One of the macro patterns of capital has to do with the ongoing and advancing fragmentation of social production. Every socially producing body is increasingly on its own, and as such, has its own idiosyncratic and urgent interest in maintaining a certain society that supports its perpetual operation. Some of these interests align, but many do not. Much is mutually reinforcing antagonism.
Part of this has to do with capital's explosive growth and its constant need for dynamic, yet self serving change. Everything is angling to change at once, but the direction that change goes ends up where the power concentrates the most, and the rest of the resigned and fearful dynamos are taken with it.
Monday, January 29, 2018
You're Not Getting Away That Easily
In much talk about U.S. decline, there is an unmistakable touch of acridity in the rhetoric. It is an acridity that no doubt arises amongst self-pity or external compassion as well; one can't watch a dying thing and remain unmoved, but the acridity does indeed persist.
The boot that is pressed upon the neck of the world has a leg connected to it, and that leg has a body connected to it, a body that must be fed and maintained, and which has limited energy. And so as the feed runs dry and that boot begins to weaken, there is a countervailing force rising back to meet the boot, a force which among many things, bears the imprint of the boot's mirror image.
The fear and resent that the U.S. empire has generated throughout the world - and within itself - will ensure that not only does that empire fade into the murk as it goes, but that it will be plunged into that murk with, dare I say, "extreme prejudice." And so on and so forth.
The boot that is pressed upon the neck of the world has a leg connected to it, and that leg has a body connected to it, a body that must be fed and maintained, and which has limited energy. And so as the feed runs dry and that boot begins to weaken, there is a countervailing force rising back to meet the boot, a force which among many things, bears the imprint of the boot's mirror image.
The fear and resent that the U.S. empire has generated throughout the world - and within itself - will ensure that not only does that empire fade into the murk as it goes, but that it will be plunged into that murk with, dare I say, "extreme prejudice." And so on and so forth.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Hang Tight
The writing here has petered off for a number of reasons. In a depressive state, the mind - or at least my mind - becomes more passive and more absorptive than it already is, and so it feels as a foggy and sluggish sink of information. At some point the active and constructive creativity will come back, but when that will be is always a question that is up in the air during times such as these.
Further, a depressive perception tends to focus obsessively on what is wrong. This is of course a very useful diagnostic process, but in too great amounts this process only proceeds to a state of paralysis in which misery is the only product, a product which is continuously produced.
To give a macro example of this problem that exists in the individual, no amount of detailed and hand-wringing analysis has changed the fact that explosive oil tankers can continue to lumber across the North American continent unimpeded, occasionally blowing up and casting toxic oil sludge about, which proceeds in every direction by the grace of gravity and paths of least resistance, and which catches fire and causes all sorts of havoc, and in some cases death.
It seems the destructive trends most central to a way of life continue unabated, only to be lamented over as they continue on relatively unobstructed. The executive functions look over the runaway elemental forces with pale faces and clammy hands, like so many Sisyphus types chasing slippery boulders back down their hills, which is a syndrome present in economic processes and individuals alike, wherever there is futile effort and resignation over those stubborn problems which refuse to be solved in the given paradigm.
To give a macro example of this problem that exists in the individual, no amount of detailed and hand-wringing analysis has changed the fact that explosive oil tankers can continue to lumber across the North American continent unimpeded, occasionally blowing up and casting toxic oil sludge about, which proceeds in every direction by the grace of gravity and paths of least resistance, and which catches fire and causes all sorts of havoc, and in some cases death.
It seems the destructive trends most central to a way of life continue unabated, only to be lamented over as they continue on relatively unobstructed. The executive functions look over the runaway elemental forces with pale faces and clammy hands, like so many Sisyphus types chasing slippery boulders back down their hills, which is a syndrome present in economic processes and individuals alike, wherever there is futile effort and resignation over those stubborn problems which refuse to be solved in the given paradigm.
I have plenty of material that embodies the endless refinement of obsessive problem identification, and I've grown tired of it. In time a positive analysis should return as I shift into a more constructive life pattern, though there is always the matter of how useful this stuff actually is, and what exactly I'm going to do with it. At least I can write in a relative vacuum while the writing is still enjoyable.
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Trio
The three posts below are all attempts to tackle a single phenomenon from separate but interrelated angles. An experiment with structure if you will. I've always viewed this blog as a sort of sketchpad, a way to not only present ideas to myself - and to those that read it - for the joy of doing the work in relative silence, but to modulate the various forms of presenting those ideas and meditate on that as well. Still, there is always the danger of becoming a sort of Goldilocks figure, milling about in an empty house, never quite satisfied with the temperature of the porridge, even as the bears make their way back.
Anyway, apologies for the density and the obliqueness of the last couple of months of work. I wanted to move closer to greater accessibility, clarity, and directness, but there is only so much one can do, when one dances with words to mitigate the pain of depression and mania.
The poles of depression and mania themselves give a mixed blessing: an illumination that is afforded from the intensity of attention and feeling, and an obscuring distortion that is caused by extreme oscillating emotions, brain fog, and irritability and exhaustion, among other things.
Anyway, apologies for the density and the obliqueness of the last couple of months of work. I wanted to move closer to greater accessibility, clarity, and directness, but there is only so much one can do, when one dances with words to mitigate the pain of depression and mania.
The poles of depression and mania themselves give a mixed blessing: an illumination that is afforded from the intensity of attention and feeling, and an obscuring distortion that is caused by extreme oscillating emotions, brain fog, and irritability and exhaustion, among other things.
The Courts
The public becomes ever more aware of a dysfunctional and predatory justice system, and so the individual, when caught, becomes ever more despondent and hopeless. One's life focus shifts to the violent disruption gradually approaching; one effectively disappears from the living and all of its concerns.
The subjective experience of becoming involved in the court system is like getting an article of clothing caught in a great industrial shredder, moving at a glacial pace. The size of the shredder, and speed of its work serves to conceal it to the general public (yes until now for the white majority, and not so for people of color), while the caught individual becomes a sort of social ghost, as the individual is pulled further along to the final court date, which is oftentimes a moving target thanks to dysfunctional, underfunded, and overburdened courts.
So the instruments of violence themselves can no longer fully function to meet their nefarious purpose. The legal process becomes the equivalent of the tortured drawing out of an execution, as the blunted axe is not enough to lop off the head in one swing.
The subjective experience of becoming involved in the court system is like getting an article of clothing caught in a great industrial shredder, moving at a glacial pace. The size of the shredder, and speed of its work serves to conceal it to the general public (yes until now for the white majority, and not so for people of color), while the caught individual becomes a sort of social ghost, as the individual is pulled further along to the final court date, which is oftentimes a moving target thanks to dysfunctional, underfunded, and overburdened courts.
So the instruments of violence themselves can no longer fully function to meet their nefarious purpose. The legal process becomes the equivalent of the tortured drawing out of an execution, as the blunted axe is not enough to lop off the head in one swing.
Punishment
And what is the nature of punishment now? The automated assessment and collection of fines and the industrialization of incarceration sustains the separated life of a legal body, which necessitates the perpetual violence wrought on the public, a volume that constantly grows in size, complexity, and precarity.
This form of punishment serves to inflame the fault lines between communities that are already set against each other. This domestic phenomenon has its counterpart in military practice as well.
One is reminded of the mechanisms behind counterinsurgency, where an incentive system is repurposed to fuel centuries-old ethnic or tribal disputes, which often owe their genesis, or at least their complication, to modernity's incessant "rationalization" of state borders and the asymmetric flow of resources that occur within those states.
The "good guys," and "freedom fighters" are awarded resources in the form of incentives for doing God's work, that is, of streamlining the flow of resources that are leaving the stricken country, while the "bad guys," and "terrorists" are punished for their transgressions. The incentive system was the neoliberal answer to the hearts and minds approach of the insurgent, who wanted to swim as a fish among the people, as Mao put it. In the same way, the fee system could be seen to be the stick to that carrot.
We see that a collection of Enlightenment-era principles and concepts have been used to construct the tools and weapons regularly used to further cleave communities apart, so as to smooth out extraction and reduce the violence and reaction around those sites.
To go back further, such principles and concepts are the ideological movers behind old social constructs. The prison system - the "penitentiary" - itself arose out of the Christian conceptions surrounding "penitence." One's social isolation would produce the environment of reflection wherein one could think about one's errors and mend them. This form of meditation, which may have very well benefited its share of monks, became an abomination of itself in its coerced and industrialized form.
An abomination that is quite widespread - and increasingly obvious - among the various tools and constructs we've built to administrate ourselves over the course of thousands of years.
This form of punishment serves to inflame the fault lines between communities that are already set against each other. This domestic phenomenon has its counterpart in military practice as well.
One is reminded of the mechanisms behind counterinsurgency, where an incentive system is repurposed to fuel centuries-old ethnic or tribal disputes, which often owe their genesis, or at least their complication, to modernity's incessant "rationalization" of state borders and the asymmetric flow of resources that occur within those states.
The "good guys," and "freedom fighters" are awarded resources in the form of incentives for doing God's work, that is, of streamlining the flow of resources that are leaving the stricken country, while the "bad guys," and "terrorists" are punished for their transgressions. The incentive system was the neoliberal answer to the hearts and minds approach of the insurgent, who wanted to swim as a fish among the people, as Mao put it. In the same way, the fee system could be seen to be the stick to that carrot.
We see that a collection of Enlightenment-era principles and concepts have been used to construct the tools and weapons regularly used to further cleave communities apart, so as to smooth out extraction and reduce the violence and reaction around those sites.
To go back further, such principles and concepts are the ideological movers behind old social constructs. The prison system - the "penitentiary" - itself arose out of the Christian conceptions surrounding "penitence." One's social isolation would produce the environment of reflection wherein one could think about one's errors and mend them. This form of meditation, which may have very well benefited its share of monks, became an abomination of itself in its coerced and industrialized form.
An abomination that is quite widespread - and increasingly obvious - among the various tools and constructs we've built to administrate ourselves over the course of thousands of years.
Security
The body politic is composed of so many unresolved traumas set against each other in a state of rest - which beget more traumas in turn - that various layers of privacy are the only means that such a society can continue on: it intermingles with itself using a multitude of curtains between its subjects, and all sorts of harmonizing thoughts are projected onto subjects via subjects, until some calamitous crisis - large or small - removes the curtains by force, in one way or another.
More often than not, this is a chaotic and violent process, so that a bounty of fresh traumas are generated while others are resolved.
Through the pursuit of security, or even vengeance, we've given police, intelligence agencies, and the court system the ability to penetrate and cleave through the layers of privacy, the curtains, that allow a fundamentally self-antagonistic society to sit with itself. Reveal the truth, in other words, and perpetrators get their just deserts, and victims are made whole again.
This conceptual split benefits the carceral and military ideologies that our imperial society rests on quite handily, but of course its contrived truth only appears in a fraction of cases, if one is being generous.
There is no ultimate truth in the legal judgment, that is if the judgment is meted out by an institution sustained by capital. Judgment in this case only becomes the means to shed the light necessary to guide the sustained application of extraction.
Another way to put it is this: legal judgment is the laser that guides the cutting saw, as in some way capital must preserve the chunks of resources that it tears from the earth, whether those resources are natural or human.
Those that wish to not get cut have to engage in all manner of contrivance to escape the teeth of a capitalist society, which regularly sheds its most vulnerable and "superfluous" through the course of its operation. Doubtless, when the vulnerable and superfluous work to protect or even sustain themselves, by definition they often do so outside of the "law," the code that governs a capitalist society.
And so a given investigation can be riddled with "suspicious" behavior, which is only so much shrinking back from the light of the extractor, on the part of the vulnerable.
One's "precarity" in such a state of affairs is a global attribute, which governs one's impulses to take steps to protect oneself, which, the more sustained and numerous these efforts are, the more of a disturbance they cause which can attract the attention of the legal and security apparatus.
More often than not, this is a chaotic and violent process, so that a bounty of fresh traumas are generated while others are resolved.
Through the pursuit of security, or even vengeance, we've given police, intelligence agencies, and the court system the ability to penetrate and cleave through the layers of privacy, the curtains, that allow a fundamentally self-antagonistic society to sit with itself. Reveal the truth, in other words, and perpetrators get their just deserts, and victims are made whole again.
This conceptual split benefits the carceral and military ideologies that our imperial society rests on quite handily, but of course its contrived truth only appears in a fraction of cases, if one is being generous.
There is no ultimate truth in the legal judgment, that is if the judgment is meted out by an institution sustained by capital. Judgment in this case only becomes the means to shed the light necessary to guide the sustained application of extraction.
Another way to put it is this: legal judgment is the laser that guides the cutting saw, as in some way capital must preserve the chunks of resources that it tears from the earth, whether those resources are natural or human.
Those that wish to not get cut have to engage in all manner of contrivance to escape the teeth of a capitalist society, which regularly sheds its most vulnerable and "superfluous" through the course of its operation. Doubtless, when the vulnerable and superfluous work to protect or even sustain themselves, by definition they often do so outside of the "law," the code that governs a capitalist society.
And so a given investigation can be riddled with "suspicious" behavior, which is only so much shrinking back from the light of the extractor, on the part of the vulnerable.
One's "precarity" in such a state of affairs is a global attribute, which governs one's impulses to take steps to protect oneself, which, the more sustained and numerous these efforts are, the more of a disturbance they cause which can attract the attention of the legal and security apparatus.
Monday, January 08, 2018
Community
To develop in a given direction is to be a part of a community, as it is necessary to learn skills and take in resources to both develop and sustain oneself as one is. And when all is fraught, the modern world's cosmopolitan communities begin to contract and exclude, so that one's growth is predicated on the good will of the community itself. The efficacious individual - which though was a myth, did for all intents and purposes work for the powerful and privileged - is giving way to efficacious community. Feudalism becomes more clear in this light, and the trope comes to mind of the mafia member that "wants out" but can't necessarily leave all that easily.
So Many Ideas, and So Few to Take
In mirroring the material world, the world of ideas itself is in the course of undergoing a massive tectonic shift. In retrospect, here are a collection of ideas that are just wrong or evil. And here are a collection of ideas that are maybe okay. The assortment of the former seems to grow and grow. And we're left to cling to what is sound until the earth stops turning over again.
To Know
A man approached me to take a picture of him with his kids. To my annoyance, he was short with his request and insistent in affect, almost to the point of being demanding.
And then he stuttered, and my conception of him was instantly transformed. This was merely the stance he had learned to take when interacting with new people. He was protecting himself.
And what of my annoyance, just a second earlier? Still self-protection.
But this itself was a small flicker of judgment. A fragile kind of knowing.
And then he stuttered, and my conception of him was instantly transformed. This was merely the stance he had learned to take when interacting with new people. He was protecting himself.
And what of my annoyance, just a second earlier? Still self-protection.
But this itself was a small flicker of judgment. A fragile kind of knowing.
Police (And Their Poise)
A poise assumes some sort of equilibrium. To achieve some sort of poise is to find balance given the combined conditions of one's body and the surface one is standing on.
A poise changes then as the environment changes, or when one's body changes, or a combination of the two changes.
You can do all sorts of things with this, but for now I want to briefly illustrate the relationship of the police to the public.
What the public is finally finding - it took long enough for the white majority to discover what minorities of color have long known - is that the police are indeed an occupying force not themselves subject to the rule of law.
This is happening as the forces of domination behind capital and empire eat into the white majority itself, and the entire public as a whole becomes more aware of the nature of the police, as it turns its guns onto the whole of exploitable society.
This is of course something that was bound to happen - sorry guys, should have done something earlier - which is now coming into fruition.
The police too have become aware of this awareness, so that the poise of the police relation to the public sphere is ratcheted to more extreme states of equilibria, in which both parties are terrified of and hostile to each other.
So that the default position of an individual officer is to be cocked and loaded, and the default position of the victim is to be in abject terror, a state in which nothing that happens is for the benefit of anyone, at least in the long term. In the short term, nothing is specifically for the benefit of the victim, to be sure.
So you have situations in which a cop issues directions to someone, in which one wrong move is grounds for execution because the psychological stakes are so high, and the terrorized victim, unable to reason or follow directions, attempts to anyway, and ends up shot, tazed, or choked. Other times this mere introductory phase is short-circuited, and the exchange is opened with a barking gun.
The steady evaporation of the reformist impulse in this increasingly heated environment is apparent, as is the case with society's other institutions tasked with keeping the shape of something indefensible.
A poise changes then as the environment changes, or when one's body changes, or a combination of the two changes.
You can do all sorts of things with this, but for now I want to briefly illustrate the relationship of the police to the public.
What the public is finally finding - it took long enough for the white majority to discover what minorities of color have long known - is that the police are indeed an occupying force not themselves subject to the rule of law.
This is happening as the forces of domination behind capital and empire eat into the white majority itself, and the entire public as a whole becomes more aware of the nature of the police, as it turns its guns onto the whole of exploitable society.
This is of course something that was bound to happen - sorry guys, should have done something earlier - which is now coming into fruition.
The police too have become aware of this awareness, so that the poise of the police relation to the public sphere is ratcheted to more extreme states of equilibria, in which both parties are terrified of and hostile to each other.
So that the default position of an individual officer is to be cocked and loaded, and the default position of the victim is to be in abject terror, a state in which nothing that happens is for the benefit of anyone, at least in the long term. In the short term, nothing is specifically for the benefit of the victim, to be sure.
So you have situations in which a cop issues directions to someone, in which one wrong move is grounds for execution because the psychological stakes are so high, and the terrorized victim, unable to reason or follow directions, attempts to anyway, and ends up shot, tazed, or choked. Other times this mere introductory phase is short-circuited, and the exchange is opened with a barking gun.
The steady evaporation of the reformist impulse in this increasingly heated environment is apparent, as is the case with society's other institutions tasked with keeping the shape of something indefensible.
Sunday, January 07, 2018
Poli-Pros
Part of the problem with a professional political class is the separation of meaning of one's actions from the context in which they are efficacious. So there is a fragmentation in one's consciousness which obscures the true impact of one's actions.
On the separated political level, the subjective experience of corruption is that of one simply chasing one's own self-interest, an activity that is mimicked from the rest of the dominant social sphere, particularly that of business, where the behavior is universal.
This reality becomes separated from the underlying reality that it affects. That one's decisions are impoverishing and killing an extraordinary amount of people is not a direct experience in one's subjectivity. It becomes easier to compartmentalize these facts and rationalize all manner of alternate explanations over them.
And those gazing up at the political class, from underneath the firestorm caused by their actions, gaze up with a growing hatred and fury.
This is not to excuse anyone in the political class. But looking on at the totality of this activity, one is forced to ask oneself: how can this happen?
On the separated political level, the subjective experience of corruption is that of one simply chasing one's own self-interest, an activity that is mimicked from the rest of the dominant social sphere, particularly that of business, where the behavior is universal.
This reality becomes separated from the underlying reality that it affects. That one's decisions are impoverishing and killing an extraordinary amount of people is not a direct experience in one's subjectivity. It becomes easier to compartmentalize these facts and rationalize all manner of alternate explanations over them.
And those gazing up at the political class, from underneath the firestorm caused by their actions, gaze up with a growing hatred and fury.
This is not to excuse anyone in the political class. But looking on at the totality of this activity, one is forced to ask oneself: how can this happen?
Crisis
A crisis-ridden society is a society that is constantly in the process of consolidation and dissolution.
Some individuals, in the course of a crisis, develop a strong desire for control, a control that is localized to the individual's own sensibility and outlook.
And that desire for control amplifies the desire for control in the other, and vice versa.
And the power that collects around the individual, which serves as the means of control, is power that is taken from the social body, power that is needed for that body to administrate itself.
So the social body is hollowed out, and the society proceeds to a dissolution and the re-concentration of power on the part of those well-placed and well-connected.
The process begins again, and the society ping pongs from one crisis to the next, reorienting around new centers of power until they hollow out the body once again.
Other individuals, in the course of a crisis, discover quite the opposite: that control is unattainable and so there is a letting go, and what power is left can flow to the social body, where it administers itself.
But whether this happens on the social level depends on who is placed where, and what means of control are still accessible to those in power.
Some individuals, in the course of a crisis, develop a strong desire for control, a control that is localized to the individual's own sensibility and outlook.
And that desire for control amplifies the desire for control in the other, and vice versa.
And the power that collects around the individual, which serves as the means of control, is power that is taken from the social body, power that is needed for that body to administrate itself.
So the social body is hollowed out, and the society proceeds to a dissolution and the re-concentration of power on the part of those well-placed and well-connected.
The process begins again, and the society ping pongs from one crisis to the next, reorienting around new centers of power until they hollow out the body once again.
Other individuals, in the course of a crisis, discover quite the opposite: that control is unattainable and so there is a letting go, and what power is left can flow to the social body, where it administers itself.
But whether this happens on the social level depends on who is placed where, and what means of control are still accessible to those in power.
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