Rock

Life and Death

The background process of life and death, barring any sort of extraneous crisis, is seemingly tragic enough as it is, without terminal stage societies to think about. In the background process, no matter what one does, one is going to peak, and decline, and die, and the only thing that can be done is to perpetually maximize this interval for each individual.

One holds onto others, and then one goes. On and on along a perpetual string of failures, which can only be held off until a later time.

But this tragic condition is itself a spiritual condition brought about by the current collective experience in society as it is constituted. When you feel - or are made to feel - that you are separate from the surrounding earth and that you and your loved ones are just "hanging on" in a cold vacuum, this is the experience you tend to get.

Further, contained in the modern and colloquial conception of tragedy is a tendency that eventually gives rise to an increasingly intense grasping, and an equally intense eventual release.

Even in Western history, there were conceptions of "tragedy" which saw it as both a terrible cataclysm and end, but also a merciful release that dashes apart bad karmic patterns which gave rise to the release, and which were finally put to rest, the experience of which can bring about all kinds of healing and growth in the participants.

There then is the spiritual possibility - and we see this in many places - that one and one's loved ones are the same as the rest of the earth, and that the end is merely transformation.

But our common conception of "tragic" is something unthinkable which should be struggled against at all costs - a bad word. And when you struggle against something inevitable at all costs, you greatly compress the region of the "good," while simultaneously compressing the "bad," and then it all bursts forth eventually anyway with tremendous force.

Shaky

I guess it has become a bit of a hobby of mine - or less generously an obsession - to trace the contours and dynamics of what is more or less the equivalent of a calving glacier: the steady dissolution of society as it is currently composed. Implied in this - as the historical record shows - is also transformation, but transformation requires a thing to be transformed, and a platform for that thing to transform on, all of which could be rendered moot by the greater climate change crisis.

It would be just great if we could put all of this behind us and get back to a positive theory of transformation, but this bullshit keeps getting pushed in my face, so here we go. As the rapper Black Thought put it so succinctly on the excellent "Education," a song on the recent and excellent Freddie Gibbs and Madlib album Bandana, "I focused on sinnin' when winnin' was not an option."

Anyway. There is a whole lot of speculation here, and it is not meant to be so much a precise prediction - glacier dynamics are complicated as it is, not to mention an advanced industrial society - as it is a suggestion for thinking about how things could play out.

As frightening as the recent coronavirus outbreak is, it may serve to act as a sort of imaginary angiogram for the body politic. We can watch as the metaphorical ink makes its way through the circulatory system, and reveal its function, or dysfunction, for that matter.

The neverending procession of political, economic, and environmental crises, of all sizes, have served as such. And then the conjunction of multiple cascading crises says something in addition, above and beyond analysis of any given individual crisis.

We could imagine a fanciful scenario in which the characteristics of the virus contribute to a wiping out of vulnerable groups like the elderly, many of whom hold larger stores of wealth, which could upset family structures and wealth holdings on a vast scale, ultimately setting in motion profound shifts in social power and the movement of wealth.

Of course in the real world, wealth disparities affect who gets the hit hardest, and who is vulnerable to the brunt of the destruction, and what we would more likely have is a hardening of the status quo, though on the other hand if we get a virus or disease that is destructive enough or aggressive enough, who knows what could happen? But we don't even have to imagine a simplified and fanciful scenario to come up with all sorts of effects that are readily observable.

There is a reason for so-called "stress tests" whether you are talking about engineering or finance. A larger shock like a deadly, worldwide virus puts all sorts of strain on systems both big and small. Throw a snake in the room and see what happens, so to speak.  Heck, they're already whining about stock market fears over the accelerating spread of the coronavirus, after a period of so-called "strong growth," "tariff turbulence," and then settled "tranquility." Quite the fair-weather friend, that stock market.

Dangerous viruses call into question medical facilities, the administrative structure of those facilities, the economic structure of those administrations, behavior of transportation networks and the security of those networks, the economic and political structures that organize those networks, the climate of international relations and the dynamics between multiple political and economic structures across the globe.

Because these systems were ostensibly put into place to perpetuate human society, we get to see in greater contrast whether these systems are doing what they should be doing when faced with a more clear and forceful threat. Of course it is my position that these systems are no longer affecting perpetuation, but are instead accelerating just the opposite. But it is a little more interesting to attempt to show your work than just state this flat out.

We could even speculate on something good, but nevertheless a substantial change, like Bernie Sanders being elected president, and nevertheless raise all kinds of concerns. Establishment figures tend to put up the argument that no one would want to work with him, which is unfair and ridiculous in the context of voting choice, but also probably true given the systems we have.

For someone like him to suddenly assume office would be shattering to the current composition of the establishment. We could only imagine what would happen with the massive ecology of monopolies, interlocking boards of directors, revolving doors, the security state, corporate media, and so on. Why, the whole thing could seize up. And then whatever happens next just happens.

None of this is to say that nothing should be done, as doing nothing would result in some other cataclysm that just happens in a different way. What all of this does say: expect some weather.

Nice Things

Bitter experience has fostered in me a wary suspicion of nice things.

Of course the nice things I have in mind at the moment are very specific. I'm not speaking of well-made things and things that are produced with love and care, the love of which and the desire of which to produce could be considered virtues.

Virtues in that certain high standards of quality and care encourage a consciousness of love and care and vice versa, which bring into focus the living energy of the materials one works with, the individuals that get to enjoy those materials, the pride and belonging of good work, and the communities enriched by that enjoyment and that pride and belonging.

It is nice to have some nice things. But there is a tipping point in which the thing becomes the subject, and the end for one's efforts.

The more time and energy and investment put into a thing, the more weight it begins to hold as something of importance, which grows and can eventually eclipse the people surrounding it. And it is also the case that a poverty of healthy people relations can lead to an inordinate preoccupation with nice materials and things and how important it is to have those things.

We put human beings in cages and kill them over the taking back and forth of nice things.

And nice infrastructure can become quite oppressive, with its owners constantly hovering over it anxiously, disrespecting and degrading those who might sully it in some way. Say the anxious homeowner agonizes over the white carpet and torments guests and occupants alike for dirtying it.

Or the anxious homeowner agonizes over the drooping property values and chases out undesirable urban elements and individuals say. Or the anxious car owner rages over a small cosmetic dent. Or the anxious restaurant goer humiliates the server for serving a meal that fails to meet expectations. And so on. The examples are depressingly endless.

And so the things maintain their value or the value is augmented even, and people steadily contract and crumple and degrade around the things in perfect stasis.

Making Sense

Part of the issue lies in the relation between information and the reality it maps. With a profound material complexity in the real world, it requires a substantial amount of information processing, or an incredibly elegant and effective way of organizing and simplifying that information, and oftentimes both things are required to even make sense of that reality.

It is not just the information that is doing the work. The enormous chain of complexity is partially managed through division of labor, both in breadth of occupation and across time. Children are brought up with inherited worldviews and heuristics, which are intimately passed on in the household and in school and in other places, and then the aggregate of this activity comes into contact with media itself, and as the prepared information enters, it is processed and acted upon with the desired result.

This is where information fabrication - or media - comes in, which not only concerns itself with collecting information, but with designing vehicles for distribution and digestion for that information, and with handling the way in which the information is collected and apprehended in the first place, and contending with the pre-cognitive functions, effects, and biases and the like which are cultivated in the greater society.

Our problem is that this information fabrication system is constantly in danger of monopolization and hijacking towards private ends, and so the greater body of average individuals that depend on this system are manipulated back and forth through their dependency towards private interests.

There is a way around this. However, outside of the captured social average, it falls upon the individual - or an association of individuals, with its more limited set of resources - to make sense of reality outside of the captured groupthink. And the individual - or associations of individuals - standing outside must possess a far greater capacity of mental horsepower, so to speak.

This is because to truly understand the nature and dynamics of any given thing, one has to understand all of the mechanics of that thing, and all of the elements outside of that thing which interact with it, and which either compare with it or contrast with it, and bring the nature of the thing into sharper relief as it connects to everything else.

In the mainstream this is handled through a massive interrelated division of labor, but within the alternative circuits, it takes savant-like figures to transmit and understand the information at the scale and sophistication required to successfully navigate the underlying reality and act on it.

The catch here is that savant-like figures tend to be rarer and in a minority, and that the average person - who is dependent on the mainstreaming and streamlining of information which takes off a cognitive load - is far more numerous and more efficacious in a material way. So there is a constant struggle over control of the greater media ecosystem and its effects.

Specialization and Resent

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is often dispensed as sagely advice, though structurally this is often impossible to follow in terms of one's life path.

Instinctually we specialize in the tasks suited to our strengths in order to get the most enjoyment out of daily labors, and admiration from peers.

But we've collectively organized to carry that instinct out to its extreme, and to encourage intense specialization in a single and sharply delineated discipline, so that everyone is more or less subject to the decisions and efforts of everyone else.

If one doesn't have a living environment that one can affect through one's own efforts or the efforts of a community, then one's efficacy must be bought, usually by wage, earned under the control and permission of someone else.

So a sort of selective infantilization occurs, in which whatever can't be helped is given up on and ignored, and one's related knowledge or skills atrophy or never even develop in a number of disciplines, and one puts all of one's stock - and bases a large part of one's identity - on one's profession.

In an environment of mutual love and respect, this state of affairs could imaginably sustain itself. However this is not the environment we find ourselves in collectively, in which mutual suspicion, exploitation, and disrespect is the norm, and the experience of the professional is degradation and encroaching deprivation.

One way out of this is to fight into stardom, fame, or success in the business or political world, where one can command the resources necessary to achieve some sort of autonomy, and even then.

No wonder then that simmering resent is the prevailing characteristic of our age.

Helplessness is one thing, but dependence on cruel and incompetent superiors for one's resources is a good way to build up serious pressure, which must escape somewhere.

Psychological Warfare

For decades, there has been an ecosystem of news, entertainment, and advertising organizations which has influenced and managed public opinion, and controlled the dissemination of information, using techniques of psychological warfare both developed in the military and civilian spheres.

This is a form of manipulation that is very loose and soft, and mercifully allows for pockets of free expression and dissemination of information within alternative circuits, so long as that activity doesn't seriously disrupt the very important worldly affairs of business and finance.

The manipulation of information and opinion was perhaps temporarily democratized through the Internet medium, releasing pressure from the stultifying television and news print mediums, though now as time has passed that democratization has largely been mopped up by a few large tech companies.

The game has largely stayed the same, though the players have shifted.

We see this shift most readily in the alarms being raised about unscrupulous agencies engaging in aggressive advertising and propaganda campaigns, using primarily social media outlets, which tacitly permit the activity as long as a portion of the proceeds pass through their fingers.

And yes this is psychological warfare, and has been thought of as such by theorists of such propaganda systems.

Warfare does not necessarily have to mean physical violence. We speak of economic warfare all the time. With physical violence, you just remove someone with force, either by detaining them or killing them, to get things that you want.

Economic warfare is a little slower and less kinetic, in that you just remove part of someone subtly and slowly to get what you want, and continue to preserve them to continue removing parts of them as long as the relationship holds.

So you further unequal exchange in world trade through unfair trade deals, usurious lending, privatization backed by coups, and the like. And domestically you do it through wage repression, usury, privatization and financialization, austerity and the cutting of social programs, and so on. 

Propagandistic media dissemination is tasked with giving people information and the illusion of agency, while utilizing their consent and their advocacy to take or keep power and continue to exploit them through various systems of unequal exchange.

Now, as with all forms of warfare, your opponent is not just going to sit still and accept destruction, no matter how rapid or gradual that process is. Combatants move around, they change tactics, they fight back, and continuously inflict more and more violence around them through retaliatory maneuvers and the like, reproducing the conditions for warfare in a given direction until exhausted.

Movement is the issue here. Violence tends to beget itself as movement. If you take something vital from someone, they're liable to attempt to get that viable thing back, or get it from somewhere else, and so on.

Within regions beset by economic warfare - everywhere basically - is the constant struggle for economic and social security. Some alternatives attempt peace and others yet struggle for the supremacy they've been victimized by, setting ever higher waves of movement in motion in the process. 

The class of people doing most of the pushing and pulling over the last couple of decades are the ones wringing their hands about all of the turbulence cropping up that they've had a hand in stirring up. It would be amusing enough to sit at remove and watch the fireworks, but we're all stuck on the same rock really. 

That's Fake News

It is a common occurrence for some establishment journalist or editor to write an opinion piece or give an interview to express alarm about the degradation of traditional journalism. They'll turn their noses up at amateur reporting and opinion and denounce bloggers for churning up and muddying the waters of discourse, and then just positively wave their hands about the "fake news."

The argument goes something like this: traditional media outlets have a process for collecting, distilling, and distributing information, and they have the resources and the techniques to responsibly handle and transmit that information. Bloggers and amateurs on the other hand lack the resources, infrastructure, and - sometimes implicitly put, and then sometimes explicitly put - the discipline to handle these matters responsibly.

Setting aside the condescension and privilege, some of this is true, which is what makes the position so deceptive. The individual, however brilliant and potent a researcher and analyst that person may be, is far more vulnerable to cognitive biases and limitations to perspectives and resources than a community of individuals, such as that found in a traditional news organization, with its time-tested fact-checking, source verification, peer-reviewing and editing, and all the like. The establishment news professionals, finding themselves in these impressive organizations and watching the processes themselves, can only conclude that the competition is missing something essential.

Of course there have been plenty of effective blogging communities and other types of organizations that have sprung up around processing and producing news, but no one can really keep up with the amount of content, the quality of the reporting, and the breadth of the information that the major outlets can put out. Indeed, it is very typical for the alternative outlets, groups, and individuals to rely heavily on that very content for their own reporting and analysis.

Yet half of the energy spent in our collective discourse (and perhaps more) has to do with airing out frustrations with framings and premises, dissections of misleading statements and arguments, and corrections of flat out falsehoods contained in the manifold circulating news products. Indeed, collective trust in the reliability and legitimacy of establishment media is at a historical low. So what is happening?

First, we have to view the fabrication of news and information as just another process of manufacture. There is an accumulated store of techniques and processes for collecting information, putting it together, and distributing it in a useful form, which these organizations draw upon.

And to the layman, manufacturing, in all its complexity, can appear dazzling and bewildering, and thus, powerful in its own right, giving the manufacturing process the benefit of the doubt right there. The sprawling refining, molding, and logistical infrastructure of the plastics industry is a sight to behold for example, even as it floods the earth, the oceans, and the air with garbage and poison.

Like everything else, manufacturing too is shaped and driven by its own values. As manufacturing is in the end a form of fabrication, there are plenty of ways out there to make something. And there are plenty of choices to make about what to make and why.

One can look upon a manufacturing plant, its infrastructure, its equipment, and its processes, and determine just how much value is placed into the human lives that both labor there and benefit from its product. And one can judge the product output in relation to the greater world and the effects of that output, and thus judge the values behind the manufacturing process as they relate to the world.

This is a little more difficult to do if one derives one's paycheck and/or identity from this process. But neither of those things are the case here, so a quick rundown.

This process of manufacture, with its distinct processes, must also be fed and maintained in the same distinct way, and then it must relate in the same distinct way with all of the other manufacturing processes which support it and which are supported by it.

Yes we get a circulation of useful information to understand and move in the world with. But contained in that same product is an impetus to maintain and spread the views of the powerful and related industries, and then also to continuously pull in the attention of consumers and direct them toward subscription and advertisement.

Further, these news outlets are part of an economic ecosystem in which monopolization is the prevailing mode of organization, and so alternatives vanish or are eaten up, and then other prospective alternatives are beaten back as hostile competition which must be extinguished. So everyone is entered into an awkward relationship in which they depend on organizations they hate which aggressively pursue their dependence.

In the same environment are the "fake news" agencies vigorously pushing their own dubious market strategies, rushing into the vacuums that a shifting economic landscape has opened up, whether through destruction or the creative shifting of new economic and social spaces such as the social media landscape, using an innovative and supercharged approach that bears more than a little resemblance to the approach used by their professional and hand-wringing detractors in the establishment media.   

On the other hand if we are to insist doggedly on restricting our focus to a tiny sliver of reality, say a given manufacturing process, without raising greater questions about the nature of that process and its relations to the surrounding world, then sure, we can marvel and proclaim gratitude about that process all day long. We can continue collecting our paycheck and strutting about. Of course there is then the declining trust, the further advancing of collective and planetary destruction, the ongoing monopolization, and the rushing into the vacuums of both scrupulous and unscrupulous political actors to take stock of.

Slot

I See You

One observation that I keep seeing come up in indigenous thought is this: the more you treat the things outside of you as other people, say the trees, the animals, the shrubs, the insects, the rocks, and etc., the more those things start to communicate with you in turn. Those things become extensions of your self. Not necessarily as appendages - and of course there are more to appendages than meets the eye - but as community, as entities that are acted on and which are allowed to act on you in turn.

Argue

Any given argument will eventually open up deeper and wider when it becomes engaged. An argument always has to begin somewhere, and to point somewhere, and to look upon it, and then to follow it, is to go somewhere else from there.

That is if the argument is made in good faith. Bad faith is a whole other thing.

Sophists saw some of this reality, though ended up acquiring an unfavorable reputation for exploiting that insight.

And arguments lead to actions, and actions lead to feedback. And then it all changes once again.

Accelerating Concepts

We can begin to imagine a hypothetical society of practicing Buddhists, faithfully carrying out their conceptions of "equanimity" by observing their various thoughts and impressions peacefully and letting them pass by in their consciousness, as these things typically do if one just sits and watches them without attaching. What would probably end up happening - all other factors remaining constant - is that everyone would simply orbit their given spheres, perhaps swaying to and fro occasionally with the rhythms of the world, but largely staying in place, like peaceful strands of seaweed swaying on the ocean floor.

Certainly not what we have now - though the hypothetical seems vastly preferable at this point. But holding the spiritual workings of our society in contrast to this hypothetical, an alarming pattern begins to appear. What we practice collectively - at least in the mainstream - is something which is almost the opposite: a relentless focusing and intensifying attachment to thoughts and impressions.

The concept, and the impressions which interact with that concept, are as we know, limited, lower resolution artifacts that can be very useful for navigating the infinite reality. But now they are held up as eternal, even as they are destroyed and cast aside at an ever-accelerating rate with ever-increasing contempt and scorn. The political and media organs are all too happy to push, push, push, and push some more for good measure.

Nuclear fission comes more readily to mind than the seaweed swaying on the ocean floor. And not the kind of controlled fission surrounded by massive walls of concrete, but more the mushrooming kind.

Conception

The way that concepts are created and formed in a society provides a useful window into the daily outcomes in that society. Of course, at our current stage of conceptual advancement, there is a tremendous complexity that we will have to cut through and simplify in order to even talk about it, but that's how it goes.

The concept is a strange, seemingly disembodied entity that we catch glimpses of in writings, illustrations, aural arrangements, and juxtaposed images, among other things, which are really just material and communicable expressions of that entity.

But the concept can often seem more real than the physical world which it is embedded in. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if we are suspended within an insulated world of concepts, like some sort of amniotic fluid which keeps us nourished yet separate. Nevertheless, this ghostly, disembodied concept-world does eventually meet the earth, and influence it, as the earth influences it.

Let's say you are about to get kicked out of your house. Your conceptions of what the surrounding world is like, what the surrounding people are like, and a projection and prediction of what is likely to happen all go a long way towards establishing your state of mind in that very moment, which will largely determine the actions you take.

Further, the way in which people will interact with each other can largely depend on their mutual conceptions of each other, and conceptions of what is possible or even probable. And then these concept-lead interactions create realities of their own, after initial behaviors set in motion further chains of events. If someone thinks that I am the archetypal fool - an image manufactured and conjured up by the greater society they are part of - and then treats me as such, I will be strongly predisposed to respond in kind, say by reacting negatively or just avoiding the problem altogether, thus reinforcing that conception in the end.

To be fair, the way in which concepts are put together, and their tendency to stick and circulate are also dependent on the way in which the society is structured and how it operates, and it also depends on the basic constitutions of those individuals hosting concepts of a certain nature, and carrying those concepts out in a certain way, as they become exposed to others with similar or differing concepts. So the entire conceptual apparatus is dependent on a historical trajectory and formation.

Part of that historical trajectory and formation is that of organized and technical production, in which human beings in cooperation with each other make extensive use of internal mental concepts to plan and realize an enormous and complex technical field of production and habitation.

And this precious and tender faculty is precisely the critical target that our vested political and economic interests like most to screw with. Due to the highly technical and urban nature of modern production and habitation, the various interlocking conceptual apparatuses that we make use of to guide our efforts makes for a very vulnerable and powerful resource to hijack.

And why not? Individuals have learned to seize upon the relations of energy and matter and manipulate them to sustain and reproduce themselves, and so there must be a way to seize upon the individuals in relation to each other and manipulate them to sustain and reproduce a state of affairs favorable to the one with the power to move things in that direction. But then this contains within it a burdensome cost which is not immediately appreciated.

Let's put forward a simplified illustration. Say, there is a paranoid political conception that is circulating, let's say, through political propaganda spread by opportunists or some such, which suggests all of one's opposition are conniving killers, and that they should be treated and dealt with as such.

This is a conception that only works for someone in an extreme and persistent state of fear and desperation, and whose sense of collective trust has shattered. This conception not only validates and edifies the original state of consciousness, but further shapes it and directs its explosive energy. And then this paranoid conception goes on to create further damage and perpetuate itself as it is carried out, amplifying the state of affairs that gave rise to it. And so on.

There are various favorable short term outcomes to be had by manipulating these concepts, and thus influencing the general direction that political and economic actors may take. If you portray your opposition as conniving and murderous, well then you can eventually get them out of the way without putting all of that work into negotiation and communication, and putting in the required resources to sustain that entire relationship. If your society is indeed breaking down, then some power can be had by directing that destructive power away from yourself and towards whoever happens to be an opponent.

But now you are reproducing individuals and spreading them throughout the world with that given conception embedded in their head, and moreover, accelerating the effects and widening the scope of that concept, and then wherever they come into contact with their perceived opposition, they carry out the prescribed actions regardless of the underlying reality. An explosive concept will eventually create explosions, and concepts, in consideration of their permeable borders, have a tendency to spread far and wide and take on a life of their own through the gradual unfolding of their subjects into time and space.

Putting together a bad conception and embedding it into someone is like introducing a knife into a tense situation, or trafficking arms into a battlefield, and the people that encourage them should be held responsible as such. People with bad political and economic conceptions can do real damage in the real world with their actions.

Really this is a pretty naive position, and plenty of observers across time have had similar observations and insights to share. But concepts do have a potent power of their own, and they have a way of sneaking up and obscuring the reality that they are attempting to navigate. Sometimes it is worth thinking reflexively about them.

This is of course a tough and complicated subject to suss out. I'll stop for now, but eventually I'll have to return to this and chip away at it from another angle, and further the analysis.

2020

Jeez, what is there to say? The world is on fire both literally and metaphorically, and both macrocosmically and microcosmically; a fractal of doom you could say. Much work to do; we'll see what change brings too. Hell of a way to usher in the new year.

Plenty to say but there has just been no time. More to come soon.