Monday, March 30, 2020
Allow Me to Fall Apart for a Minute
In the interest of remaining productive during a self-quarantine, I've looked to put together a series on apprehending the present state of things, coming to terms with it, and then moving forward. And perhaps writing and observing regularly on various interesting phenomena. I've made some progress but now I'm a bit tired.
Being isolated in a confined space does do things to you, especially depending on what is going on outside, and what that means for you. Like someone trapped in a car trunk, rolled up in a ball, the concern has become: ok my left arm is getting numb, and now if I can just contort this other side of me, and then slip this other way and get this part of my body situated, and...there! Much better. Now my right hand is getting numb. Also: eesh I'm in a trunk.
I'm taking in a lot of intense and contradictory energy - both endogenous and exogenous energies of course - a lot of misery, despair, rage, but also hope and decency. There is a lot there, and a lot that needs to be processed and articulated in due time, but right now it is just a mess.
So for now I'm biding my time. A mixture of resting, obsessing, getting distracted, and etc. I imagine once I stretch out a bit again, and get a couple of breaths of fresh air, some of this stuff will be coming together and falling into place again. It is how it usually happens.
Water needs air to move, or as an old general principle in physics and mystics has it: matter requires space to do its thing. Till then.
Being isolated in a confined space does do things to you, especially depending on what is going on outside, and what that means for you. Like someone trapped in a car trunk, rolled up in a ball, the concern has become: ok my left arm is getting numb, and now if I can just contort this other side of me, and then slip this other way and get this part of my body situated, and...there! Much better. Now my right hand is getting numb. Also: eesh I'm in a trunk.
I'm taking in a lot of intense and contradictory energy - both endogenous and exogenous energies of course - a lot of misery, despair, rage, but also hope and decency. There is a lot there, and a lot that needs to be processed and articulated in due time, but right now it is just a mess.
So for now I'm biding my time. A mixture of resting, obsessing, getting distracted, and etc. I imagine once I stretch out a bit again, and get a couple of breaths of fresh air, some of this stuff will be coming together and falling into place again. It is how it usually happens.
Water needs air to move, or as an old general principle in physics and mystics has it: matter requires space to do its thing. Till then.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Uncertainty in the Built Environment Pt. 2
There are distinct moments in one's life when one's safety is directly being threatened, when that feeling of surrounding social support drops away, and the feeling that one is on one's own begins to set in. This can happen in many different ways, and the frequency and severity of these events can depend on one's historical and social position. Larger scale disruptions like natural disasters, pandemics, riots and revolutions, financial panics, and wars tend to make these events more frequent and likely, but the smaller events themselves can happen to anyone at any time.
Phenomonologically these moments carry with them distinct experiences that are unforgettable, and which make lasting changes to one's global emotional state. Here one can expect terror and panic, and the lessons and forebodings those things come with, but with those experiences also flow a whole other spectrum of processing and revelations, such as relief, gratefulness, confidence and faith, and the like. The entire process is at the same time the process of reawakening older instincts and experiential ranges, all of which can help one cope with larger and more sustained disruptive events.
The forceful and kinetic nature of these events are such that they are very unpredictable. Nevertheless these experiences can be constructive, or they can go very badly, depending on one's previous history and constitution, which can be cultivated in modest amounts. Numerous cultures and traditions across time have recognized the need for this cultivation and the power of these lived experiences, and have built up practices to account for them.
Partially controlled destabilizing events such as going into the wilderness prepared, taking powerful hallucinatory substances in a controlled and intentional setting, or engaging in deep meditation or partaking in other intensive spiritual practices are just some examples. These activities allow one's mind to press down onto those base instincts, which are otherwise neglected from being suspended above the fundamentals for so long.
This feeling is not enough for lasting change, however, and will evaporate off over time if not acted on. As a catalyst, it is a potent driving motivation for cultivating traditional techniques and community, building up knowledge and resources, putting effective practice in place, and so on.
Phenomenological discussions are fraught with the provincial subjectivity of the analyst. There are many far less privileged than I - whether via combinations of class, race, gender, sexuality, geographic location, or etc. - that have existed in a tremendous state of uncertainty towards their outer social environment, all too often hostile to their existence, who have been forced to cultivate a resilient consciousness to survive, but who will nevertheless be crushed by a system overwhelmingly stacked against them.
And for that matter, there are those far more privileged than I - who, buttressed by a system stacked overwhelmingly in their favor - never have to come to terms subjectively with their own individual frailty and become resilient as an individual, and who will live to die peacefully in their sleep surrounded by their treasures. That said, being a fabulously wealthy person cooped up in a bunker somewhere, refusing to grow spiritually and intellectually, and hard at work scheming on how to put one over on the private security and hired help to deliver them to safety, sounds like a little slice of hell to me.
My interest is not in prioritizing my own subjective experiences and learned coping mechanisms as the way forward, but in offering them up as avenues of interest for those interested. Next up: this series' namesake, the nature of uncertainty in the built environment.
Phenomonologically these moments carry with them distinct experiences that are unforgettable, and which make lasting changes to one's global emotional state. Here one can expect terror and panic, and the lessons and forebodings those things come with, but with those experiences also flow a whole other spectrum of processing and revelations, such as relief, gratefulness, confidence and faith, and the like. The entire process is at the same time the process of reawakening older instincts and experiential ranges, all of which can help one cope with larger and more sustained disruptive events.
The forceful and kinetic nature of these events are such that they are very unpredictable. Nevertheless these experiences can be constructive, or they can go very badly, depending on one's previous history and constitution, which can be cultivated in modest amounts. Numerous cultures and traditions across time have recognized the need for this cultivation and the power of these lived experiences, and have built up practices to account for them.
Partially controlled destabilizing events such as going into the wilderness prepared, taking powerful hallucinatory substances in a controlled and intentional setting, or engaging in deep meditation or partaking in other intensive spiritual practices are just some examples. These activities allow one's mind to press down onto those base instincts, which are otherwise neglected from being suspended above the fundamentals for so long.
This feeling is not enough for lasting change, however, and will evaporate off over time if not acted on. As a catalyst, it is a potent driving motivation for cultivating traditional techniques and community, building up knowledge and resources, putting effective practice in place, and so on.
Phenomenological discussions are fraught with the provincial subjectivity of the analyst. There are many far less privileged than I - whether via combinations of class, race, gender, sexuality, geographic location, or etc. - that have existed in a tremendous state of uncertainty towards their outer social environment, all too often hostile to their existence, who have been forced to cultivate a resilient consciousness to survive, but who will nevertheless be crushed by a system overwhelmingly stacked against them.
And for that matter, there are those far more privileged than I - who, buttressed by a system stacked overwhelmingly in their favor - never have to come to terms subjectively with their own individual frailty and become resilient as an individual, and who will live to die peacefully in their sleep surrounded by their treasures. That said, being a fabulously wealthy person cooped up in a bunker somewhere, refusing to grow spiritually and intellectually, and hard at work scheming on how to put one over on the private security and hired help to deliver them to safety, sounds like a little slice of hell to me.
My interest is not in prioritizing my own subjective experiences and learned coping mechanisms as the way forward, but in offering them up as avenues of interest for those interested. Next up: this series' namesake, the nature of uncertainty in the built environment.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Problems with Profit
The behavior of the world economy in crisis, with its flighty stock markets, faithless investors, and sloshy capital is reminiscent of the withdrawal of a severe addiction. We already have the intuition that this is the nature of the profit motive. But perhaps a brief examination of these dynamics? In the abstract anyway, as we like to do it here.
The issue with an addiction in general, is that a dependency is established with a specific substance, which in a limited way targets something limited and removed like a neurological reward system or some such, which, when deprived of the altering substance, sends the altered reward system itself into freefall, a system which is connected to many other functioning parts of the body.
Further, addictive substances and practices tend to compete with nutritious substances and practices, so that by the time withdrawal sets in, the system is already in a weakened state. Through an addictive substance then, the body becomes alienated from itself, and requires constant input of the substance to reproduce both the body's continued functioning and its self-alienation. With the substance removed, the alienation remains, and the body comes into conflict with itself. Abstracting this state of affairs, we can compare this to the money relation.
The money relation has the characteristics of an addictive substance. Sure small amounts of it are fine and even useful, but too much over a sustained period and a quality change occurs. Once money becomes the dominant productive relation in society, its circulation touches every corner of every functioning component of that society, so that accumulating it amounts to power over society, and the more the accumulation, the more incomparable ecstasy and possibility one enjoys. One can never have enough of it.
But now that the system depends wholly on that money to run, the money must not be deprived or the whole system seizes up and enters into antagonism with itself. So a society becomes alienated to itself, and through money, that alienation is reproduced, but can continue to function. There are additional intricacies to consider, such as the dynamics of money and the necessity for economic growth, and comparisons of that to growing resistance and dependency to an addictive substance, but that will outstrip my intended scope here. The point I have been imperfectly getting at here is that addictive substances - or addictive entities for that matter - tend to increase the brittleness of the bodies they affect to further shocks. Of course, it is a certain sort of brittleness that is required in the first place to encourage the ascendancy of a given addictive entity, but anyway, moving on to a more immediate point.
Back to physical bodies: if one runs out of food and needs to fast, that fasting is much more manageable given a certain previous regimen of nutrition and habit, and can even be pleasurable if done right. But if one needs to suddenly fast and one has been eating junkfood, or is deprived of a certain addictive substance, then things can get uncomfortable really fast. Processed grains and refined sugars for example are notorious for encouraging the growth of certain yeasts and bacteria that send painful hunger messages to the brain when deprived, messages that are not necessarily related to a fundamental hunger, but more of a craving for that deprived substance.
Depending on the substance and the health complication, this can become deadly. And this complication is in addition to simply being deprived of food, which on an otherwise healthier diet, could be endured for much longer before the danger of starvation and death.
Similarly, a shock like C-19 is even more acute when it is tested against a political economy such as ours, which is no longer tooled to circulate resources and satisfy a number of fundamental needs, but which makes use of those needs to pursue a massive process of accumulation above and beyond those needs, and which requires a sustained accumulation to continuously function.
One can only imagine the greater robustness of a steady state economy - driven by concerns other than profit and accumulation - in the face of a pandemic. Indeed, as any given wave of disruption becomes more severe, whether we are talking about pandemics, natural disasters, or wars, it is easy to imagine that we will be positively clamoring for a steady state economy. Whether we actually get one or not is another matter.
The issue with an addiction in general, is that a dependency is established with a specific substance, which in a limited way targets something limited and removed like a neurological reward system or some such, which, when deprived of the altering substance, sends the altered reward system itself into freefall, a system which is connected to many other functioning parts of the body.
Further, addictive substances and practices tend to compete with nutritious substances and practices, so that by the time withdrawal sets in, the system is already in a weakened state. Through an addictive substance then, the body becomes alienated from itself, and requires constant input of the substance to reproduce both the body's continued functioning and its self-alienation. With the substance removed, the alienation remains, and the body comes into conflict with itself. Abstracting this state of affairs, we can compare this to the money relation.
The money relation has the characteristics of an addictive substance. Sure small amounts of it are fine and even useful, but too much over a sustained period and a quality change occurs. Once money becomes the dominant productive relation in society, its circulation touches every corner of every functioning component of that society, so that accumulating it amounts to power over society, and the more the accumulation, the more incomparable ecstasy and possibility one enjoys. One can never have enough of it.
But now that the system depends wholly on that money to run, the money must not be deprived or the whole system seizes up and enters into antagonism with itself. So a society becomes alienated to itself, and through money, that alienation is reproduced, but can continue to function. There are additional intricacies to consider, such as the dynamics of money and the necessity for economic growth, and comparisons of that to growing resistance and dependency to an addictive substance, but that will outstrip my intended scope here. The point I have been imperfectly getting at here is that addictive substances - or addictive entities for that matter - tend to increase the brittleness of the bodies they affect to further shocks. Of course, it is a certain sort of brittleness that is required in the first place to encourage the ascendancy of a given addictive entity, but anyway, moving on to a more immediate point.
Back to physical bodies: if one runs out of food and needs to fast, that fasting is much more manageable given a certain previous regimen of nutrition and habit, and can even be pleasurable if done right. But if one needs to suddenly fast and one has been eating junkfood, or is deprived of a certain addictive substance, then things can get uncomfortable really fast. Processed grains and refined sugars for example are notorious for encouraging the growth of certain yeasts and bacteria that send painful hunger messages to the brain when deprived, messages that are not necessarily related to a fundamental hunger, but more of a craving for that deprived substance.
Depending on the substance and the health complication, this can become deadly. And this complication is in addition to simply being deprived of food, which on an otherwise healthier diet, could be endured for much longer before the danger of starvation and death.
Similarly, a shock like C-19 is even more acute when it is tested against a political economy such as ours, which is no longer tooled to circulate resources and satisfy a number of fundamental needs, but which makes use of those needs to pursue a massive process of accumulation above and beyond those needs, and which requires a sustained accumulation to continuously function.
One can only imagine the greater robustness of a steady state economy - driven by concerns other than profit and accumulation - in the face of a pandemic. Indeed, as any given wave of disruption becomes more severe, whether we are talking about pandemics, natural disasters, or wars, it is easy to imagine that we will be positively clamoring for a steady state economy. Whether we actually get one or not is another matter.
Mirrors
Let's abstract from this: it takes a wall - or at least a barrier to one's field of vision, in the case of one way windows - to make the mirror functional. The reflexive nature of the mirror is reliant on light travel reaching its limit in a given direction, and then bouncing back.
In the same way it often takes a terminus to bring about the widespread revelation: it takes a king starving his people to bring about revolution in the streets. Or it takes the rule of capital to plunge a majority of its population into disease, amidst a pandemic that was otherwise manageable, to unmask the beast.
So these huge businesses are suing and lobbying their way to mass immiseration? Well poverty can still be fought and negotiated, so we can rationalize that these businesses are just protecting trade secrets and exercising free speech. Say, manufacturers, insurers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies striving to keep equipment, medicine, and treatment costs up to protect their business model, for example.
Now these same huge businesses are suing and lobbying for their own provincial interests amidst an unfolding pandemic? Now the question is: what the fuck are you doing? As it should be.
Of course these businesses, these corporations, are just doing what they have always been doing. They correctly perceive that they must work together to prevent the majority from experiencing the possibility of something better. But then, what happens when all of that suppressing, or oppressing, reaches bedrock, and the exploited have nowhere else to go? The revelation there lies at the terminus. If not in this particular pandemic, then in something comparable.
You can only take more than you put in if there is something still to take. And historically, the tendency has been that the taking gathers momentum and cannot easily be reversed. And then once you get to that wall, all of that energy going in that direction must now go back the way it had come.
In the same way it often takes a terminus to bring about the widespread revelation: it takes a king starving his people to bring about revolution in the streets. Or it takes the rule of capital to plunge a majority of its population into disease, amidst a pandemic that was otherwise manageable, to unmask the beast.
So these huge businesses are suing and lobbying their way to mass immiseration? Well poverty can still be fought and negotiated, so we can rationalize that these businesses are just protecting trade secrets and exercising free speech. Say, manufacturers, insurers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies striving to keep equipment, medicine, and treatment costs up to protect their business model, for example.
Now these same huge businesses are suing and lobbying for their own provincial interests amidst an unfolding pandemic? Now the question is: what the fuck are you doing? As it should be.
Of course these businesses, these corporations, are just doing what they have always been doing. They correctly perceive that they must work together to prevent the majority from experiencing the possibility of something better. But then, what happens when all of that suppressing, or oppressing, reaches bedrock, and the exploited have nowhere else to go? The revelation there lies at the terminus. If not in this particular pandemic, then in something comparable.
You can only take more than you put in if there is something still to take. And historically, the tendency has been that the taking gathers momentum and cannot easily be reversed. And then once you get to that wall, all of that energy going in that direction must now go back the way it had come.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
The Virus and the Human
As many others have commented before, there is something different about this pandemic. I suspect the difference lies not just in the specific characteristics of the virus, but also in the period we find ourselves in.
The fear and strain surrounding the virus is less about the actual virus itself. Yes it is potentially deadly to elderly and vulnerable people, and very contagious, but historically - especially if one goes back further than a century - or even contemporaneously - the Ebola virus in Africa comes to mind, though it is less contagious - the virus appears less deadly on its own.
Yes, the virus should be taken seriously. But many of the arguments asserting this have to do with the virus' relational effects in a mass. So, we have death rates go up when hospitals are overwhelmed and there are not enough beds or equipment, and health professionals burn out and become more vulnerable to the virus and are taken out of commission, and then those potential rates go up further because of poor political coordination and botched attempts at tracking and containing the virus, poor coordination which has also resulted in disrupted supply chains, and the cycle continues.
There are a number of other fears that come with this: the fear of spreading the virus to a vulnerable friend or loved one, the fear of hoarding and gouging (also predicated on fear), the fear and loathing of incompetent and exploitative political and economic institutions, and etc. all of which serve to exacerbate the situation further.
So much of the fear is directed relationally: it is the fear of the fear of others. And this is a fear that has been accumulating for quite some time, for various reasons apart from any sort of virus. Now it is only intensified. At the risk of sounding hackneyed, the story of the virus is at the same time the story of late capital and late industry. Of the late modern human experience, and what the human element means and effects.
We could say the C-19 virus is notable for playing its part in effectively transforming the collective psychic landscape of the industrialized world. It is certainly too early to survey just what that transformation is - though one can make some educated guesses based on the general progression of things - but right away one can clearly see that everything has changed.
This globetrotting virus, this "McDonald's" of epidemics (yes, a pandemic) which, as reactive blowback to a highly globalized, integrated, and most importantly, unevenly developed and distributed global economy, is surging back to meet the forces of its opposite and shrink them back.
Greater swathes of the population may now be experiencing something on a larger scale that was previously relegated to regional, class-based, or race-based experiences, that darkening of the horizon recognizable to those who have experienced protracted natural disasters, or human caused disasters such as blighted neighborhoods and flagging local economies, when freedom and creativity of movement dies and the possible avenues of escape close.
I caught a glimpse of it during a particularly severe 2017 fire season in Montana: the months-long haze and choking smoke which persisted as the sun rose and set, which told you - like a casket closing shut - that would be the last of the sun you see for a while, and that vague, timeless, burning, and nauseous malaise would be the best you could do for now, and that you'd better get used to it.
But there are always other ways to live. More to come.
The fear and strain surrounding the virus is less about the actual virus itself. Yes it is potentially deadly to elderly and vulnerable people, and very contagious, but historically - especially if one goes back further than a century - or even contemporaneously - the Ebola virus in Africa comes to mind, though it is less contagious - the virus appears less deadly on its own.
Yes, the virus should be taken seriously. But many of the arguments asserting this have to do with the virus' relational effects in a mass. So, we have death rates go up when hospitals are overwhelmed and there are not enough beds or equipment, and health professionals burn out and become more vulnerable to the virus and are taken out of commission, and then those potential rates go up further because of poor political coordination and botched attempts at tracking and containing the virus, poor coordination which has also resulted in disrupted supply chains, and the cycle continues.
There are a number of other fears that come with this: the fear of spreading the virus to a vulnerable friend or loved one, the fear of hoarding and gouging (also predicated on fear), the fear and loathing of incompetent and exploitative political and economic institutions, and etc. all of which serve to exacerbate the situation further.
So much of the fear is directed relationally: it is the fear of the fear of others. And this is a fear that has been accumulating for quite some time, for various reasons apart from any sort of virus. Now it is only intensified. At the risk of sounding hackneyed, the story of the virus is at the same time the story of late capital and late industry. Of the late modern human experience, and what the human element means and effects.
We could say the C-19 virus is notable for playing its part in effectively transforming the collective psychic landscape of the industrialized world. It is certainly too early to survey just what that transformation is - though one can make some educated guesses based on the general progression of things - but right away one can clearly see that everything has changed.
This globetrotting virus, this "McDonald's" of epidemics (yes, a pandemic) which, as reactive blowback to a highly globalized, integrated, and most importantly, unevenly developed and distributed global economy, is surging back to meet the forces of its opposite and shrink them back.
Greater swathes of the population may now be experiencing something on a larger scale that was previously relegated to regional, class-based, or race-based experiences, that darkening of the horizon recognizable to those who have experienced protracted natural disasters, or human caused disasters such as blighted neighborhoods and flagging local economies, when freedom and creativity of movement dies and the possible avenues of escape close.
I caught a glimpse of it during a particularly severe 2017 fire season in Montana: the months-long haze and choking smoke which persisted as the sun rose and set, which told you - like a casket closing shut - that would be the last of the sun you see for a while, and that vague, timeless, burning, and nauseous malaise would be the best you could do for now, and that you'd better get used to it.
But there are always other ways to live. More to come.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Uncertainty in the Built Environment Pt. 1
I've mentioned previously that uncertainty in the built environment is an interesting topic; now is probably a good time to examine it.
It is a good time because of our present circumstances. The dubious clouds forming over our prospects for the near future are enough to cause one to pause. Further, there is the brooding psychic space opened up by isolation and the attendant investigation of the unraveling and worsening circumstances of the virus propagation in the United States: its projected spread and reach, its effects on medical, political, and economic institutions and daily activity, its relationship to resources and the supply chain, and etc.
The virus is set to spread for some time. The social, political, and economic costs are set to deepen as well. And further, as a massive shock it has absorbed all of the attention. Those of us paying attention anticipated these consequences, and anticipate still more. There is the gnawing concern that all of those other mounting crises, now pushed to the back of our collective perception, are advancing less obstructed and in relative obscurity, and which will come to collect bills of their own in due time.
As one paces back and forth, or sits brooding at the window, one can pore over the many reckless failures of our political and economic establishment, the many insults and humiliations of daily life in a cruel, antisocial, and neoliberal society, the many advancing and anticipated complications in daily and global life, the looming dangers to one's loved ones and one's self, and so on.
Much work is currently being done to explore and probe the many weaknesses in our political economy and society in general, and to process emotionally and spiritually the meaning and implications of our greater predicament, and it is good important work. Plenty more work has been done to analyze and carry out practical measures in order to survive, and to sketch out the broad changes that must happen to move past this crisis, or perhaps disconcertingly, the sketching out of what we might not expect to happen, and as a consequence, the further destruction we can expect instead. This too is good important work.
But for my part, I'd like to sketch out the basic phenomenological dimensions of surviving such a crisis, or even related and protracted crises in the future. Pacing in a room or sitting at a window can do wonders for processing and thinking about a massive shock, and then formulating a future response. But I'd also like to suggest that too much pacing or sitting can lead to dangers and complications of their own.
Next I'd like to explore some of those problems, and working through them, in the context of survival in an increasingly unstable built environment, drawing partially from lessons of the wilderness. I'm not talking here of a cheap, self-reliant kind of survival, a kind of "I got mine" where one can celebrate one's own wit and one-upsmanship over nature and one's less gifted peers.
I'd like to consider an attempt at modest perpetuity, and an attempt at preserving not just one's own provincial self and interests - say, immediate family or some such, self-contained in one's "castle" - but a sense of hope, decency, and dignity for others, or at least those acting in good faith, even in the face of cascading crises and contractions, and further, a love and respect for that greater ecological totality, which at first glance, appears as part of the tightening noose. Well, we can get to those things in due time.
It is a good time because of our present circumstances. The dubious clouds forming over our prospects for the near future are enough to cause one to pause. Further, there is the brooding psychic space opened up by isolation and the attendant investigation of the unraveling and worsening circumstances of the virus propagation in the United States: its projected spread and reach, its effects on medical, political, and economic institutions and daily activity, its relationship to resources and the supply chain, and etc.
The virus is set to spread for some time. The social, political, and economic costs are set to deepen as well. And further, as a massive shock it has absorbed all of the attention. Those of us paying attention anticipated these consequences, and anticipate still more. There is the gnawing concern that all of those other mounting crises, now pushed to the back of our collective perception, are advancing less obstructed and in relative obscurity, and which will come to collect bills of their own in due time.
As one paces back and forth, or sits brooding at the window, one can pore over the many reckless failures of our political and economic establishment, the many insults and humiliations of daily life in a cruel, antisocial, and neoliberal society, the many advancing and anticipated complications in daily and global life, the looming dangers to one's loved ones and one's self, and so on.
Much work is currently being done to explore and probe the many weaknesses in our political economy and society in general, and to process emotionally and spiritually the meaning and implications of our greater predicament, and it is good important work. Plenty more work has been done to analyze and carry out practical measures in order to survive, and to sketch out the broad changes that must happen to move past this crisis, or perhaps disconcertingly, the sketching out of what we might not expect to happen, and as a consequence, the further destruction we can expect instead. This too is good important work.
But for my part, I'd like to sketch out the basic phenomenological dimensions of surviving such a crisis, or even related and protracted crises in the future. Pacing in a room or sitting at a window can do wonders for processing and thinking about a massive shock, and then formulating a future response. But I'd also like to suggest that too much pacing or sitting can lead to dangers and complications of their own.
Next I'd like to explore some of those problems, and working through them, in the context of survival in an increasingly unstable built environment, drawing partially from lessons of the wilderness. I'm not talking here of a cheap, self-reliant kind of survival, a kind of "I got mine" where one can celebrate one's own wit and one-upsmanship over nature and one's less gifted peers.
I'd like to consider an attempt at modest perpetuity, and an attempt at preserving not just one's own provincial self and interests - say, immediate family or some such, self-contained in one's "castle" - but a sense of hope, decency, and dignity for others, or at least those acting in good faith, even in the face of cascading crises and contractions, and further, a love and respect for that greater ecological totality, which at first glance, appears as part of the tightening noose. Well, we can get to those things in due time.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Flood
Yes, a trying time, and plenty more trials to come. As dispiriting and painful as the circumstances surrounding trials tend to be, a trial must also be risen to.
Shafiq Husayn and Silka had it right: they speak and sing, "The flood is coming." And then, importantly, right after that, a call to rise: "Time to raise up, blaze up, the fire in you."
Shafiq Husayn and Silka had it right: they speak and sing, "The flood is coming." And then, importantly, right after that, a call to rise: "Time to raise up, blaze up, the fire in you."
End of the Line
There were critics of the destructive forces within civilization far before those forces approached their terminus. There was talk of ecological crisis and the "end" of civilization in the 60's and 70's, and there was talk of a terminal crisis of economy, state, and human nature in general in the 30's and 40's before that. There are also the many waves of Christian anticipation of the 2nd coming, and a slew of other waves in various mystical and political traditions. Fervor arises alongside the apocalyptic moon and then abates again, the moon slipping from sight, only to come back around and arise again. Waves of nausea.
With each pass the prophets of an era - though perhaps proven wrong temporally given a literal reading - have grasped the contours of a more dispersed, uneven, ragged, and boundless eschaton in their own way. Or they have apprehended the root forces giving shape to those contours.
Today the shelf appears ever closer. Yet how many waves are to pass until the dawn of the true terminus, and the cold hard bedrock? Terminus and bedrock for whom?
With each pass the prophets of an era - though perhaps proven wrong temporally given a literal reading - have grasped the contours of a more dispersed, uneven, ragged, and boundless eschaton in their own way. Or they have apprehended the root forces giving shape to those contours.
Today the shelf appears ever closer. Yet how many waves are to pass until the dawn of the true terminus, and the cold hard bedrock? Terminus and bedrock for whom?
Virus
Each new day, the world turns, and with the passing of the sun and the daily accelerated motion of living things, the virus is spread further and deeper, and the information feedback of its progression refreshes and focuses into view anew as the stewards of the industrial media apparatus awaken and are moved to production. Apathy, complacency, and denial are given to panic in waves as the sun rises.
The virus is poised to wreak havoc in the Western world, and indeed it is already doing so now. As a communicable pathogen, its perceived danger lies in its transmission, or in the daily physical relations of people. So it intensifies and raises the stakes of what relations are already in place and in effect. It has proven to force pathological relations - across scales large and small - into compression with each other, intensifying their effects.
It took the porosity of a highly dysfunctional human society, and the virulence of a highly contagious virus, to cover the ground required to put many disparate and partially insulated points of risk into closer and more consequential contact with one another: bad cultivated social and public relations, bad medical and political institutions, bad economic arrangements, bad resource distribution, and so on down the line. To put it another way, as we have in a situation with a drought, famine, or large scale foreign or domestic war, say, it is the very real possibility of death of the individual that is at stake in the course of regular systemic dysfunction, which heightens the consequence of dysfunction by a different order of magnitude altogether.
A severe strain can have curiously diverging effects, depending on what undergoes the strain. Say, a harrowing battle may confirm in the minds of the generals and tacticians of the victorious party that whatever arrangement or technology or set of tactics was in place was just the sort of secret sauce needed to do the job, and by golly things should stay that way indefinitely. In the losing party, of course you get: my god things need to change quite dramatically! A sentiment of the surviving members anyway, who have escaped the whirling tempest of failure and catastrophe.
The virus is poised to wreak havoc in the Western world, and indeed it is already doing so now. As a communicable pathogen, its perceived danger lies in its transmission, or in the daily physical relations of people. So it intensifies and raises the stakes of what relations are already in place and in effect. It has proven to force pathological relations - across scales large and small - into compression with each other, intensifying their effects.
It took the porosity of a highly dysfunctional human society, and the virulence of a highly contagious virus, to cover the ground required to put many disparate and partially insulated points of risk into closer and more consequential contact with one another: bad cultivated social and public relations, bad medical and political institutions, bad economic arrangements, bad resource distribution, and so on down the line. To put it another way, as we have in a situation with a drought, famine, or large scale foreign or domestic war, say, it is the very real possibility of death of the individual that is at stake in the course of regular systemic dysfunction, which heightens the consequence of dysfunction by a different order of magnitude altogether.
A severe strain can have curiously diverging effects, depending on what undergoes the strain. Say, a harrowing battle may confirm in the minds of the generals and tacticians of the victorious party that whatever arrangement or technology or set of tactics was in place was just the sort of secret sauce needed to do the job, and by golly things should stay that way indefinitely. In the losing party, of course you get: my god things need to change quite dramatically! A sentiment of the surviving members anyway, who have escaped the whirling tempest of failure and catastrophe.
So-Called Civilization
Civilization is only thought of in the way it is now because of the monopolizing tendencies of empire. Civilization in its totality across human history is an incredibly varied and polymorphous thing. Yet empire springs up within civilization, and then covers the whole of the earth and drags everyone into its bosom, stamping out its competitors and detractors, and then as the earth burns and all of its alternatives are vanquished, it goes on arrogantly to claim of itself that it is "true human nature."
Joe
In the ascendancy of Joe Biden is the ascendancy of the manufactured lie, and the desire for efficacy of the obfuscating image, or a retreat into the false comforts of a creaky status quo which has already wrought great destruction, and which is poised to bring about much more. At the same time it is the ascendancy of manufactured and force fed gruel, of the continued domination of dark money, in the midst of an intensifying pandemic no less. None of these are very good signs.
That this is what many are choosing - and let's be clear, there is a whole ecosystem of organized power encouraging this choice - speaks to a deep and lasting failure of imagination and apprehension. That luminous vision that comes with the hard and steady work of sustained meditation upon the nature of the world, and coming to terms with one's demons, and one's society's demons, is at the same time a curse.
"Vision" in the singular of course sounds cultish or totalitarian, but there are many visions of different natures which can arise in contradistinction to the mythological and imperial Western establishment vision. They arise in different constellations of symbols, cultures, and stories, and may be backed by different sets of values. Some of them may be destructive or even totalitarian and monopolistic in nature, while others, though differing, are perfectly compatible, in that one with a holistic view is given to an open constitution that allows one to understand and communicate with others who may entertain holistic views of their own, and who have that open constitution.
But these visions do take work to cultivate and sustain, and oftentimes, talent. And many are not able to put in the work, or are given to a constitution that doesn't allow for coming to terms, which of course is perpetually encouraged by a large-scale industrial apparatus that hates and fears the vision, a vision which acts as competition to its industrial-scale manipulation and domination of perception and action.
As a result of this, a lonely gulf opens up wide. A relational gulf, a social gulf, which is as wide spiritually as the social gulfs opened up by the violent expansion of the professional individual and the nuclear family across vast distances, embodied by the massive infrastructure sprawls across the North American continent, or for that matter, the far flung economic activity of a global market.
That this is what many are choosing - and let's be clear, there is a whole ecosystem of organized power encouraging this choice - speaks to a deep and lasting failure of imagination and apprehension. That luminous vision that comes with the hard and steady work of sustained meditation upon the nature of the world, and coming to terms with one's demons, and one's society's demons, is at the same time a curse.
"Vision" in the singular of course sounds cultish or totalitarian, but there are many visions of different natures which can arise in contradistinction to the mythological and imperial Western establishment vision. They arise in different constellations of symbols, cultures, and stories, and may be backed by different sets of values. Some of them may be destructive or even totalitarian and monopolistic in nature, while others, though differing, are perfectly compatible, in that one with a holistic view is given to an open constitution that allows one to understand and communicate with others who may entertain holistic views of their own, and who have that open constitution.
But these visions do take work to cultivate and sustain, and oftentimes, talent. And many are not able to put in the work, or are given to a constitution that doesn't allow for coming to terms, which of course is perpetually encouraged by a large-scale industrial apparatus that hates and fears the vision, a vision which acts as competition to its industrial-scale manipulation and domination of perception and action.
As a result of this, a lonely gulf opens up wide. A relational gulf, a social gulf, which is as wide spiritually as the social gulfs opened up by the violent expansion of the professional individual and the nuclear family across vast distances, embodied by the massive infrastructure sprawls across the North American continent, or for that matter, the far flung economic activity of a global market.
Monday, March 02, 2020
Focus
There is an observation that keeps coming up in various schools of thought across time: that what is focused on becomes more real or it takes on a stronger presence. But also, there must be a thing doing the focusing, and that thing has a certain nature, which determines what is being focused on, for how long, to what intensity, and etc. And the nature of that thing affects what is being focused on, and vice versa.
Nice Economy You Got There
To watch the fear set in and the investors up and snatch their loot and take it somewhere else: my god, that it is even permitted!
That the very functioning of a society is held hostage by a class of people threatening abandonment unless they enjoy perpetual and laborless gain, and that they must be coaxed back into supporting the circulation of the collective economy with a bribe, is something else altogether. Yet here we are.
That the very functioning of a society is held hostage by a class of people threatening abandonment unless they enjoy perpetual and laborless gain, and that they must be coaxed back into supporting the circulation of the collective economy with a bribe, is something else altogether. Yet here we are.
Reel
A lot of modern economic activity is based on a very specific kind of exploitation, an exploitation in which a certain need or desire is isolated and then seized upon, drawing in the consumer like one reels in a fish, with really the same sort of end desired: consumption in the form of extracted profit.
And so there are a multitude of forces seizing upon and then pulling at these exposed strands, further unraveling, exposing further strands still.
The only way to continue to work in this economic modality over a longer term is to encourage perpetual expansion, perpetual growth, because the strands broken by exploitation can only be mended after the exploitation - the pulling away force - is halted altogether, which necessitates a transformation of the economic modality.
Barring transformation, unceasing growth is required, to continuously generate a body fresh, with more strands to pull.
I've Heard That One Before
Strange, these arguments and appeals that persist and which refuse to die. People pick up these facile political and cultural arguments right off of the ground really, holding them up like a nifty shiny trinket, taking possession of them and feeling personally attacked if challenged on their support of a weak argument cobbled together somewhere by a hack. Kind of like people's homes filling up with useless and garish figurines and memorabilia.
On Manufacturing Archetype
To enter into the incredibly complex realm of social relations, with its own distinct on and off patterns one has to harmonize with to persist in, one has to compress one's own incredibly complex self and fabricate a persona to move forward.
This persona - which far from being static, is always shifting and morphing as it moves through various public and private spaces, to persist in each distinct space - is nevertheless a simplified freezing or repetition of a simplified pattern within the swirling chaos in the individual. It is the coalescing of various favorable, harmonious traits and energies into a visible visage to achieve a certain effect in time and space.
We do this on a massive scale with our national politics. The formation of the persona - or we could say an archetype, taking into account a greater scale and a longer passage of time - has taken on an industrial quality, which seeks to meet the multitude of social and political wants and desires across a continental body politic.
But to fabricate there must be intentions and ends. There must be something that shapes the direction of the fabrication, or which motivates and drives the fabrication.
We live in a society that secretly and ultimately prizes bare accumulation, but which must drape itself in all manner of fabricated mythological ideation which conceals and denies that secret desire, and which indeed, makes that secret desire possible to fulfill in the first place. A concentrated locality that accumulates must ensure that there is accumulation nowhere else after all, or at least the permitted centers of accumulation must not conflict with each other.
All of that is to say that there is still a clear preference for a fabricated idea in our democracy which looks good on the surface and which wins elections, and which runs cover for further accumulation for whatever set of factions happens to muscle their way into power.
Someone like Bernie certainly indicates a fabrication with an intention of anti-accumulation, and the movement towards stability and amends that comes with that. But then that fabrication must struggle against the whole of the mass that is threatened by it, and transform the mass in that direction, whatever future revelations and compromises are implied by that.
This persona - which far from being static, is always shifting and morphing as it moves through various public and private spaces, to persist in each distinct space - is nevertheless a simplified freezing or repetition of a simplified pattern within the swirling chaos in the individual. It is the coalescing of various favorable, harmonious traits and energies into a visible visage to achieve a certain effect in time and space.
We do this on a massive scale with our national politics. The formation of the persona - or we could say an archetype, taking into account a greater scale and a longer passage of time - has taken on an industrial quality, which seeks to meet the multitude of social and political wants and desires across a continental body politic.
But to fabricate there must be intentions and ends. There must be something that shapes the direction of the fabrication, or which motivates and drives the fabrication.
We live in a society that secretly and ultimately prizes bare accumulation, but which must drape itself in all manner of fabricated mythological ideation which conceals and denies that secret desire, and which indeed, makes that secret desire possible to fulfill in the first place. A concentrated locality that accumulates must ensure that there is accumulation nowhere else after all, or at least the permitted centers of accumulation must not conflict with each other.
All of that is to say that there is still a clear preference for a fabricated idea in our democracy which looks good on the surface and which wins elections, and which runs cover for further accumulation for whatever set of factions happens to muscle their way into power.
Someone like Bernie certainly indicates a fabrication with an intention of anti-accumulation, and the movement towards stability and amends that comes with that. But then that fabrication must struggle against the whole of the mass that is threatened by it, and transform the mass in that direction, whatever future revelations and compromises are implied by that.
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