The drive to mastery is essential to the fulfillment of mastery, and it is those with an intense drive that become masters in their respective fields. Mastery then can be seen as one way to distribute all of the overflowing energy and intensity that boils over within one who has an extremely active drive.
When one has a fire under oneself, one has to constantly be moving, so as to ventilate the effects of that fire, the constant movement of energy that radiates from a point of extreme energy concentration.
All of that extra energy can be safely put towards mastery, which hopefully can absorb much of it, lest one become roasted.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
Control
One emergent theme in this new set of positive values is the relinquishing of control. Yes, everything we do implies some degree of control. Even the permaculture techniques that insist on nature taking back control are really using a concentration of organized matter and energy - the individual and tools - to realize a set of conditions favorable to the manipulator, albeit a set of conditions that relegates more controls to living systems outside one's immediate locus of manipulation. Control then is predicated on the fear of destruction. But that fear, as we've learned through studies of paranoia, eventually turns back on itself, and accelerates the destruction of the fearful entity. One must strike a balance, between control and release.
Solitary Mind
The thing about being alone is that your mind begins to talk to itself, as opposed to engaging in constant conversation with others. It is allowed to consolidate and realize itself more fully, which of course takes the inputs from others, though too much input clouds what one's mind is.
What It is All About
To put it crudely, economics can be reduced to the average of human activity, centered around collective wants. This civilization wants to expand in every direction, and thus the flurry of activity around petroleum, the expansive element par excellence.
Cruelty
Cruelty is manifested in many ways. One of those ways is simply the function of explosive force, which as a medium, turns the matter that it passes through against itself.
It manifests too as fatigue, as a failing of tissue. There is no longer strength in life to respect life.
It manifests too as fatigue, as a failing of tissue. There is no longer strength in life to respect life.
Why Labor?
In this culture, labor is one of the closest concepts to the sacred, or the pure. One is saintly if one labors. It exists as some self-evident reason for doing anything good. As a concept, labor can be quite flexible, and of course, any kind of work or development in a certain direction sets one up as master over one's domain in that direction.
And so this context allows the flexible concept to be wrapped around limited activities favored by the ruling class. The labor concept was as the blade of a shovel that forced the indigenous off of their land. The laboring colonialists were doing something worthwhile and progressive, while the idling natives were sinners that let their talents and environments languish. Pure nonsense of course, but it made for a convenient rationalization to kill and dispossess.
It is the concept of labor that both the left and right struggle to socially define, as the near whole of our modern conception of virtue is attached to it. In the political imagination of the left, labor belongs to the laborer, so the laborer should be rewarded. Or else the meaning of labor is expanded to blanket the activity of marginalized peoples, which also should be rewarded.
And then on the right, any sort of activity that is just and good is activity that occurs under the guided supervision of capital and white males in general.
This shovel, once transformed into a revolutionary tool, did indeed bring life to its many wielders - sometimes justly derived life - but the shovel has also been transformed into the whip that drives the value-creating activity that fuels capital.
Now it is time for the whip to transform once again, perhaps as a noose to fit around the neck of capital. Labor is wholesome which occurs in a direction away from the aims of sustaining capital.
And so this context allows the flexible concept to be wrapped around limited activities favored by the ruling class. The labor concept was as the blade of a shovel that forced the indigenous off of their land. The laboring colonialists were doing something worthwhile and progressive, while the idling natives were sinners that let their talents and environments languish. Pure nonsense of course, but it made for a convenient rationalization to kill and dispossess.
It is the concept of labor that both the left and right struggle to socially define, as the near whole of our modern conception of virtue is attached to it. In the political imagination of the left, labor belongs to the laborer, so the laborer should be rewarded. Or else the meaning of labor is expanded to blanket the activity of marginalized peoples, which also should be rewarded.
And then on the right, any sort of activity that is just and good is activity that occurs under the guided supervision of capital and white males in general.
This shovel, once transformed into a revolutionary tool, did indeed bring life to its many wielders - sometimes justly derived life - but the shovel has also been transformed into the whip that drives the value-creating activity that fuels capital.
Now it is time for the whip to transform once again, perhaps as a noose to fit around the neck of capital. Labor is wholesome which occurs in a direction away from the aims of sustaining capital.
Liquid Assets
Liquid wealth is generally wealth that can change hands relatively easily. Money is very liquid, at least if the backing government is stable enough and there are no serious currency problems going on at market.
A house is only as liquid as it is desired. Is it in a desirable place? Is there a market of buyers that can afford it? Is it built well and appealing? Factors such as these contribute to the value of a house, which generates liquid wealth like cash, an asset that is desired by everyone at any time.
As some commentators have noted, the basis of the modern economy is the constant changing of hands of assets, a sort of circulation. In Marxist theory, this circulation is one of the essential components of capital, and when the dynamism of capital circulation wanes, you get a specific form of crisis.
A close reading of the 2008 financial crisis shows this. The debt and bad financial products were able to pile into sky-high abstract structures, as long as they were constantly changing hands, and the momentum of this activity was able to sustained, so that any actor that entered into this arrangement was confident that the capital they put into the flows would come back augmented.
It was when the general fear set in, and spread, that all of the assets lost their liquidity; they stopped circulating, and the entire abstract structure vaporized, its ghostly form to be buttressed up again by state intervention.
The vivid imagery in Pink Floyd's "Animals" album echoes this phenomenon. The dogs - or the petite bourgeoisie, the businessmen and merchants - are depicted as loyal to power, yet duplicitous and backstabbing in their daily affairs, as they lie and steal in order to accumulate their share of weight in wealth in order to maintain power in their personal spheres.
This lying and stealing occurs over a certain interval, and goes on as long circulation is possible, as long as everyone has the chance to lie and steal their way to the top, with each individual down or up to a certain degree. However, upon a crisis, the circulating blood turns to stone, and the weight they've been busy accumulating becomes a liability, to drag them down. Instead of attending to one's life and community, producing one's own resources within one's community, one has turned to the relational process of market competition to gain wealth, which sets one's peers against oneself in competition, which eventually goes bad. The backstabbing knife turns against oneself: one does not reciprocate with someone one is in antagonism with and in competition with when times get hard.
What exactly will this hardening look like?
The absurdly overdetermined instability of the financial system could be picked apart from any angle really, but I'd like to briefly hit on its attachment to the real estate sector, since it is real estate that is immediately threatened by physically disruptive processes like climate change, and it is also real estate where the super rich are laundering their gains through various shell games. Much attention is tied up in the superstructure of the financial system itself, for obvious reasons, as we've already experienced catastrophe there and the system has not been fixed. There are other sectors to look at of course.
There is much real estate value tied up on the coasts, vulnerable places certainly as the icy landmasses fall apart at the seams at an accelerating pace. Extremely valuable properties all over the world are endangered by floodwaters, and predictably, many local governments are spending millions on flood barriers to protect this real estate, while letting the poor wash away with the floods.
But we don't even have to look to the coasts. I passed through Sun Valley, Idaho, where the most ridiculous mansions - palatial in their size - sit empty and at attention for most of the year. Much of the local economy is simply maintenance work on these residences, and they have to be heated through the winter to avoid water freezing in the pipes. The local retail and restaurant sector is heavily subsidized by philanthropic wealth that passes back into the private corporation that holds much of the land. Sun Valley is a little-known resort playground for the rich and famous.
The place wouldn't exist in its present form if it wasn't for enormous amounts of surplus wealth. Almost all of its resources are shipped in, for there is scarce farming at the scale required to feed sudden influxes of vacationers and sightseers coming to this mountainous region, which stands in a kind of suspended animation, fed by the greater market.
But Sun Valley has been hit hard by floodwaters and overflowing rivers, which are generated by melting snow caps and falling rain, attributable to the increased amounts of free moisture passing over and then heated.
Much of the building has occurred on riverbanks where owners want to be close to water, and the houses and roadways have become inundated with water; there are sandbags piled everywhere. What happens to all of that idle wealth, which figures into all sorts of balance sheets, as it loses its liquidity, its desirability? What happens to the town itself, an enormous store of wealth, as the lodgings and landscapes become impassable, and the ski resorts and summer recreation sites dry up?
The flooded houses will sit as messes, and become useless. And what will this massive loss of value, this liquidity do, to the psychology of fundamentally conservative and timid buyers and sellers? What will this do to the aggregate, as everyone retracts their assets, their money, as the fear sets in? We may very well see the blood turn to stone once again.
A house is only as liquid as it is desired. Is it in a desirable place? Is there a market of buyers that can afford it? Is it built well and appealing? Factors such as these contribute to the value of a house, which generates liquid wealth like cash, an asset that is desired by everyone at any time.
As some commentators have noted, the basis of the modern economy is the constant changing of hands of assets, a sort of circulation. In Marxist theory, this circulation is one of the essential components of capital, and when the dynamism of capital circulation wanes, you get a specific form of crisis.
A close reading of the 2008 financial crisis shows this. The debt and bad financial products were able to pile into sky-high abstract structures, as long as they were constantly changing hands, and the momentum of this activity was able to sustained, so that any actor that entered into this arrangement was confident that the capital they put into the flows would come back augmented.
It was when the general fear set in, and spread, that all of the assets lost their liquidity; they stopped circulating, and the entire abstract structure vaporized, its ghostly form to be buttressed up again by state intervention.
The vivid imagery in Pink Floyd's "Animals" album echoes this phenomenon. The dogs - or the petite bourgeoisie, the businessmen and merchants - are depicted as loyal to power, yet duplicitous and backstabbing in their daily affairs, as they lie and steal in order to accumulate their share of weight in wealth in order to maintain power in their personal spheres.
This lying and stealing occurs over a certain interval, and goes on as long circulation is possible, as long as everyone has the chance to lie and steal their way to the top, with each individual down or up to a certain degree. However, upon a crisis, the circulating blood turns to stone, and the weight they've been busy accumulating becomes a liability, to drag them down. Instead of attending to one's life and community, producing one's own resources within one's community, one has turned to the relational process of market competition to gain wealth, which sets one's peers against oneself in competition, which eventually goes bad. The backstabbing knife turns against oneself: one does not reciprocate with someone one is in antagonism with and in competition with when times get hard.
What exactly will this hardening look like?
The absurdly overdetermined instability of the financial system could be picked apart from any angle really, but I'd like to briefly hit on its attachment to the real estate sector, since it is real estate that is immediately threatened by physically disruptive processes like climate change, and it is also real estate where the super rich are laundering their gains through various shell games. Much attention is tied up in the superstructure of the financial system itself, for obvious reasons, as we've already experienced catastrophe there and the system has not been fixed. There are other sectors to look at of course.
There is much real estate value tied up on the coasts, vulnerable places certainly as the icy landmasses fall apart at the seams at an accelerating pace. Extremely valuable properties all over the world are endangered by floodwaters, and predictably, many local governments are spending millions on flood barriers to protect this real estate, while letting the poor wash away with the floods.
But we don't even have to look to the coasts. I passed through Sun Valley, Idaho, where the most ridiculous mansions - palatial in their size - sit empty and at attention for most of the year. Much of the local economy is simply maintenance work on these residences, and they have to be heated through the winter to avoid water freezing in the pipes. The local retail and restaurant sector is heavily subsidized by philanthropic wealth that passes back into the private corporation that holds much of the land. Sun Valley is a little-known resort playground for the rich and famous.
The place wouldn't exist in its present form if it wasn't for enormous amounts of surplus wealth. Almost all of its resources are shipped in, for there is scarce farming at the scale required to feed sudden influxes of vacationers and sightseers coming to this mountainous region, which stands in a kind of suspended animation, fed by the greater market.
But Sun Valley has been hit hard by floodwaters and overflowing rivers, which are generated by melting snow caps and falling rain, attributable to the increased amounts of free moisture passing over and then heated.
Much of the building has occurred on riverbanks where owners want to be close to water, and the houses and roadways have become inundated with water; there are sandbags piled everywhere. What happens to all of that idle wealth, which figures into all sorts of balance sheets, as it loses its liquidity, its desirability? What happens to the town itself, an enormous store of wealth, as the lodgings and landscapes become impassable, and the ski resorts and summer recreation sites dry up?
The flooded houses will sit as messes, and become useless. And what will this massive loss of value, this liquidity do, to the psychology of fundamentally conservative and timid buyers and sellers? What will this do to the aggregate, as everyone retracts their assets, their money, as the fear sets in? We may very well see the blood turn to stone once again.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Strength
Strength is often thought of as a single dimension. This here tree branch is "strong," this given person has a "strong" emotional constitution, this nation has a "strong"military, and all the like. But such conceptions of strength fail to account for the myriad conditions that go into making "strength" possible. Even if we turn to the body builder, that stereotypical symbol of our culture's notion of physical strength, many elements have to be in place for that physical strength to be possible.
There must be an established regimen of strength training, which itself is a strong or well established regime. There must be useful implements for building strength, the reproduction of which implies a strong industry or manufacturing process. The body builder must have a strong diet, and a strong work ethic, both of which require self-discipline, which also needs to be strong, and this in turn is encouraged by a strong family, which is only socially possible and culturally determined. Or of course one's family connections are weak by cultural standards, which produces another kind of urgency altogether, which develops strength in some other area, such as one's willpower. There are many ways for these conditions to arise.
And then of course for anyone to care about any of this at all, we must have landed here through historical developments and cultural determination among other things. What one respects as strong is necessarily what others may respect, or it is at least something that helps one maintain what one loves. I probably don't need to go much further than that at this point.
One element of strength is repetition. If strength is a sturdiness or constancy against some sort of disorganizing force, then it would follow that a given living arrangement would have to be constantly organized to provide that sturdiness. Repetition is a way to constantly fix energy and matter in a certain configuration, which eventually holds tighter the longer the process goes on, which can be used as leverage to manipulate energy and matter in other ways.
Strength can manifest in good habits that effect some sort of bodily constitution, or a mental state, which reinforces the regimen within which strength emerges. Take for example spiritual strength. Equanimity, or the evenness and stability of affect, arises out of one's diet, environment, relations, self-discipline, personal history, and many other elements, which can be combined in a number of ways. Great spiritual disciplines grow as a complex of practices, practices which marshal the senses in various ways, such as with incense, beautiful sounds, beautiful artistic and architectural imagery, social relations, repetitious rituals, and the like, all of which reinforce the strength of a given state of being.
If one of those elements is weakened, it does not necessarily mean that the entire arrangement falls into decline, but it does make it more probable for further weakness to spread if some sort of corrective or compensatory action is not taken. If multiple branches are weakened, then you have a greater chance of backsliding. But conversely, to make progress globally, one can slowly build strength in each area and feel the buoyancy that such assistance provides.
There must be an established regimen of strength training, which itself is a strong or well established regime. There must be useful implements for building strength, the reproduction of which implies a strong industry or manufacturing process. The body builder must have a strong diet, and a strong work ethic, both of which require self-discipline, which also needs to be strong, and this in turn is encouraged by a strong family, which is only socially possible and culturally determined. Or of course one's family connections are weak by cultural standards, which produces another kind of urgency altogether, which develops strength in some other area, such as one's willpower. There are many ways for these conditions to arise.
And then of course for anyone to care about any of this at all, we must have landed here through historical developments and cultural determination among other things. What one respects as strong is necessarily what others may respect, or it is at least something that helps one maintain what one loves. I probably don't need to go much further than that at this point.
One element of strength is repetition. If strength is a sturdiness or constancy against some sort of disorganizing force, then it would follow that a given living arrangement would have to be constantly organized to provide that sturdiness. Repetition is a way to constantly fix energy and matter in a certain configuration, which eventually holds tighter the longer the process goes on, which can be used as leverage to manipulate energy and matter in other ways.
Strength can manifest in good habits that effect some sort of bodily constitution, or a mental state, which reinforces the regimen within which strength emerges. Take for example spiritual strength. Equanimity, or the evenness and stability of affect, arises out of one's diet, environment, relations, self-discipline, personal history, and many other elements, which can be combined in a number of ways. Great spiritual disciplines grow as a complex of practices, practices which marshal the senses in various ways, such as with incense, beautiful sounds, beautiful artistic and architectural imagery, social relations, repetitious rituals, and the like, all of which reinforce the strength of a given state of being.
If one of those elements is weakened, it does not necessarily mean that the entire arrangement falls into decline, but it does make it more probable for further weakness to spread if some sort of corrective or compensatory action is not taken. If multiple branches are weakened, then you have a greater chance of backsliding. But conversely, to make progress globally, one can slowly build strength in each area and feel the buoyancy that such assistance provides.
Language and Symbol
One thing about language and symbolism is that embedded in such phenomena is the imprint of social function. When things are put into words, when discourse arises around something, it makes it much more real to us social animals; few want to be truly alone. Language, through its very nature, implies a sharing and by extension, a community. To speak of something is to remove the isolation of that thing existing only in oneself. The language, or the symbol, confirms the existence of its referent in the minds of others.
This is one thing that makes Trump such an interesting and powerful figure. With his person, his words, and his acts in full view and taken readily up into discourse, our predicament can no longer be spun away with propaganda or pushed to the side: everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone else knows, that the political system as it exists is in serious trouble. Through the symbol, a quality of fear is established by virtue of the fear being shared by a large enough number.
But this fear is not monolithic, because through the fear is a sense of possibility. There emerges a new aggressive vision of what can be, whose potentiality grows all the more as the body politic is slighted. One thinks: to hell with it, let's ask for more. And of course the reactionaries, upon coming face to face with this growing radicalism say: the gloves come off, our inferiors are growing too restless.
The functionality of language works in positive ways as well. Part of how identity works is that building up a language around what one is - especially if one is a marginalized person - helps to legitimize oneself through a social recognition of one's character.
This is one thing that makes Trump such an interesting and powerful figure. With his person, his words, and his acts in full view and taken readily up into discourse, our predicament can no longer be spun away with propaganda or pushed to the side: everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone else knows, that the political system as it exists is in serious trouble. Through the symbol, a quality of fear is established by virtue of the fear being shared by a large enough number.
But this fear is not monolithic, because through the fear is a sense of possibility. There emerges a new aggressive vision of what can be, whose potentiality grows all the more as the body politic is slighted. One thinks: to hell with it, let's ask for more. And of course the reactionaries, upon coming face to face with this growing radicalism say: the gloves come off, our inferiors are growing too restless.
The functionality of language works in positive ways as well. Part of how identity works is that building up a language around what one is - especially if one is a marginalized person - helps to legitimize oneself through a social recognition of one's character.
Contraction
It is the monstrous and the absurd that most intensely focuses our attention on a society's deepest structural flaws, flaws which also systematically produce problematic individuals as well, through that society's regular operation. And of course it is the association of individuals that makes up a given structure. But as usual, I digress.
In an extreme case, the mass murder of the Jews throughout Europe during WWII has served as a singular focusing point in the Western intellect, in which an endless analysis of every single pertinent detail has been carried out. And layer after layer, generation after generation of scholarly study has obsessively mapped out the deep flaws in modern Western societies, and the modern human character, for that matter. A much welcome obsession! As long as its lessons are actively applied to daily life and society.
Or else of course the lessons of history are forgotten, and historical events are studied as isolated and alien constellations of suspended events. Like one glances into an ant farm, trying to understand, yet separated by glass and given the benefit of ultimate disinterest.
Or else of course the lessons of history are forgotten, and historical events are studied as isolated and alien constellations of suspended events. Like one glances into an ant farm, trying to understand, yet separated by glass and given the benefit of ultimate disinterest.
Great wars, civil wars, and instances of genocide provide further examples in which various irreconcilable political, economic, and social problems erupt into explosive catastrophes. However, despite the explosive quality of these catastrophic events, they can also be viewed as periods of contraction.
War, civil strife, and revolution are partially manifestations of a forceful purging and reconciliation of internal and external contradictions within and without a society's structure. This is not, as the reactionaries imagine, a clean purge or reconciliation that we can crudely conceive of, such as when one vomits or sweats out toxins, washes one's hands, or heals a relationship. No, these catastrophic sequences of events only generate a multitude of fresh trauma, expanding in every direction, which sets the shape of reproduced structural contradiction when the cooling begins. And where these fault lines develop, they mark the sites where trauma cycles are to begin anew, seemingly until structural violence and repression exhausts itself, though given the history of civilizations, these destructive forces scatter out, their germseed buried and set to take root in time.
War and strife appear to be self-accelerating until they burn themselves out. But there are cases in which these contractionary forces are expressed over a greater time frame. The devastation happens slowly, and a society is gradually transformed over a protracted period of a thousand cuts.
Our national conversation busies itself with discussions about brutal dictators and calamitous wars across history, and the grim lessons posed by those events are passed by in silence, or obscured by some new distraction. More specifically, the privileged obsess over distilled images of the horrible, or anticipations of the horrible, while growing numbers of the marginalized experience the horrible itself in greater intensity through everyday events.
We need not rub our knuckles over burning foreign lands - though we certainly should - when great misery smolders among us. Whether various communities struggle to survive in sacrifice zones, prisoners die of overcrowding, bacteria-resistant staph, and abuse, immigrants die attempting to cross various borders, under-served communities waste away without health care, or any other slow-burning atrocity carries on, the soul of this nation, or at least the collective conception of what is possible or permissible, is permanently altered.
Through contraction, a society's overextension is pared down, through the sacrifice of marginalized peoples, whose consent in regard to the arrangement is not bothered with, needless to say. And in turn, why should the consent of the governed be extended in reciprocation?
One needn't look under the bed for Nazis. When officials in Flint can poison an entire population, citing concerns about "cost," and then turn their backs against cries of pain and despair, or when prison complex administrators speak of mass execution, citing concerns about the cost of expiring drugs, we can only wonder how long ago it was that some essential component to our national character was lost, if it did indeed exist at some point.
One fears the tiger emerging from the bushes, as multitudes of poisonous snakes gather around one's ankles. Fine. The question now is whether the society combusts into flames once again, gradually unravels over a period of time, or else finds the courage within itself to radically transform into something worth going on.
War, civil strife, and revolution are partially manifestations of a forceful purging and reconciliation of internal and external contradictions within and without a society's structure. This is not, as the reactionaries imagine, a clean purge or reconciliation that we can crudely conceive of, such as when one vomits or sweats out toxins, washes one's hands, or heals a relationship. No, these catastrophic sequences of events only generate a multitude of fresh trauma, expanding in every direction, which sets the shape of reproduced structural contradiction when the cooling begins. And where these fault lines develop, they mark the sites where trauma cycles are to begin anew, seemingly until structural violence and repression exhausts itself, though given the history of civilizations, these destructive forces scatter out, their germseed buried and set to take root in time.
War and strife appear to be self-accelerating until they burn themselves out. But there are cases in which these contractionary forces are expressed over a greater time frame. The devastation happens slowly, and a society is gradually transformed over a protracted period of a thousand cuts.
Our national conversation busies itself with discussions about brutal dictators and calamitous wars across history, and the grim lessons posed by those events are passed by in silence, or obscured by some new distraction. More specifically, the privileged obsess over distilled images of the horrible, or anticipations of the horrible, while growing numbers of the marginalized experience the horrible itself in greater intensity through everyday events.
We need not rub our knuckles over burning foreign lands - though we certainly should - when great misery smolders among us. Whether various communities struggle to survive in sacrifice zones, prisoners die of overcrowding, bacteria-resistant staph, and abuse, immigrants die attempting to cross various borders, under-served communities waste away without health care, or any other slow-burning atrocity carries on, the soul of this nation, or at least the collective conception of what is possible or permissible, is permanently altered.
Through contraction, a society's overextension is pared down, through the sacrifice of marginalized peoples, whose consent in regard to the arrangement is not bothered with, needless to say. And in turn, why should the consent of the governed be extended in reciprocation?
One needn't look under the bed for Nazis. When officials in Flint can poison an entire population, citing concerns about "cost," and then turn their backs against cries of pain and despair, or when prison complex administrators speak of mass execution, citing concerns about the cost of expiring drugs, we can only wonder how long ago it was that some essential component to our national character was lost, if it did indeed exist at some point.
One fears the tiger emerging from the bushes, as multitudes of poisonous snakes gather around one's ankles. Fine. The question now is whether the society combusts into flames once again, gradually unravels over a period of time, or else finds the courage within itself to radically transform into something worth going on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)