Friday, April 24, 2020
Priorities
The ordering of priorities and perceptions, and the struggles associated with keeping those priorities in place, and maintaining those perceptions, can be quite sticky. The whole point of a set of priorities is to maintain a given state of affairs that produces for those priorities, so one is constantly straining and struggling to keep those things in place.
And one of the silver linings in a profound enough shock is to completely reorder those priorities by blowing away whatever commitments one was stuck with, requiring the taking up of new commitments and the bonding of associated priorities and measures for maintaining those commitments. This lining is especially silver if the prior set of priorities was counterproductive.
All of the stress that goes into maintaining a mortgage, car payments, a trendy social life, and etc. could go up in flame with the actual benefits themselves, should you be knocked out of work and dislodged from the so-called rat race. And then you are doing things you never imagined you'd be doing to survive, and the priorities are reordered, and all of the previous fears now appear as the vaporous bogeymen they really were.
Not that this is a cure - a very cruel one it would be - but it is a kind of vision that can be salvaged in a disaster.
To simplify and lower the stakes, but nevertheless illustrate, we could consider fasting.
An initial hunger pang may appear frightful to someone who has never gone hungry, but then if you go a couple of days and watch that pang disappear, and something new arise in its place, then you awaken to what the body can really do, and how far it really can be pushed, and this informs later experiences outside of that context.
There are numerous dangers here too, such as a suppressed immune system - which can eventually come back stronger, but beside the point - and physical weakness, faculties that could be needed in a bind. And there is eventually a bottoming out of reordering your priorities, as cold hard death is death.
At least some of this is plastic anyway. There is some room to move and maneuver.
All of the stress that goes into maintaining a mortgage, car payments, a trendy social life, and etc. could go up in flame with the actual benefits themselves, should you be knocked out of work and dislodged from the so-called rat race. And then you are doing things you never imagined you'd be doing to survive, and the priorities are reordered, and all of the previous fears now appear as the vaporous bogeymen they really were.
Not that this is a cure - a very cruel one it would be - but it is a kind of vision that can be salvaged in a disaster.
To simplify and lower the stakes, but nevertheless illustrate, we could consider fasting.
An initial hunger pang may appear frightful to someone who has never gone hungry, but then if you go a couple of days and watch that pang disappear, and something new arise in its place, then you awaken to what the body can really do, and how far it really can be pushed, and this informs later experiences outside of that context.
There are numerous dangers here too, such as a suppressed immune system - which can eventually come back stronger, but beside the point - and physical weakness, faculties that could be needed in a bind. And there is eventually a bottoming out of reordering your priorities, as cold hard death is death.
At least some of this is plastic anyway. There is some room to move and maneuver.
From Fear to Terror
Yes, fear often tends to be a response to threatening stimuli, or stimuli perceived to be threatening. But beyond that is a spectrum into terror and panic, where there is much more going on. For example, underlying terror and panic is a breakdown in organization and a failure of discipline amidst the coping milieu. Terror arises in an environment in which one's trusted means of mitigation and perpetuation completely break down: "nowhere to run, nowhere to hide," as the horror movie trope goes. It is not just the external threat that is the problem, but one's living framework which is affected by a given threat.
Yes, an overwhelming external force can bring this breakdown about all on its own; indeed, that is the nature of calamities like natural and man made disasters. But important to the analysis here are the internal conditions for breakdown and ensuing panic. Because overwhelming force can build up, and build up in relation to internal frameworks, and it often does build up in response to over-zealous responses to perceived external threat.
The traditional law and order approach deceptively recognized the internal portion of the dynamic by focusing intensively and obsessively on external threats real and imagined, and so a process of internal and social sterilization occurs, in which substantial resources are put into reinforced concrete and steel: stronger prisons, more powerful and spread out militaries, and the like, and so internal discipline and organization is concentrated and intensified in an undisciplined and unorganized way, to the impoverishment of everything else.
And then gradually over time, the tremors and convulsions grow. And blockades and shieldings appear in the capitol, and metal detectors and security and bulletproof shields appear in offices and schools and convenience stores, and the police begins to resemble the military, and the convulsions only continue to grow. The fear and terror spreads.
And in a similar way, the fields and medical patients are bombed and gassed, and are sterilized, and require ever greater doses and concentrations of herbicide and antibiotic to fight off the strengthening hordes. And the war on drugs and the war on poverty, like splashing about an oil fire, spread the drugs and poverty. Need I go on?
On the flip side of that coin, you have something like the hippie movement, which in its mainstream strains, renounces external threat along with all of the discipline and organization that goes with addressing those things.
And so without traditionally disciplined and cultivated means of maintenance, and stewarding systems that sustain the ecstasies and illuminations of intoxication and ecstatic ritual, free love, communal living, and the like, those phenomena are burnt up and dissolve into bad trips, fair weather friends, and failed communes, and the fear and terror spreads.
So, where and how do we get our food, our shelter, our relations, our securities, our delights? How to put it all together so that it works together?
Yes, an overwhelming external force can bring this breakdown about all on its own; indeed, that is the nature of calamities like natural and man made disasters. But important to the analysis here are the internal conditions for breakdown and ensuing panic. Because overwhelming force can build up, and build up in relation to internal frameworks, and it often does build up in response to over-zealous responses to perceived external threat.
The traditional law and order approach deceptively recognized the internal portion of the dynamic by focusing intensively and obsessively on external threats real and imagined, and so a process of internal and social sterilization occurs, in which substantial resources are put into reinforced concrete and steel: stronger prisons, more powerful and spread out militaries, and the like, and so internal discipline and organization is concentrated and intensified in an undisciplined and unorganized way, to the impoverishment of everything else.
And then gradually over time, the tremors and convulsions grow. And blockades and shieldings appear in the capitol, and metal detectors and security and bulletproof shields appear in offices and schools and convenience stores, and the police begins to resemble the military, and the convulsions only continue to grow. The fear and terror spreads.
And in a similar way, the fields and medical patients are bombed and gassed, and are sterilized, and require ever greater doses and concentrations of herbicide and antibiotic to fight off the strengthening hordes. And the war on drugs and the war on poverty, like splashing about an oil fire, spread the drugs and poverty. Need I go on?
On the flip side of that coin, you have something like the hippie movement, which in its mainstream strains, renounces external threat along with all of the discipline and organization that goes with addressing those things.
And so without traditionally disciplined and cultivated means of maintenance, and stewarding systems that sustain the ecstasies and illuminations of intoxication and ecstatic ritual, free love, communal living, and the like, those phenomena are burnt up and dissolve into bad trips, fair weather friends, and failed communes, and the fear and terror spreads.
So, where and how do we get our food, our shelter, our relations, our securities, our delights? How to put it all together so that it works together?
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Trust the Body?
What the body wants is not a straightforward proposition, as within the body are a multitude of chaotic forces and interests, which can express themselves in contradictory desires and intentions, all of which are further complicated by emoting and cognition.
Stooping to listen, one may catch the ghostly ringing of a socially cultivated desire, or the pining of a colony of bacteria injected into the stomach by industry.
A novel virus, driven and spread in part by the complex forces of interrelating cognition and desire, reveals the interrelatedness of and integration of intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and instinctual systems, and the need for the harmonious functioning of those systems.
It is not enough to simply stoop and listen to one's body as it cries out from infection, as addressing those immediate needs may lead to further complications, and the building up of momentum of those complications.
One also has to enter intellectually into the field of research and best practice, as there may not be enough time to traverse that idiosyncratic chain of trial, error, and revelation in one's individual person.
Stooping to listen, one may catch the ghostly ringing of a socially cultivated desire, or the pining of a colony of bacteria injected into the stomach by industry.
A novel virus, driven and spread in part by the complex forces of interrelating cognition and desire, reveals the interrelatedness of and integration of intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and instinctual systems, and the need for the harmonious functioning of those systems.
It is not enough to simply stoop and listen to one's body as it cries out from infection, as addressing those immediate needs may lead to further complications, and the building up of momentum of those complications.
One also has to enter intellectually into the field of research and best practice, as there may not be enough time to traverse that idiosyncratic chain of trial, error, and revelation in one's individual person.
Stack
A stack composed of somewhat independent entities (like a stack of firewood) can be piled quite high, despite a foundational lean that makes it vulnerable to toppling. It is still vulnerable to toppling, but may do so incompletely. A leaning monolith however is given to more irresistible toppling the more mass is added atop the already existing lean, and fused, all topples together and completely, though it may take more force to separate it completely too. Barring ideological compression, nothing is simple.
Void
More often than not, it is within the opening cracks that you find the decency and solidarity, and what is cracking is that which is cruel and rapacious, and cracking partly because of that. But where nothing allows for something else, it also allows for violent shifts, which can bring about cruelness and rapaciousness themselves. And the somethings forming may go on and scale out and develop to be good, or they may scale out to mimic the cruelty and rapacious, and go on to crack themselves.
Spitting Out
With all of this fear of contamination and soiled articles, and the widespread stockpiling and utilization of disposable cleaning and single use products, and the CO2 shortages and compromised water treatment systems, it makes me wonder how the waste flows are looking. Of course this is going to be very mixed, taking into account also the declining economic activity and pollution levels, the industrial operations on standby, and the backing up of oil reserves in storage.
Monday, April 20, 2020
Dragged Down By The Stone
The heterodox economists have been warning about private debt for a long time. This is a profound and complex issue that spans thousands of years, but at the moment it might be worthwhile to simply contemplate the state of consciousness that arises from institutionalized interest-bearing debt as a social engine. Now, what has been fitted into place as a social motivation for collective activity is a mass desire to acquire much more than is put in, as a matter of course, as a matter of daily function.
Because each is on their own, and nobody is there to help, so enough resources must be taken in to get clear of that grinding killing floor of universal exploitation.
Part of the establishment response to the crisis consists of preserving this consciousness, this way of being, which accounts for the dogged reliance on huge bailouts for the wealthy and the well-connected, and scraps for everyone else, even in the face of massive destabilization and calamity.
To do things differently in a great enough amount threatens a mass mimetic response, which can cascade and cause lasting changes to the social order.
So you see bankers, managers, executives and investors nervously eyeing their assets and balance sheets, and clamoring for handouts and reassurances, and goading everyone down the line into maintaining capital and income flows, going so far as to claw at measly stimulus checks coming in.
And from reports I've seen and anecdotal accounts I've heard, many landlords and creditors are expecting full payment of back rent and suspended lease payments. Of course things will have to change as complications arise from the crisis, and we'll see various compensatory mechanisms put in place.
But just consider how long so much of the economy has been frozen, and how many people are out of work, and how many payments have been suspended or rendered unpayable. We're talking an enormous amount of suspended value, hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles, which when the gears start turning again, will come due and expected, and come crashing down. And this is on top of the sorry state of the credit system, and the massive sprawls of destroyed middle class wealth, and extreme precarity for a majority of individuals in the industrial world.
So as I've mentioned before, we'll have to see some pretty profound change in our political economy in the coming decade. That, or as Pink Floyd put it so vividly and succinctly, we'll be "dragged down by the stone."
Because each is on their own, and nobody is there to help, so enough resources must be taken in to get clear of that grinding killing floor of universal exploitation.
Part of the establishment response to the crisis consists of preserving this consciousness, this way of being, which accounts for the dogged reliance on huge bailouts for the wealthy and the well-connected, and scraps for everyone else, even in the face of massive destabilization and calamity.
To do things differently in a great enough amount threatens a mass mimetic response, which can cascade and cause lasting changes to the social order.
So you see bankers, managers, executives and investors nervously eyeing their assets and balance sheets, and clamoring for handouts and reassurances, and goading everyone down the line into maintaining capital and income flows, going so far as to claw at measly stimulus checks coming in.
And from reports I've seen and anecdotal accounts I've heard, many landlords and creditors are expecting full payment of back rent and suspended lease payments. Of course things will have to change as complications arise from the crisis, and we'll see various compensatory mechanisms put in place.
But just consider how long so much of the economy has been frozen, and how many people are out of work, and how many payments have been suspended or rendered unpayable. We're talking an enormous amount of suspended value, hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles, which when the gears start turning again, will come due and expected, and come crashing down. And this is on top of the sorry state of the credit system, and the massive sprawls of destroyed middle class wealth, and extreme precarity for a majority of individuals in the industrial world.
So as I've mentioned before, we'll have to see some pretty profound change in our political economy in the coming decade. That, or as Pink Floyd put it so vividly and succinctly, we'll be "dragged down by the stone."
Hiding in The Noise
As a new virus, C-19 seems to be highly opportunistic, taking advantage of its youth and anonymity to attack whatever systems it comes into contact with. Symptoms are all over the map and unpredictable, and I've heard all sorts of stories of strange and unexpected complications, depending on the patient.
Further there are unsettling reports of either reinfections, relapses, or both. The befuddled immune system fumbles it and the virus comes back, again and again for some time, for some people. Patients recover, and are cleared, and then return to the hospital at a later time. And what of contagion in that period? And that is for cases under medical supervision.
In the United States, if we look at the sorry state of testing, the waters grow ever muddier. Setting aside the early development phase of the tests themselves, and the limited availability of those resources, there is the open question of testing penetration into a populace that have been instilled with a mortal fear of finance and the medical industry. Even the cold hard numbers at this point cannot be trusted.
In an environment where clinical experience is not yet developed, and research is still in its early stages - and worse, the centralized political and economic systems have abdicated their responsibilities, leading to further confusion and uncertainty - the virus' continued perpetuation looks to be wide open, as it silently claims its footholds amidst the noise. And part of that noise was discovered in the wild some time ago by our propagandists, who learned to produce and cultivate it into perpetuity, to sustain accumulation.
It could very well be the case that the virus itself stumbles and burns out in the summer sun. This is exceedingly generous, as we know the virus is doing fine in warmer climates, and there is the matter of the vast archipelago of climate-controlled space we've produced in the form of the built environment. Further, there is always next winter. But given the ideal pandemic scenario with the current regime of political economy, and its concomitant hands off approach and pathetic fixation on restoring the engines of accumulation, our whole collective pandemic strategy amounts to an enormous gamble with immense risk in human well-being. The recklessness and lack of discipline will remain as the virus is vanquished.
Out here it is only chaos. And for the Masters - who desire to keep their loot - the primary concern is to manage images, and maintain a narrative which ultimately stabilizes their position when the chaos finally settles into itself and a new tenuous stability is achieved, regardless of the consequences that may follow that.
Their heroic task before them is to boldly stride forth and construct the most irresistible propagandistic imagery, with the most compelling sets of doctored numbers and the most appealing narratives to our national sensibilities, to assure a great enough mass is frozen into fixation on the constructed number and image, and which continues to orbit in place and behave as it did before. Even as the tension between its own stasis and the ecological waves of destruction set in motion against it threatens to rend it asunder.
They still have to see to the treatment and recovery of those who "matter," and the rest can fend for themselves, and those who survive can then assume their positions and pay their back rent for the good of civilization. The increasingly kinetic mass of that which doesn't "matter" is another thing altogether though.
Further there are unsettling reports of either reinfections, relapses, or both. The befuddled immune system fumbles it and the virus comes back, again and again for some time, for some people. Patients recover, and are cleared, and then return to the hospital at a later time. And what of contagion in that period? And that is for cases under medical supervision.
In the United States, if we look at the sorry state of testing, the waters grow ever muddier. Setting aside the early development phase of the tests themselves, and the limited availability of those resources, there is the open question of testing penetration into a populace that have been instilled with a mortal fear of finance and the medical industry. Even the cold hard numbers at this point cannot be trusted.
In an environment where clinical experience is not yet developed, and research is still in its early stages - and worse, the centralized political and economic systems have abdicated their responsibilities, leading to further confusion and uncertainty - the virus' continued perpetuation looks to be wide open, as it silently claims its footholds amidst the noise. And part of that noise was discovered in the wild some time ago by our propagandists, who learned to produce and cultivate it into perpetuity, to sustain accumulation.
It could very well be the case that the virus itself stumbles and burns out in the summer sun. This is exceedingly generous, as we know the virus is doing fine in warmer climates, and there is the matter of the vast archipelago of climate-controlled space we've produced in the form of the built environment. Further, there is always next winter. But given the ideal pandemic scenario with the current regime of political economy, and its concomitant hands off approach and pathetic fixation on restoring the engines of accumulation, our whole collective pandemic strategy amounts to an enormous gamble with immense risk in human well-being. The recklessness and lack of discipline will remain as the virus is vanquished.
Out here it is only chaos. And for the Masters - who desire to keep their loot - the primary concern is to manage images, and maintain a narrative which ultimately stabilizes their position when the chaos finally settles into itself and a new tenuous stability is achieved, regardless of the consequences that may follow that.
Their heroic task before them is to boldly stride forth and construct the most irresistible propagandistic imagery, with the most compelling sets of doctored numbers and the most appealing narratives to our national sensibilities, to assure a great enough mass is frozen into fixation on the constructed number and image, and which continues to orbit in place and behave as it did before. Even as the tension between its own stasis and the ecological waves of destruction set in motion against it threatens to rend it asunder.
They still have to see to the treatment and recovery of those who "matter," and the rest can fend for themselves, and those who survive can then assume their positions and pay their back rent for the good of civilization. The increasingly kinetic mass of that which doesn't "matter" is another thing altogether though.
Still Kicking
Still alive for now, but I continue to be in the throes of a protracted ass-kicking, courtesy of the virus. I'll send out a few notes in the meantime.
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Subjective Virus
It descends on you and sits on your chest like the mythological creatures of sleep paralysis lore. It is the "bear encounter in the forest" of maladies: the body knows it well enough, and the mind confirms it; better sit still and be careful with this one, this thing could really hurt me.
You can do what you can to mind your step. Eat well, drink fluids, get rest, stay calm and avoid too much stress. But as with the bear, the conditions could just be bad, who knows? The big bastard could charge anyway after you've made yourself smaller, lowered your eyes, and backed away.
Unlike the bear, at least in the built environment, the virus is everywhere. You can try to be as careful as you can, say, isolated and removed, but you can't stay in that sterilized box forever. The whip of hunger drives you out, and ultimately the whip of the wage gets you moving and agitated and spreading further.
And out there, the virus sits and waits on shiny steel knobs and gleaming counters; it rests patiently on plastic buttons and glass screens, and occasionally it even hangs silently in the air.
Here in the United States, the Masters just don't care. And headless, the body politic flails in confusion. And the human detritus from the slow motion wreckage is sent out haphazardly to strike what it will and crash into itself, and the virus spreads.
But spiritually things are very hot and charged. And they're getting hotter. What will we be?
You can do what you can to mind your step. Eat well, drink fluids, get rest, stay calm and avoid too much stress. But as with the bear, the conditions could just be bad, who knows? The big bastard could charge anyway after you've made yourself smaller, lowered your eyes, and backed away.
Unlike the bear, at least in the built environment, the virus is everywhere. You can try to be as careful as you can, say, isolated and removed, but you can't stay in that sterilized box forever. The whip of hunger drives you out, and ultimately the whip of the wage gets you moving and agitated and spreading further.
And out there, the virus sits and waits on shiny steel knobs and gleaming counters; it rests patiently on plastic buttons and glass screens, and occasionally it even hangs silently in the air.
Here in the United States, the Masters just don't care. And headless, the body politic flails in confusion. And the human detritus from the slow motion wreckage is sent out haphazardly to strike what it will and crash into itself, and the virus spreads.
But spiritually things are very hot and charged. And they're getting hotter. What will we be?
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