Thursday, December 22, 2016
The Dance
As one's constructed realities break down, and as reality itself begins rushing in - and sometimes as the madness creeps in - one's writing takes on the quality of a dance. Or a ride down the side of a mountain. Or simply the intuitive juxtaposition of what one finds to be beautiful, or terrible for that matter, while one has the energy to do so.
Magical Wealth
There is great power in a complex social system, such as an industrial society: to the outsider it produces wonderous materials like magic. But the nature of this power conceals itself to the outsider, and even to many insiders. The power relations remain camouflaged and hidden from view. That is, a beautiful industrial creation like an automobile or a tool says very little about how it is produced, and who gets to enjoy it, and who gets to produce it, and who gets to suffer for it, for that matter.
Some colonized groups behold the material powers with awe, yet when they seek to integrate themselves into this powerful body, so as to channel this power, they are instead enslaved and even destroyed. Or else a small minority prospers, at the pinpoint where the wealth is being vacuumed up.
This issue manifests in many other ways, such as with the resource curse. The supposed blessing of oil wealth suddenly becomes a curse. To process the oil and welcome in money and investments, the colonized quickly find their society transformed, mirroring capital with all of its social consequences. And of course colonial or imperial capital always wants to take a little more than it gives.
Some colonized groups behold the material powers with awe, yet when they seek to integrate themselves into this powerful body, so as to channel this power, they are instead enslaved and even destroyed. Or else a small minority prospers, at the pinpoint where the wealth is being vacuumed up.
This issue manifests in many other ways, such as with the resource curse. The supposed blessing of oil wealth suddenly becomes a curse. To process the oil and welcome in money and investments, the colonized quickly find their society transformed, mirroring capital with all of its social consequences. And of course colonial or imperial capital always wants to take a little more than it gives.
Healers
Who heals the healer? Presumably the healer.
The healer finds that force can no longer be exerted outwards. No, it must now be turned inwards, toward the self.
But there is a dilemma. One finds oneself at an impasse in which, exhausted from the pain of others, one seeks to conceal the pain of exhaustion, so that it will not give others any more pain. Yet to conceal is to give the other pain in the long run.
So the healer must simultaneously open up, which requires others.
The healer finds that force can no longer be exerted outwards. No, it must now be turned inwards, toward the self.
But there is a dilemma. One finds oneself at an impasse in which, exhausted from the pain of others, one seeks to conceal the pain of exhaustion, so that it will not give others any more pain. Yet to conceal is to give the other pain in the long run.
So the healer must simultaneously open up, which requires others.
Wealth in Circulation
Wealth often appears to the perception as static: a heap of gold, or a glittering kingdom, sitting. But really it is constantly in circulation, which has all sorts of implications of its own.
For example, the planes moving traffic from Los Angeles to Chicago and back again are virtually brand new, spacious, fancy. But the planes moving traffic from Chicago to Detroit and back again are aging and run-down.
Further, both of these circuits of transport represent wealth, but they are wealth in different stages: a wealth that is passing, and a wealth that is renewing.
For example, the planes moving traffic from Los Angeles to Chicago and back again are virtually brand new, spacious, fancy. But the planes moving traffic from Chicago to Detroit and back again are aging and run-down.
Further, both of these circuits of transport represent wealth, but they are wealth in different stages: a wealth that is passing, and a wealth that is renewing.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Junk News: Closing Thoughts
As the junk news process grinds on, I'd like to get down a few closing thoughts on the matter before I relax my fevered gaze on its unfolding.
We have the production of fake news, junk news, which is both morally and economically possible because of the general ambient background of the body politic. That same ambient background is also producing the junk truth-measuring instruments, whose purpose of sustaining truth is demonstrating the opposite function of destroying truth.
As a war transforms both combatants simultaneously by virtue of what takes place between them, the production of junk and anti-junk is only reinforcing the emerging patterns that are giving rise to them in the first place, and these emerging patterns are transforming the nature of our institutions and loci of human activity, such as the instruments for junk and anti-junk production.
The junk-producing right is drawing its political force from a domestic proto-fascism, whose raging fires, wounds, bad karmic cycles, or what have you, have been allowed to fester. Now I say "proto" because these forces aren't yet fully developed, and I say the "f-word" because it conjures the immediacy and focus one gets when pointing to a fire and saying, "hey, not good, that's fire." Technical fascism was specific to a historical period, and today we don't entirely know what shapes this new reactionary populism will take.
The anti-junk producing left - please excuse the simplistic right and left designations by the way, just devices for now - is drawing its political force from foreign proto-fascist fires that have been allowed - and even encouraged - to rage. Yes, much of the Russophobic paranoia that has accompanied the fake news witch hunts has been found to be most forcefully emanating from Ukrainian nationalist actors, trafficking in the same paranoid proto-fascist undercurrents as the far right in that nation.
Here a more physical analogue comes to mind, in which cultivated regions of poverty become vectors of diseases that were long since thought to be vanquished.
Both junk processes will produce similar results in the end. The ending of Hamlet also comes to mind, in which everyone busies themselves with poking each other with poisoned rapiers.
We keep looking for the monsters, the identifiable evil Mordor kingdoms, while it is all happening simultaneously, right under our noses. These are baffling patterns peculiar to the human capitalist era, which however unprecedented it may be in human social, technological, and economic history, is still similar to earlier historic patterns in which there is a dramatic accumulation of material power that grows and holds, and that proceeds to an equally dramatic dissolution.
Am I then some wise observer, perched upon a hill, unsoiled by the mud fights taking place below? Well, of course not. I am also a willing participant, who nevertheless has to learn to live by some kind of ideal in these barbarous times. That project to come, in time.
We have the production of fake news, junk news, which is both morally and economically possible because of the general ambient background of the body politic. That same ambient background is also producing the junk truth-measuring instruments, whose purpose of sustaining truth is demonstrating the opposite function of destroying truth.
As a war transforms both combatants simultaneously by virtue of what takes place between them, the production of junk and anti-junk is only reinforcing the emerging patterns that are giving rise to them in the first place, and these emerging patterns are transforming the nature of our institutions and loci of human activity, such as the instruments for junk and anti-junk production.
The junk-producing right is drawing its political force from a domestic proto-fascism, whose raging fires, wounds, bad karmic cycles, or what have you, have been allowed to fester. Now I say "proto" because these forces aren't yet fully developed, and I say the "f-word" because it conjures the immediacy and focus one gets when pointing to a fire and saying, "hey, not good, that's fire." Technical fascism was specific to a historical period, and today we don't entirely know what shapes this new reactionary populism will take.
The anti-junk producing left - please excuse the simplistic right and left designations by the way, just devices for now - is drawing its political force from foreign proto-fascist fires that have been allowed - and even encouraged - to rage. Yes, much of the Russophobic paranoia that has accompanied the fake news witch hunts has been found to be most forcefully emanating from Ukrainian nationalist actors, trafficking in the same paranoid proto-fascist undercurrents as the far right in that nation.
Here a more physical analogue comes to mind, in which cultivated regions of poverty become vectors of diseases that were long since thought to be vanquished.
Both junk processes will produce similar results in the end. The ending of Hamlet also comes to mind, in which everyone busies themselves with poking each other with poisoned rapiers.
We keep looking for the monsters, the identifiable evil Mordor kingdoms, while it is all happening simultaneously, right under our noses. These are baffling patterns peculiar to the human capitalist era, which however unprecedented it may be in human social, technological, and economic history, is still similar to earlier historic patterns in which there is a dramatic accumulation of material power that grows and holds, and that proceeds to an equally dramatic dissolution.
Am I then some wise observer, perched upon a hill, unsoiled by the mud fights taking place below? Well, of course not. I am also a willing participant, who nevertheless has to learn to live by some kind of ideal in these barbarous times. That project to come, in time.
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
Patterns of Wear
The worker, as a specialized function within the division of labor, is worn down by a sustained exposure to high volumes of distinct work. And similarly, different individuals become more sensitive to different types of wear. The motion and repetition of something often determines the pattern of wear.
In a larger sense, one sees new entrants in the workforce bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as they say, and over time their enthusiasm wanes as they find that their initiatives for transforming their environments are suppressed.
Even a new job after a string of many is perceived as a new beginning, a birth, and the energetic intervals afforded by these bursts of energy shorten further and further as the worker becomes more cynical.
In a larger sense, one sees new entrants in the workforce bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as they say, and over time their enthusiasm wanes as they find that their initiatives for transforming their environments are suppressed.
Even a new job after a string of many is perceived as a new beginning, a birth, and the energetic intervals afforded by these bursts of energy shorten further and further as the worker becomes more cynical.
Junk News Cont'd
It seems as though the singular event of the American executive power transfer - and its perceived failure by many in the republic - has ignited a galaxy of latent antagonisms, which have cascaded out in every direction. Granted, any further plunge in an already precipitous public trust will tend to do just this.
It will be difficult to ascertain the magnitude of the effects of this completed election cycle until after the dust clears. Though of course the outcome of the election cycle itself can be construed as yet another effect that is consequence of a complex historical process.
All too easy to get ahead of ourselves. For the moment, it is useful to focus in once again on the "fake news" phenomena, and the struggles contained in it, to trace the contours of this ongoing unfolding. Pardon the obsession, these developments are just too irresistible to me.
The establishment reaction to the fake news phenomena is already well underway, and this reaction will most likely further progress the system to the supercritical state mentioned earlier. This is because the system that has tasked itself with filtering out quality news and hence truth has in fact contributed mightily to the concentrations of power that have produced these distortions of truth in the first place.
This of course requires some unpacking.
Suddenly we have enthusiastic tech entrepreneurs and programmers, who having concerned themselves with the troubling proliferation of fake news outlets, have bravely faced up to the task of building filtering tools for browsers in order to warn users of impending fakeness. The problem is that these filtering devices have to draw from established lists of news outlets that have been reputed to produce low quality news, which of course is a political decision.
As an aside, it is curious that both a person spearheading the fake news push and a person spearheading the fake news filter push initiated their efforts as a cynical joke which then took off. It seems the ironic self-reference and self parody that accompanies the breakdown of overarching public truths and the onset of relativist epistemology is back in full swing. The breakdown of the political order is ushering in a recurrence of the postmodern electrical storm.
As for the political decision for the filter list, we are already seeing this decision being made; its results are all too predictable. CBS was one of the first news outlets to promote the anti-fake tool, and doubtless their name was on the good news list, along with other establishment media organs, despite the very visible degradation in news quality from these outlets, which has real consequences.
Of course a developer of a tool like this will want to ensure that the outlets that plug its products will be included on the good list. And all of the independent news sites that actually produce reliable news, and which lack the resources to pose a real threat, are being swept up in the net with the other fake news organs. So the public truth is indeed breaking down, as the public's instruments for maintaining those truths are themselves breaking down as coherent and reliable entities of efficacy. Here an image impresses itself: one is going into battle with a blade that is doing battle with itself.
And I assume the people who gladly consume the fake news are going to drop what they are doing and trust that the instruments telling them to stand down and respect the truth are indeed telling the truth! The circulation and build up of capital required to produce the instruments that vet the truth is simultaneously producing substantial power imbalances, which is in turn fostering the resent necessary for people to consume news media that is flattering to their sensibilities, regardless of its quality.
There is something profound that is happening here, and I don't believe I am giving it proper treatment at the moment, though the ground covered in this post makes for plenty of headway. This subject will have to be revisited, perhaps again and again, so that I may at some time properly convey it. Until then, plenty to think through for some time.
It will be difficult to ascertain the magnitude of the effects of this completed election cycle until after the dust clears. Though of course the outcome of the election cycle itself can be construed as yet another effect that is consequence of a complex historical process.
All too easy to get ahead of ourselves. For the moment, it is useful to focus in once again on the "fake news" phenomena, and the struggles contained in it, to trace the contours of this ongoing unfolding. Pardon the obsession, these developments are just too irresistible to me.
The establishment reaction to the fake news phenomena is already well underway, and this reaction will most likely further progress the system to the supercritical state mentioned earlier. This is because the system that has tasked itself with filtering out quality news and hence truth has in fact contributed mightily to the concentrations of power that have produced these distortions of truth in the first place.
This of course requires some unpacking.
Suddenly we have enthusiastic tech entrepreneurs and programmers, who having concerned themselves with the troubling proliferation of fake news outlets, have bravely faced up to the task of building filtering tools for browsers in order to warn users of impending fakeness. The problem is that these filtering devices have to draw from established lists of news outlets that have been reputed to produce low quality news, which of course is a political decision.
As an aside, it is curious that both a person spearheading the fake news push and a person spearheading the fake news filter push initiated their efforts as a cynical joke which then took off. It seems the ironic self-reference and self parody that accompanies the breakdown of overarching public truths and the onset of relativist epistemology is back in full swing. The breakdown of the political order is ushering in a recurrence of the postmodern electrical storm.
As for the political decision for the filter list, we are already seeing this decision being made; its results are all too predictable. CBS was one of the first news outlets to promote the anti-fake tool, and doubtless their name was on the good news list, along with other establishment media organs, despite the very visible degradation in news quality from these outlets, which has real consequences.
Of course a developer of a tool like this will want to ensure that the outlets that plug its products will be included on the good list. And all of the independent news sites that actually produce reliable news, and which lack the resources to pose a real threat, are being swept up in the net with the other fake news organs. So the public truth is indeed breaking down, as the public's instruments for maintaining those truths are themselves breaking down as coherent and reliable entities of efficacy. Here an image impresses itself: one is going into battle with a blade that is doing battle with itself.
And I assume the people who gladly consume the fake news are going to drop what they are doing and trust that the instruments telling them to stand down and respect the truth are indeed telling the truth! The circulation and build up of capital required to produce the instruments that vet the truth is simultaneously producing substantial power imbalances, which is in turn fostering the resent necessary for people to consume news media that is flattering to their sensibilities, regardless of its quality.
There is something profound that is happening here, and I don't believe I am giving it proper treatment at the moment, though the ground covered in this post makes for plenty of headway. This subject will have to be revisited, perhaps again and again, so that I may at some time properly convey it. Until then, plenty to think through for some time.
Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Can't Get No Satisfaction
I think it is worth reiterating - and I'm sure I've written about this before - that I am perpetually dissatisfied with my writings. Each paragraph, along with all of the concepts that are elucidated or at least implied in it, is constantly threatening to fall apart, or even blow up.
I am reminded of that old cartoon gag in which the protagonist is unfruitfully attempting to plug up some leak, only to have it burst forth somewhere else, and soon enough there is a deluge of uncooperative reality, as it were.
Reality is pouring forth in every direction, and all I can do is attempt to use the limbs and tools I have to plug up what streams I can, and arrange them into a communicable artifact.
And here it is: eventually you do just reach some limited artifact that is a finished work. I am inclined to obsessively poke, prod, and revise a given piece. But every artist - and I've found this in music composition - knows that you eventually have to stop, or you'll just spoil the damn thing. Finish it, and allow the transformative - and entropic - effects of the atmosphere take hold, as the piece is processed by others with differing perceptions and values.
Or maybe it will simply languish in a sealed room, I don't know! And there is that constant nagging doubt in the background: should I even be doing this? Is it a worthwhile project?
And the harder I work to surmount the limits of my self, to represent a reality so much larger than myself, then all the more this work asserts itself as an irreducible artifact of myself, with all of the limits that implies.
I am reminded of that old cartoon gag in which the protagonist is unfruitfully attempting to plug up some leak, only to have it burst forth somewhere else, and soon enough there is a deluge of uncooperative reality, as it were.
Reality is pouring forth in every direction, and all I can do is attempt to use the limbs and tools I have to plug up what streams I can, and arrange them into a communicable artifact.
And here it is: eventually you do just reach some limited artifact that is a finished work. I am inclined to obsessively poke, prod, and revise a given piece. But every artist - and I've found this in music composition - knows that you eventually have to stop, or you'll just spoil the damn thing. Finish it, and allow the transformative - and entropic - effects of the atmosphere take hold, as the piece is processed by others with differing perceptions and values.
Or maybe it will simply languish in a sealed room, I don't know! And there is that constant nagging doubt in the background: should I even be doing this? Is it a worthwhile project?
And the harder I work to surmount the limits of my self, to represent a reality so much larger than myself, then all the more this work asserts itself as an irreducible artifact of myself, with all of the limits that implies.
Saturday, December 03, 2016
Junk News
This is incredibly fascinating, albeit morbidly so.
The fake news phenomenon has to be taken in conjunction with Trump supporters' desire for an alternate reality. For precision, let's speak here of the alt-right's desire for an alternate reality.
It isn't so important that the alternate reality is a lie; the observation in the Stone article that this alternate reality is a function of the authoritarian leader's power is very prescient. There are parts of this reality that are indeed coherent and sensible: the distrust of establishment politicians and institutions, the distrust of capital (at least liberal capital), the distrust of free trade, the distrust of immigration policy, etc.
The alternate reality does take its power from this coherence and correspondence, but it then distorts the picture with xenophobic and domineering nonsense, as a function of the reactionary's instinct to power. This ends up decoupling the alternate reality from an inclination towards harmony and justice, and towards a delineated and separated sphere of power that ends up progressing the entire system to a supercritical and destructive state.
This alternate reality requires manufacturing, which is something that capital is very good at for obvious reasons. Like the processing of refined sugars, corn syrups, and enriched flours, the alternate reality is manufactured by the breaking down and recombining of living bodies, their most appealing components distilled and combined in the greatest number, so as to be irresistible to some isolated organ, regardless of the effects on the rest of the body (or body politic). Because of this constructed quality, a business can be built around intentionally manufacturing facets of this reality. One doesn't have to wait around for reality to assert itself and provide the scoop; one can simply construct an appealing reality to be taken up.
So a fake news story takes off and all of those seedy entrepreneurs smell blood. There is a feeding frenzy in which everyone is constructing their own fake news outlets, and the frenzy attracts the attention of advertisers and even Facebook, which has allowed the fake news stories to flourish on its networks for want of a cut of the advertising money.
Evidently Google has tried to suppress these fake news sites, but there are many more advertising networks waiting to get in on the action. Could this be an instance of ominous foreshadowing? These tech companies are still large and powerful, but we saw what happened to both the Republican and Democratic establishments...
This could very well be an indicator as to why the right is enjoying such a rapid ascendance around the world, against all odds. As a radical leftist, it would be very wonderful if capital suddenly started flooding in to attend to my prejudices, but alas, the money spigot has turned away from my kind.
The constructed mythos of the left is suppressed by money power at every turn because it is actually threatening to money power. The right's tribal alliances on the other hand are shared with members of the ruling class, and the prejudices of this alliance are manifested in the right wing mythos, so that it is steadily amplified by capital flows.
The fake news is junk yes, but we are no longer talking about some form of information that is supposed to aid in regulating the body as a whole. We are speaking of a sort of catalyst or enzyme within an altogether new metabolism, a metabolism that does not progress towards the maintenance of some stable relation, but its precise opposite.
The fake news phenomenon has to be taken in conjunction with Trump supporters' desire for an alternate reality. For precision, let's speak here of the alt-right's desire for an alternate reality.
It isn't so important that the alternate reality is a lie; the observation in the Stone article that this alternate reality is a function of the authoritarian leader's power is very prescient. There are parts of this reality that are indeed coherent and sensible: the distrust of establishment politicians and institutions, the distrust of capital (at least liberal capital), the distrust of free trade, the distrust of immigration policy, etc.
The alternate reality does take its power from this coherence and correspondence, but it then distorts the picture with xenophobic and domineering nonsense, as a function of the reactionary's instinct to power. This ends up decoupling the alternate reality from an inclination towards harmony and justice, and towards a delineated and separated sphere of power that ends up progressing the entire system to a supercritical and destructive state.
This alternate reality requires manufacturing, which is something that capital is very good at for obvious reasons. Like the processing of refined sugars, corn syrups, and enriched flours, the alternate reality is manufactured by the breaking down and recombining of living bodies, their most appealing components distilled and combined in the greatest number, so as to be irresistible to some isolated organ, regardless of the effects on the rest of the body (or body politic). Because of this constructed quality, a business can be built around intentionally manufacturing facets of this reality. One doesn't have to wait around for reality to assert itself and provide the scoop; one can simply construct an appealing reality to be taken up.
So a fake news story takes off and all of those seedy entrepreneurs smell blood. There is a feeding frenzy in which everyone is constructing their own fake news outlets, and the frenzy attracts the attention of advertisers and even Facebook, which has allowed the fake news stories to flourish on its networks for want of a cut of the advertising money.
Evidently Google has tried to suppress these fake news sites, but there are many more advertising networks waiting to get in on the action. Could this be an instance of ominous foreshadowing? These tech companies are still large and powerful, but we saw what happened to both the Republican and Democratic establishments...
This could very well be an indicator as to why the right is enjoying such a rapid ascendance around the world, against all odds. As a radical leftist, it would be very wonderful if capital suddenly started flooding in to attend to my prejudices, but alas, the money spigot has turned away from my kind.
The constructed mythos of the left is suppressed by money power at every turn because it is actually threatening to money power. The right's tribal alliances on the other hand are shared with members of the ruling class, and the prejudices of this alliance are manifested in the right wing mythos, so that it is steadily amplified by capital flows.
The fake news is junk yes, but we are no longer talking about some form of information that is supposed to aid in regulating the body as a whole. We are speaking of a sort of catalyst or enzyme within an altogether new metabolism, a metabolism that does not progress towards the maintenance of some stable relation, but its precise opposite.
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