Dead Tree

 

Uy

Yes, at the moment, the writing is shit. But bear with me, I've got to get some things written down here. 

Society Is Strange

As social and political animals, society itself exists to our perception as the proverbial water exists to the fish. It can be difficult to ascertain its nature because we are suffused with it and it is us. For example, the rebellious teenager looks at society and sees it as a noxious monolith, which at times does indeed behave as one, but under closer inspection, is much more strange than all that. The teenager can be forgiven though, as after all many people never quite advance intellectually beyond that basic perception, or that aspiration anyway. 

We see this all the time in the common attitude of: why can't we make so and so do this, or why can't things simply be such and such way and then it will all be fine? This is an attitude that usually crops up when some society-wide change is desired, which flattens the infinitely complex intricacies of social reality in favor of a given individual's field of vision and being. 

This is setting aside the more principled stances based upon more complex theories of change, in which a complex array of considerations informs a given plan of action's impact on society. Which, considering the nature of society itself, are considerations that are nevertheless steep simplifications, yet these compressions that are required for navigating the complexities of the social arena, unless one is to become completely overwhelmed and paralyzed by those complexities. Social changes themselves then proceed from the distortions introduced by limited intelligences initiating changes that reflect their limited perspectives and loci of action, which generalize and fan out from a minority and ripple through the greater population. 

I suppose though that I should get to the point, and illustrate some of the strange aspects of what society is. From a vantage point of naivety, what motivates people to cohere in the incredibly complex living patterns required to sustain a society like this one? The whip of hunger and the direct threat of violence are good places to start I suppose, but even those supposedly simplistic motivations quickly melt into vast complex historical processes upon further analysis.

Say, with the technologies and wealth of technical knowledge, why can't burdened people simply get up, move somewhere else, stick their shovels into the dirt and produce their own food, and so on? Most people can get beyond this simple question: movement is difficult and expensive in a dense human environment, and the movement itself - along with habitation, food and water, etc. - is subject to a complex web of permissions and obligations which track along lines of class, race, ability, gender, and etc. 

Producing food is reliant on the characteristics of a given habitation and its ownership, as well as zoning, climate, soil characteristics, and so on. It takes time to produce food, within which existing food must be obtained, establishing economic, political, and social dependencies that aren't easily departed from. These conditions then imply historical processes that arrive at those points. 

Violence too requires a class-based application of force, force that is applied in a way that a majority considers legitimate enough not to intervene or respond in kind, and this legitimacy is constructed through sustained propaganda or else simply maintained through fear. And where does the violence emanate from, and in what direction? Questions like these then reference the historical rise and fall of empires and centers of power. 

We've got the coercive part, but society also has to function, and industrial society in particular has to function with a steady 3% annual growth rate, at least theoretically. That's compound growth. We're talking an enormous amount of sustained motivation and dynamism. We are talking now about a delicate balance between coercive motivations and positive motivations in which through individuals' own interests, the numerous aims and desires of a society are propelled forward. 

Adam Smith's conception of capitalism then is in one way the attempt of a society to reorganize itself around the falling debris of a disintegrating feudal order. Indeed, very strange. Now I'm going to pivot a bit, but I'm trying to further the general point: society is really strange.  

How is it that the absolute figure of an absolute monarch can go bankrupt? Doesn't the absolute monarch have absolute power to do whatever the monarch wants? Another naïve question worth asking, which eventually dispels the notion of an absolute power in itself. Nay, that absolute power is the intersection of a vast web of powers that are crossing at the right points with the right directions and velocities at that moment. And yes, we do still have monarchs, there are just more of them and they've agreed to share power through various elaborate rituals. 

Money and banking are not only tools, they are expressions of a distinct human tendency which given enough mass and velocity takes on a life of its own, as distinct from the absolute authority of a dictatorial power. The need to rule and organize is very different from the requirements of talent in trade and enterprise, and these tendencies tend to differentiate and are only fully expressed in individuals and institutions which specialize in them, which then develop dialectically together in need of each other, but distinct from each other and operating apart from each other, and so exert influence and constraint on each other. 

The banker would devour the host through exploitative accumulation without some sort of external constraint, while the absolute monarch would freeze society into a petrified husk without the vigorous dynamism of enterprising investment and opportunity. Of course, these extreme states of imbalance are constantly approached, ever more so as a given society becomes more unstable and the various sectors vie to take control. 

However, the existence of both the banker and the monarch, their mutual dependence on each other and then the dependence of them on their societies and vice versa (at least in certain points of time) are facts contingent on historical trajectories. What's more, everyone attempting to escape capital in the world system have been forced to revert to the logics of capital to survive; it all has to be done together at this point, another state of affairs worth analyzing. 

Now, strangeness is only a reality that remains unexamined or fully judged by the human perception, itself an ideal that will never be fully realized. But we can live alongside the strange, and continue our examination anyway. So it goes. 

What Gives

During the past couple of months, the writings here have been particularly abstract. I've always tended towards abstracting various subjects of inquiry anyway, as far out as I could go to stretch seemingly disparate phenomena across a simpler set of determinations, so as to capture what is happening at a greater scale. But I'm aware that it has been more so as of late. 

Part of this has to do simply with the new normal of the daily functioning of my brain with the influences of long covid. The reduced horizon of concentration, the dysfunctional memory, difficulties with language and motivation and passion, etc. all contribute to make the writing more difficult, so I have to work with what I got. 

There is much to write about in terms of particulars in the political economy of the United States, and the rest of the world for that matter, but after a point there is only so many times I can keep harping on the same threads of doom. I'm tired. Everyone else is tired. We all know where this is going, which is a rhetorical and stylistic exaggeration, as there is much gaslighting and denial going on as well, so not everyone really knows. But you get the picture. 

The continuing circulation of the virus, extreme weather events, the sagging and gasping supply chain, and the incredibly intense political tensions, among many other things, may together make for an explosive culmination in the coming years, to understate things. In time I may find reason to write about them, and indeed I do continue to write about them in a sense, just in a much more generalized way. For now I'm still laying down some bones, hopefully to help with future analyses. 

The nice thing about abstracting is that when the various components are rendered well they can be put together into more complex models and say some pretty interesting things about our reality. If the abstraction is any good, you begin to see its signature - in however imperfect form - in reality itself, a useful aid for thinking about and anticipating that reality, though it can very easily be misused or abused. I've worn that theme plenty well into the ground here, but it is certainly a theme worth the wear. 

Holiday Season

What with the falling of winter and that cyclical and conceptual winding down of the year, the reflections and evaluations come flooding in. But besides the superficial "end of the year" prompting, I think there are some deeper structural influences that encourage the self-reflecting mood. 

For one, the cyclical mass gathering of people familiar to each other and who know each other puts them into a closer proximity both through space and time. Conversation, tones, body language, and all the rest are presented at close range and across longer stretches of time and at higher resolutions than is usual for regular correspondence through communication technologies. 

This provides the occasion for mutual evaluation and judgment, whether solicited or not, and so one leaves the family gathering vibrating with vivid feedback on the current state of one's life and one's person, and the reflections begin not long after that. It can be a painful experience for the atomized modern, accustomed to the rarified cube or at least the nuclear household, suddenly pressed into the communal image and beckoned to interact.

If anything, it takes some more work to construct an attractive and believable mask, though an increasing part of the collective conversation involves acknowledging the rapidly unraveling social fabric, whether through commiseration or heated argument. 

It can be good too. Good food and drink, enjoying the company and perspectives of fellow travelers, and so on. Just as many smiles and winks as growls and snarls.  

Devil's Club

 

Family

You'll see in families different ways of moving through society and relating to other people, which propagate as they reproduce themselves. Say, this here family tends to be louder and more direct in relating to others, while this here family tends to be quieter and indirect, and then these tendencies can cluster in certain classes or cultural groups, oftentimes influenced regionally or geographically. There does seem to be a generational inversion of values, or at least selections of values. For example, the offspring reveling in disorganization in reaction to the aggressive controlling organizing tendencies of the parent, though even these reactions can revert back to a deeper tendency with aging, the whole "I'm becoming like my mom/dad" sort of thing. 

Just Stuff

A person's material possessions are bonded to them in a way, and surround them as an aura with a unique character appropriate to their person. You'll often see visceral reactions in people to others' things based on their affinity or contempt of those others. 

That's Not Me

Through a grotesque series of historical transformations, the Nazis emerged from the existing industrial order at the time. Like a growing cancer or an invading virus, the body perceives it as an external and separate encroaching force; "that's not me," that sort of thing, at least in terms of a historical, established consensus. But what really is an industrial nation in relation to the other nations? What is a nazi in relation to a dysfunctioning society? What is cancer in relation to the body? What does it mean for a virus to flourish? What then is a body? Because there are well-worn pitfalls associated with the organic body analogy. No immediate answers here, but there will be some thoughts here coming up along those lines.  

History

One of the things that makes history so endlessly fascinating is its temporality, which compounds the complexity already existing in the study of a society isolated from its context. History not only illuminates multiple objects of study across very large spaces, allowing for endless comparisons and contrasts, but the passage of time itself reveals another layer of complexity by eventually connecting those disparate objects together, in a relation of constant transformation. We're talking here about a larger and denser chunk of reality to be presented to the inquiring consciousness. 

Did I Hear You Right?

A lot of human interaction is based on imperfect comprehension or even a misunderstanding of a given set of symbols. What does it mean to love or hate? To labor? To suffer? These basic fundamental ideas may mean very different things depending on the individual, though there are always elemental similarities which make up the bindings of mutual understanding. Conversation proceeds along with a slackness across links of ideas, which then tightens up to a breaking point when conflict arises, in which misunderstandings and misalignments have to be reconciled. What's more, to labor too hard at setting it right can insult the other and break the exchange entirely. 

Though

I've got a little tic in which I may waffle on a point and muddy the waters a bit. Usually it is some sort of qualification that follows a "though" or some such. The idea is to make some sort of assertion and then introduce a conflicting claim that weakens the assertion: "such and such is x, though sometimes it is y." This has become quite intentional, and I suppose could be described as a minor routine ritual carried out in the course of writing. 

Not only is reality infinitely complex and building up good models can be devilishly hard, but then as soon as you do so the reality is already drifting away and the model is beginning its disintegration. On a large enough scale, capturing reality is forever a moving target, forever ambiguous. 

This is a belief and practice that is bound up with the view that ideology is an act of construction, as opposed to the practice of bringing to light faithfully something that already exists, and then of course making a proprietary claim over that faithful representation. There is some truth to the latter, but in a time that emphasizes disintegration, the construction aspect comes to the forefront. To put it another way, in great times of upheaval, there is a concerted collective effort to come to terms with death.   

Sure, one could deliberately adhere to an air of certainty to project confidence. A perfectly reasonable approach, though what happens when the dynamic moving parts put enough pressure on the static symbol, and then the whole thing cracks open? This is compounded with the dilemma that the thing professed to be unbreakable in the first place. 

Morning Mountains

 

Change or Stay?

Beliefs in determinism, or stronger yet, predestination, could be understood as crystallized ideological relics of the basic reality that we possess an inner, denser emotional/experiential core that although at times malleable, is a little more difficult to alter with conscious effort. It tends to take the white hot early stages of child development to give shape to the core, and after that it can be banged into other shapes with a good enough wallop, say a traumatic or ecstatic event. 

And then conscious effort can be put towards various methods of altering the thing too, albeit in a more gradual, deliberate, and incremental manner, but then even the conscious effort itself has to rest on a deeper, denser emotional and spiritual commitment, which itself is often forged through more powerful external cultural and historical forces. 

People can go through all sorts of material metamorphoses, and pass vast temporal and geographical distances and remain themselves. But they can change too; to what extent however seems to rely more on large, persuasive, external circumstances, in which peers, communities, institutions, nations, historical periods, etc. are changing with them. Though these changes are nevertheless composed of the changing individuals themselves.  

Feel Good Chain

There is a whole economy of rituals for restoring the perception of cleanliness and wellbeing that exists apart from anything actually effecting those things, though the economy of rituals itself is constantly altered in feedback with what actually exists. Say, throwing out the garbage and putting in a clean plastic trash liner with some sort of fresh scent: the clean shiny plastic and the good smell triggers a sense of renewal, in accordance with existing beliefs and attitudes towards various forms of waste. The dirty trash is gone. 

But this sense can be readily modified, and indeed it is often put there in the first place, in this case with the conventions welded into place by daily economic choices and practices of the mass, as well as mass advertising. And then what changes it? The understanding of where the plastic comes from for example, and where it goes, and what it is doing to the greater ecology for example, which can instill a sense of guilt and even horror.

But then this has to compete with the discomfort and disgust of rotting trash piling up with nowhere to go, and the presence or absence of alternative forms of amelioration.

Or how about using soap? The fresh smell on the one hand, and the basic beliefs about soap's effects, which of course are backed up by centuries of observation, knowledge, and practice, back up a feeling of cleanliness and security after the ritual is carried out. But the feeling can be changed, especially with the knowledge of certain kinds of chemicals which might clean in the short term, but which then do longer term damage to the environment, and one's own health for that matter, which of course depends on the type of soap and its composition, thus the flowering of the market of ecologically friendly and mild soaps. 

Green tech is another good example. The electric cars, the standing windmills, the fields of solar panels... here there is a complex interplay of pragmatic action and powerful images. The image communicates a cleaner, more moral way of being, opposed to the dirty, belching petroleum energies that are obnoxious and harm. Setting aside the simplistic, binary, and problematic schema of dirty and clean, there may very well be good reasons for switching to alternative forms of energy, though at what scale and what form this takes is another question and socially and culturally determined. Thus we are endowed with the noxious phenomenon of green washing.

The massive processes of mining and smelting that must continue for the enormous amounts of steel and rare earth metals to be procured to outfit a massive energy transfer of a large complex society, without of course radically altering the composition and aims of that society, may very well open or widen very different sets of wounds, and then these realities necessarily pass through the collective consciousness in uneven ways, depending on a given individual consciousness, specialization, political persuasion, economic interest, and etc. 

The rituals are needed. One must move through the world believing one is right and good, the monsters included. There is a driving action to it; it feeds the will to go on. This element, this economy unto itself, must remain stable and functional, resting atop a constantly changing reality and altering it and being altered by it. It is constantly doing this organically, but it can also be manufactured and instrumentalized like anything else. 

Macho Lattice

Of course the imperial character doesn't just emerge ready-made out of a vacuum. The frustrated and humiliated late-imperialist does have a few things right about the general character of the people that existed in the vaunted golden era of a given imperial power, and these characteristics tend to be similar across time, such as the hardiness and vigorous aggression required of the struggling founding generations to clamber their way to the top of the heap. 

The reality of such a multitude of circumstances involved in the rise of an entire empire is much more complex of course: great imperial powers tend to arise out of periods of great upheaval and constant warfare, wherein the coalescing warring powers are eventually reconciled and then centralized, out of interest of generating a longer term stability. 

But the act of gazing wistfully back into history, or looking into the future for that matter, always involves some compression, and necessarily happens in the time and place that the thinker is doing the gazing, assisted by the available tools of analysis and concerns and cultural and historic perceptions at the time, and so a whole lot is left out in the final analysis. 

As for the compression, the humiliated late-imperialist pulls from the complex flow of history a few simplified symbols, cobbling them together so as to suggest a glorious restoration to past heights. But this is a superstition comparable to their own projected contempt of the cargo cults attempting to emulate their power. 

The moment has already passed. And indeed, it was a large and unwieldy moment: no one is going to get that bull by the horns. It was a unique set of historical circumstances that led to the rise of the imperial power in question. 

And the nature of imperial power follows the basic mimetic tendencies of our strange reality. When one acts in the world, the world begins to respond in kind to oneself. The towering imperial power evokes in the Other (as a multitude, not a monolith) not only feelings of defensiveness and antagonism, but all kinds of other feelings like envy as well, which can be based on anything from the desire of power to a pragmatic need for self-protection. 

The moment that the powers of violence flowing outwards begin to weaken, the other aspiring imperial powers make their moves and consolidate their own power, overtaking the old oppressor. The flow of imperial power is by its nature unidirectional and irreversible in this way; it is the nature of the beast.  

The crisscrossing threads of history's forces tend to snap individual actors in and reinforce their trajectories. To tear out of the lattice completely is to unravel the whole thing, though this does eventually happen of its own accord, after which it begins to reconstitute itself again. 

Deprivation by Tier

The electrical suite of technologies presents a good illustration of the tiered nature of human material reality, especially when that tier is temporarily lost, such as in a power outage that lasts long enough for the effects of deprivation to set in. 

Technologies support each other and allow for higher levels of integration and expression. What is widely available and economical to use? What of the human mass that is producing it and rendering it available? The production of electricity itself is coordinated and supported by electrical infrastructures and tools and information technologies. 

That loop starts to want to close itself, and the convenience and power and joy that are afforded make one never want to go back. Besides, there are a constellation of powerful interests perpetually pushing to keep those technologies and relations in use and in place. 

And one discovers the consequences of that when the base electricity itself is cut off. At that point, one can't hear, or see. Or communicate. Or express oneself. The food begins to spoil. The air begins to revert to what is outside.

Lose it and for a moment there is panic and aggravation, jonesing and that sort of thing, but then one acclimates to a new baseline and finds other ways to fulfill one's needs. All one needs is a full belly and a little warmth and darkness to enjoy the company of one's own thoughts, which grow more vivid and sustained. 

But then the lights come back on, and the music starts up again, and oh the joy comes rushing back. 

What Endures

Contrary to the illusions put forth by the extreme energy surplus - a surplus quickly burning up alongside its illusions - of the modern area, which presents the natural world as a blank canvas to be seized upon, limited only by the imagination, the manipulation of the landscape and the built environment still resembles the flow of energy in the natural world, in that the greater, denser masses take much more energy to move and transfer, and otherwise stay put for longer intervals of time. 

A large unwieldy sentence no? But I put too much work into it, and don't have the energy to fool with it at the moment. Ha! It'll soon help illustrate my point. 

The big heavy things, especially the more difficult to manipulate - and the more rare - tend to mold and sculpt the work that takes place around them, and define what is possible, and this can introduce a vivid element of human drama itself, beyond the bare constraints it imposes. Let's take for instance a massive wooden beam that makes up a major structural element of a large building. 

A huge unbroken piece of wood, with the integrity to provide structural support, implies a very large tree that must be both handled by heavy equipment and milled by a large capable lumber mill. This takes time and a lot of effort, energy, and equipment, and there is a good chance that the entire tree is absorbed into the piece, a tree that took more time to grow and required more resources and better conditions to produce, necessarily a form of rarity, at least eventually. 

There are not just so many costs absorbed into this thing, but also a sort of awe and respect, and apprehension, that goes into the work. This thing arrives onsite, and it becomes an ordeal of its own as it is finally settled into place. A certain desperation begins to descend if there are complications with its fitting and settling: what if the size isn't right, what if it is slightly warped, or what if the joining parts of the structure aren't quite right? This isn't like botching a minor piece of lumber and going back to the stock to cut another. There aren't many substitutes or second tries, this thing must fit, and it must work well and be in good condition. 

Builders will resort to a stunning grab bag of techniques and measures to torture these pivotal elements into place: banging on them every which way, drilling, cutting, shaving, filing, compressing, what have you. They think to themselves: no way in hell are we going to get this beam back out from where it was placed. The struggle itself begins to resemble a simple struggle for survival, everything hinging on its success. 

This can come as a revelation for those newly entering a given specialized mode of labor. A system saturated with energy tends to mask the economy of labor, at least for those standing outside of the actual process itself. With more energy available, there are greater possibilities for substitution, or else there are more tools available to manipulate or transform a given state of affairs. Otherwise, for those standing outside of a given labor process - and as a consequence more distant to it - it appears as though all sorts of spectacular things come into being out of thin air, but there are still human beings bringing those things about with harrowing struggles of their own, using energies and powers ultimately finite and mutable. 

Guns

The firearm may be a good example of the usurped nature of our collective labors. For the one fortunate enough to wield the firearm out there in the wilderness, one is as a god. Any potential threat is met with terrible claps of thunder and flying objects of extreme velocity, with little to no warning. 

But the existence of even that single firearm requires an entire galaxy of mining, forging, manufacturing, research, collective labor, and historical accumulation and circumstance. 

Take away the firearm, through dysfunction, depleted ammo, loss, what have you, and one becomes like a child again, subject to the overwhelming natural forces. That is, without the appropriate skills, experience, knowledge, etc. to fall back on, and those of course require other galaxies of collective labors, accumulations, and circumstances.   

Macho

Assuming the simplistic schema of the masculine and the feminine, and the historical hand-wringing about the character of societies (usually imperial) becoming "soft" and "effeminate" and as a narrow result, weakening into a process of decline, there is something else to point out in the so-called "masculine" impulse, insofar as it is situated within a larger relation of a bounded society and its internal development. 

The macho man disavows the feminine nurturing and “babying” which is believed to soften and weaken the individual, whereas through the aggressive provocations of showing the other strength and the “right way” to do things, the virtual same effect is achieved, only on the other side of the coin. Even setting aside the forces unleashed upon the straightforward provocation of an opposing power, and simply taking into account the allied forces of the imperial man themselves, the more one becomes afraid of the macho man's sanction and disapproval, the more one’s will and drive is “weakened” and one is driven to actions which are intended to please the father figure, not actions which are “strong” or “successful” in their own right.

The key dynamic here is dependency, in which actions of a greater power produce the conditions of its own necessity, lending to the illusion that the way of the greater power is needed and essential in some absolute sense. Just as in bad gardening: one punches down the seed of some unsuitable plant merely because one wants to propagate that plant, and then to "nurture" that plant one is driven to pummel and terrorize the soil, and drive away competitors and predators and pests with herbicides and pesticides, and throw all manner of strengthening fertilizing resources at the plant to ensure that it prevails, after which one demands that the plant grow up "strong" of its own accord. 

The relationship that arises now requires constant attention and work and inputs, as the plant in question will become bitten up or wilted or diseased as soon as one turns one's back and denies it one's external energies, after the soil itself is destroyed through cycles of shock and too much nutrient. And then it doesn't take long for conditions to change and attentions to drift, or for that greater power to become absent, and then one finds one's carefully constructed environment reverted to pioneer species with their own agendas, which we so generously call "weeds." The imperial principle at work. 

Going strong for some time! As Tacitus quoted the Caledonian Calgacus on the Romans - though who knows the true origins - "where they make a desert, they call it peace."

A Form of Meditation

There is another way to conceptualize what goes on here, in this case, using the framework of Vipassana meditation. With all apologies to meditation - there are so many forms of it and it is doing so many different things, embedded of course in different traditions - there is something interesting going on worth commenting on, at least in terms of the Vipassana variety. 

I'm talking about the scanning: first, you spend time developing sensitivity in one local place, say right there at the edges of the nostrils, and when you have that, you start to detect more and more sensations, flickers here, flickers there, something like a shooting star that passes across the cheek, maybe sensations of pain in varying intensities and sizes. And then you begin to scan the whole body, watching the movement of these sensations, and soon enough, you discover that there is a constant movement and flow, which you can follow every which way. Life is going on all across the body; it is doing its thing. 

Following that flow, you come across blockages, masses of tightness and pain, and as you meditate on those masses, they begin to dissolve, and the flow is once again restored. Over time, you find that body pains are shrinking back. You're becoming calmer. More centered. 

It is not just the scanning. The activity itself is transformative: it relates with breathing and pulse and regulates them. It brings about visions and emotions and whole states of mind, which themselves feed into the scanning process. And all of this relates with a given tradition, a way of looking at the world and a way of life. 

Here, the writing is a form of scanning. And in a way many writers are doing this all the time. One starts somewhere, some point of interest, some compelling idea, and then one meditates on it, developing sensitivity for what is going on, and then following that idea and tracing its path as it is elaborated in the world. One begins to discover a continuous flow, and of course blockages, contradictions, points of pain which themselves may be growing and taking on a life of their own. 

Concerning its outer nature, one cant simply meditate enough on the writing and then see transformations in the world itself, but it is a starting point. Meditation too has its limits: one has to sit right, if one has one's leg bent back in some odd direction, or something in the real world is irritating or even piercing the skin, no amount of scanning will dissolve it, though of course a proper discipline built up can certainly change one's perception of such things, and experience of them, and ultimately how one addresses those things. 

This discipline ultimately fits into a larger framework: one has to see to one's environment, one's diet, one's habits, one's company, and etc. so that the discipline itself can work, and then the discipline in turn works on those outer things. And what one sees and experiences has to then be reconciled with how one lives and moves in the world. 

The writing does show you things, both as reader and as one is doing the writing itself. A certain kind of truth is revealed, in accordance with one's nature and one's efforts, and that truth then has to be reconciled with the outer world. Say, one meditates again and again on the nature of our world industrial society, and its relation to the earth, and then, oh shit, something must be done! Something has to change, beginning locally with oneself, hopefully. 

It is of course possible to become lost. It is possible to entertain bad ideas and then be swept away by those bad ideas, just as it is possible to engage in bad meditation practice with a misunderstanding of its nature and its relation to the world. 

An orienteering compass may have all sorts of useful markings, and it may point reliably north, but without an understanding of that tool and its relation to maps and its use in the world itself, without the skill to make use of it to the best of its ability, one can simply reliably walk north further away from where one needs to be. One can always indefinitely walk north and eventually get to the north pole (and even this is a simplification as the magnetic pole moves), but there is only so much time and energy; one has to live in the world as one is. 

Long Violence

Common to immediate violence is the disassembly or disorganization of a lesser organized power by a competing organized power. It is a sort of displacement in which something takes more space and energy from something else different from it. 

There is a longer violence though which situates these instances of more immediate and kinetic forms of violence and gives shape to them. 

Modern violence - at least at greater scales - is of a certain nature, it is such that there is a constant grinding and threshing of the structural elements of the system itself, so that in our case individuals are constantly rended apart as they are forced away amidst violent expansions, contractions, and the ensuing directional movements of capital and labor, where they resettle and re-develop deeper connections over time, after which they are rended apart again, and with each rending these relations scar and eventually begin to break down, not only in the course of a life, but over the course of successive generations as communities develop new rhythms to cope with external conditions.

These processes are geographically and temporally uneven, and so there are eventual immediate displacements by those powers which are the first to develop the means to navigate and benefit from the surrounding conditions conducive to them, which shaped as they are by the forces of long violence, come up against difference in development and form, and so they overcome and disorganize those differences into more common basic elements and incorporate those elements into themselves.  

The vanquishing of a foe, as spectacular an event as that may be, is one of many ultimately fatal distractions, as the opening up of space for a given organized body to expand allows that body to burst forth, no longer benefiting from external stimulation and constraint, at which point the violence it had been doing to itself to expand in the first place becomes more dominant. 

Death by Virus

This extended disaster in peacetime - at least, a peacetime relative to the total war period of the 20th century world wars - resembles less the massive grinding collision of multiple great powers, and more the cascading shutdown of a single body failing. We can talk about the virus, in some cases as a spectacular event in itself, and in other cases as a trigger to others such as the long derailing train that is the supply chain crisis.

There are still parts of the world - one could say the edges of the periphery - in which people are accustomed to the rhythmic retributive cycles of violence which indeed have been going on for quite some time, very old forms of violence, like the grinding together of ancient tectonic plates of difference in motion (thanks to Gary Brecher for that image). 

In the imperial core, save for some truly desolate and desperate quarters where violence like this can occur sporadically on a more localized level, or else where the violence is professionalized and sanitized as some sort of form of maintenance, it takes larger-scale, impersonal processes that can be hand-waved and gaslighted away as they cull through steady corrosion, like the spread of the virus, hunger, exposure, opioid, extreme poverty and stress, and so on. 

We do seem to be moving back into an era of more conventional warfare. But the modern doctor can keep the patient alive for quite a while. 

Lifeline

Consider the growing anxieties surrounding the smart phone and the increasing life functions packed into the technology, or else the more general collective reliance on Internet technologies. The constant spatial expansion and movement of our social production, and the constant acceleration of the speed of those things, induces an intense need for technologies to bridge those growing gaps. And at the same time as more economic activity is migrated onto those channels, or otherwise makes critical use of them, the physical institutions, techniques, and traditions that people rely on daily diminish and atrophy, at least on a collective level. And then at the same time, the growing and concentrating monopolies accelerate this transfer, and destroy the many smaller pockets of resistance, and then of course the pandemic only further amplifies this trend. Of course there is an anxiety around the continuing availability and function of a smart phone or personal computer.  

Speak for the Trees

The downside to the subjugation of nature gets less abstract the closer you get to it spatially and materially. I mean who doesn't appreciate the plentiful availability of cheap timber goods? Wood is both beautiful and useful. But then visit a clear-cut, and you can sense that some terrible crime has happened there, at least to those sensitive and receptive to such things. 

And if the clear-cut is in the midst of a healthy forest, and one surveys the trees still living at the border between regions, there is an intense sadness and despondency in their standing. They are the closest to the site of the massacre. It is not just that they are suddenly radiated with more sunlight, wind, and heat than they are used to, and that they are drying out, but also that there seems to be a sense that they are bitterly unhappy. 

We do need tools and habitations, just as we need to eat, and these things can be carried out just fine without razing whole forests, or sending multitudes of tortured animals to their doom. And let's be clear, these activities have very real effects on the people tasked with carrying them out daily as well, and the people witnessing and managing them. 

But then you increase the growth and intensity of the human element and its multitude of needs, and you address those needs with a certain form of socioeconomic organization at a certain point of history and then these atrocities just become more frequent, until they are part of a daily rhythm of our collective reproduction.  

On Guilt

Of course we know from historical observation that the guilt is very difficult to disperse; really it just shifts into some new ideological form over time, though the old forms are still very much with us, such as the guilt surrounding sex and physical pleasure. And I suspect that some century or two into the future - assuming the constancy of our current perception - the guilt will largely take the form of a horror and loathing and envy of class-based material power and efficacy, given the profoundly economic nature of both our late civilization and its crises. 

Coming Back Around Again

With each new turn of the centrifuge, this cascade of crises is intensified: capital jacks up and then detonates its financial bubble, and then through the falling rubble moves to consolidate and grow itself further, destroying its own supply chains and demand, immiserating and fragmenting its own field of operation, allowing for rapid spread of the virus, making life that much more prickly, driving everyone underground or out above ground and raving, and so then it further consolidates and grows, immiserating and fragmenting its field of operation. 

And the muscle contracts around the broken bone, multiplying the pain and loss of mobility. But then of course the bone is broken.  

Spark

The spark metaphor comes up plenty for good reason. Just consider fire-starting: a tiny and intense pinpoint of energy which can very quickly expand the conditions of its own reproduction if surrounding conditions are right. Fuel, oxygen, heat, the movement of said things through time and space with the right intensity. 

Alteration

I used to enjoy writing after a few beers. Of course, the intensity and the quality of that state of consciousness would change as the actual metabolic process was underway. Now in tandem with drinking I've largely shifted to activities such as music, media enjoyment, wood carving, or just conversation or observing nature, oftentimes after intense work. Light tobacco use can be combined nicely with some of these activities.   

For the contemplative activities, say reading and writing or listening to or watching something intellectually stimulating, tea seems to work better.

For a lot of spiritual pursuits, stone sobriety does the trick, as these states tend to induce an alteration of their own that is all the more potent the less interference there is, though one can often combine physical and metabolic effects such as diet changes or maintenance, light fasting, cleansing, listening to tones or drones, smelling incense or burning sage, and etc. 

In the matter of using the body's own faculties of alteration, exercise can provide some powerful altering effects, especially in combination with environment. A rigorous hike in view of a mountain range can induce a profound sense of heightened awareness for example: it seems through the flowing oxygen and endorphins one is opened up further to natural beauty. I could go on. 

Part of the point here, is that there are many ways one can make use of one's own body in combination with a whole variety of activities, pursuits, and external material and non-material influences to profoundly alter perceptions and experiences, and much of this is further dictated by lifestyle, intensity of activity and ingestions, and the cultural and social forms in which those things appear. 

Curious that certain of types of these forms - such as the uptake of a given plant material - are called "intoxications" whereas others can simply be referred to as "purifications" or "medicines" or "therapies" or what have you. 

There is a further instrumental usefulness for the individual or a tradition to making these distinctions of course, but a lot of these distinctions are also passively received as a given society's "code, which itself can induce certain pressures to either encourage or dampen an activity. 

Seasonal Movement

Jeez almost a month has passed already before I could get back on this thing.  

In the heat of the summer, everything was constantly growing and there was constant movement. The campsite we were running was constantly booked. There was constantly something that needed doing, or else we were outside as long as the sun was up. 

But now the cold and the wet and the dark are descending, and though that should offer plenty reason to get back writing, it keeps escaping me. It could be because the Long Covid has come back, either as a seasonal phenomenon or as residue from that evil ghost Delta passing through, which is entirely possible. But it ain't tellin. 

Hard mornings breathless and faint, and my mind just goes away, along with the old passions. It would be freshly frightening and discouraging if I still cared, but the caring is gone too, at least for that. Just have to keep moving now. 

Plenty of heavy stuff to write; I'm taking notes at least. Soon enough I'll have some more time, and hopefully the thoughts and stirrings come back with it.  

Put It Back Together

Things continue towards fragmentation, so the vast intensity of the work to be done is in the way of re-binding, of the the kind of work roughly described in the old notion of that ancient term religare.

I Think Therefore I Am

This isn't a new observation in the modern world by any means, but it is funny how much thought and work has to be put in to apprehend what simply is, and then to simply be in accordance with it. 

Which Way Did It Go

Constant oscillation is hard on memory. Which wave and peak were those, where were they in relation to each other? How high was that one and how low was that other one? What caused what and when? One must go deeper, to the root of where the oscillations come from.  

Modern Perpetuation

Survival can be reducible to the maintenance of competency in a number of spheres required to maintain an energetic and environmental equilibrium in one's given mode of living. In a wilderness survival story this process is easy enough to understand, but it also applies powerfully in the modern built environment as well. One must maintain good hygiene, nutrition, manner of speaking, technological competency, critical professional and civil relationships, and all the rest to maintain one's place in a given economic class and regional placement. This is all a lot of work, and powerfully determines one's thoughts and longer term climate of personal and spiritual experience. 

Hold On

As a living thing connected to the various processes of disintegration, it takes a relentless and muscular application of realism and inquiry to keep abreast of the actual process of being, being connected to a social multitude trapped within unfulfilled cycles of the grief cycle, lingering in collective stages of denial and bargaining, as it were. 

Multilevel Movement

It is when one begins to move between the planes that one begins to grasp the character and the interconnection and interaction between each individual plane. Say, when one moves from the spiritual plane into the ideal and then into the material, if one is interested into putting into action the deepest stirrings in one's being, so to speak. A cliche perhaps, but one that exists for good reason, which is descriptive enough to be useful in reflection.

Let's do that. Reconciling the interactions of those planes in the midst of one's own trajectory, one sees how they fit together and work together - or don't. This age of disintegration, however long and protracted its wavelengths, reveals enough as one navigates the planes in an attempt to traverse it as a living and local thing. 

For the modern individual that can afford it, the choice region to linger in is a sort of purgatory in the plane of the ideal, rearranging various symbols and ideas into different pleasing configurations which might temporarily allow for various forms of material relief organized and frozen against ever growing chaos and dysfunction, relief that may in turn offer a temporary spiritual huff of feeling good. The ideal itself may be able to afford several revolutions of material breakdown before degrading itself, staving off more profound change. 

But the very reason for all that agitated fidgeting is a deeper spiritual sense that something is terribly wrong and must change. After all, the spiritual realm, owing to its global profundity and reach, is more difficult to keep free from contaminating unpleasantries. Deepening alienation and despondency reach out to growing material chaos, seeking articulation through the ideal, almost as if to establish a current.  

I'd like to note on the side that it isn't that I've somehow discovered the secret mechanism with which the planes interact; this is only a provisional metaphor useful for teasing out various interactions and thinking about them. It may come time for a revision in short order. 

Anyway, one may discover truth, but then where to go from there? Within a given plane itself, contrast serves to direct movement as well. If one exists in a state of spiritual discomfort or even agony and then experiences a state of ecstasy, well then, where did that come from, and how to sustain it? One is cold, and vaguely feels something warm in the distance and moves to it, and so on. Now one has a direction!

But not so fast. Material labors take increasingly intensive ideologically and spiritually backed energies to sustain their paths of development. The archetypal movement from city to farm to live a simpler life may contain a lovely image, and it may come complete with several successful embodiments to shore it up, but such an image is also replete with a stream of rotting lumber piles, sharpened and unused tools, weed-infested plots, and generally failed and bankrupted operations tell another story. 

Building one's own habitation, growing and hunting one's own food, staying warm, dry, and clean, these things take much time, energy, and dedication, even more so if coming from another way of living. One has to really believe and feel it in the bones to stay motivated to put in the time and energy to move the needle and transform one's locality, and then like a fire that gets going, gives off a warming spiritual nourishment of its own which sustains the effort. 

There are ways to live between worlds, but increasingly we move toward nothing less than a revolution and harmonization of one's connected living processes. The monastery for example, organized around the sustained experience of enlightenment and spiritual peace, has to it a careful restructuring of every facet of living, buttressed against the distracting and fragmenting influences of materialistic luxury, with overhauls of food, dress, grooming, social interaction, mental and physical activity, habitation, and etc. to facilitate meditation and introspection.  

But till then? To maintain a violent abomination of our collective living regime, it takes the application of violence itself to provide the continuing motivation to continue development or even maintain the present state of society. It is the multitude of whips and sticks, whether sharp and harsh or soft and gentle, which through soft annual tax collection, regional zoning and law, and harder threats of prison, starvation, homelessness, and death that are all too motivating, at least until the complex of industrial living processes undergirding those instruments of maintenance threatens to fall down around one's ears itself. 

Threats of death and dispossession are reason enough to stay relatively miserable for many, at least until those threats are made empty by the universalization and inevitability of those very threats that one is ostensibly moving away from. 

Cause and Effect

We're smart enough to get very good at making change after change in a chain, no matter if those changes are accumulating run away effects that disperse and then concentrate outward beyond the reach of our perception. 

Brief on Power

What makes the personification of imperial power so abominable is that you get this localization of the numerous forces holding together an incredibly fragmentary and contradictory unity, as imperial power derives its greatness and potency from the reach of its spread and intake. Any who step forward to marshal that power - no matter the values held - must then take that form. But that doesn't have to be the only form that power takes. 

The Craft

Fluency is a magical emergent quality that often comes with the constant stacking of numerous smaller mechanical masteries, a necessary but not sufficient component of the whole process of course.  

Moment of Truth

As the pandemic was first coming on, I do remember the widespread shock in reaction to the conduct of the ruling elite and their administrative efforts, the ongoing revelations of motives and interests, etc. as they moved to address the pandemic in their own way.  

But to borrow from Aristotle's virtue ethics, if you're lying and producing finer PR, if you're monopolizing and financializing, if you're sweeping serious political and economic problems under the rug and praying that they go away, and spending all of your time and energy sharpening those other similar tools, and then your mettle is tested, well, then what else do you do?

Energy and Separation

Interestingly enough, one of the prime directives in permaculture is the “recombining” and “re-densifying” of the living field. These are in quotes because I’m just using the terms loosely to describe what people like Bill Mollison have talked about. The permaculture practitioners have their own manner of speaking. Nevertheless, these directives reveal much on their own merits.  

To put it negatively, one of the core critical insights in the permaculture discipline is that the separation of the productive elements interrupts their interrelated flows of consumption and production, producing a two-sided pathology in which additional inputs of work and energy need to be “imported” into the system as the separated producers are deprived of their local and mutual energy inputs, and at the same time, the waste outputs have nowhere to go to be consumed in turn, necessitating their buildup and stockpiling and the need for their “disposal,” or else they simply persist and pollute. 

What you see in a lot of living things is a dense concentration of stable, perennial energy which then branches outward with the changing seasons and availability of solar radiation and other forms of energy – in trees and woody bushes for example – growing ever more feathery and fine in the form of branches and leaves as it reaches its spatial and temporal extremes, before dying back and beginning the cycle again. There is a spatial relationship in the movement of energy in living things: the more spread out a given living system, the more energy it takes to move energy to the various extremities, or to put it another way, the more energy is lost in the production of energy. 

And then you put all of those living things in relation to each other in an ecosystem, and those ecosystems that persist tend to become bound up into closed circuits in which products, waste products, and the producing organisms themselves are immediately incorporated into the consumption of other local producers, who themselves are providing the materials and wastes for the consumption of others in a webbed chain, sustaining ultimately their own energy sources and the indirect regulation of their own wastes. The density and proximity of the energy exchanges allow for greater layers of complexity, diversity, and activity of living systems, as there is more energy freed up for play.

For the current mode of industrial civilization, the reverse is the case. Consider in this case our tendency to perennial separation and expansion of the productive centers – albeit with its share of busts – in which the spatial separations are perpetually augmented at an increasing scale and at a varying rate of acceleration, necessitating an accompanying increase in energy usage (extra work) and an accumulation of waste product which has to be moved around, stockpiled and neutralized through the passage of time, or transformed through additional energy transfers (still extra work), all of which interact dialectically to ratchet up various energetic antagonisms until they are brought to an explosive head, affording an eventual depression and plummet to baseline, from which the ratchet begins anew to return to its ascent. 

This can be illustrated by the path of development of urban centers and their suburban satellites, which increasingly separated from the soil, must be sectioned out spatially and then interrelated with zones of pure food and energy production, such as commercial farms which separate the food crops from each other, necessitating also their separation from local wildlife like birds, rodents and deer, and weeds, which are perpetually destroyed and excluded, all of which require increasing amounts of energy inputs to smooth out the turbulence caused by such disruptions, and the movement and processing of the produced wastes.

Harder material realities like infrastructure, figuring in subcategories like energy and transportation, persist for long periods of time, and so the shorter frequency deficits that are created in that cleft between increasing energy and work requirements and declining quality and return in energy sources, have to be made up with ever finer modes of separation and differentiation, accelerating distancing and the burning up of energy. At some point, we decided that we came too far to go back, and the prevailing currency became debt and deceit. 

Of course everything does eventually die, and a civilization is a little more difficult to encapsulate and analyze than a tree for example, though even trees have their mysteries. 

Though we do admire the local flora and fauna and the ecosystems that they make up, we more closely resemble the explosions and eruptions and storms that we flee from fear in – and perhaps regard with awe, an important phenomenological component.

What we can offer is a spectacular vision, a pleasing flash before and through detonation, much like the gorgeous wildflower blooms over the past years which indicated abnormal and overactive water and nutrient flows, or the fluorescent coral colors indicating their final moments before bleaching, spectacular phenomena which attract pilgrimages, often brought forth with caravans of fossil fuel-powered vehicles. A doom which is nevertheless beautiful in its own way.

Stay Still

Stay still for long enough and you can begin to witness the unfolding life field right before you, which is less perturbed by the turbulence of nervous motion. 

What's Going On Here

Every couple of months or so I like to reformulate the spirit of the basic project I have going here. It is mostly for me and for representing my efforts to myself to keep on track, but it also certainly fits in with the material here and informs its meaning and its direction. 

There is an attempt at truthfulness here, at least as much as is possible with the sort of perspective I have to articulate. When you start to pull back far enough, and you attempt to see as much of the picture as possible, all of the particulars and details do get a bit blurry. 

But if you spend enough time out there, and are constantly refining a working understanding of the greater movements, then you can work your way again to the particulars and hopefully get a lot of it right, if the model you've formulated is any good. And a lot of the motivation for doing it this particular way, and being interested in this sort of thing, is quite spiritual and personal. 

I try to constantly remind myself that I'm full of shit. All of the concerns here, and the methods of expressing those concerns reflect my own values and the trajectory of my own life. How you live on the ground goes quite a long way towards shaping what sorts of forms you are throwing up into the air. 

What do you experience? What do you have time for? What interests you and what do you study? What matters and energies are passing through your body and your mind? These are things you have to reconcile with the sorts of contemplations and articulations and models you're putting together to communicate these things.    

And of course it can't be done alone. I have a whole constellation of fellow travelers whose own articulations and journeys are consonant with my own, and so those articulations are constantly influencing my own, and are constantly compared with and triangulated upon. 

What you end up building has to communicate with the surrounding reality in some way. The house must rest on its foundation, and accept the passing waters and winds and incorporate them into its internal life. And the built up thought is not only engaged with by others, but must guide and inform as reality happens, and that process too is the reality. 

So the totality of this process is the reality. Thought, as it is formulated by the combinations of past thought and techniques, history, personal experience and being, edification with the agreements of others' thoughts, and so on, becomes ever more real and stable as it agrees with the world and encourages one to live well in that world.

What's happening? What's happening to others as well? What are we all interested in and where are we going? Do the thoughts anticipate this and represent this? Do the others agree? Then the thoughts can stay for now. And soon enough, things will change again, and the thoughts will change, and the unities will separate and disintegrate until they have to become something else entirely. 

Caught Out in the Heat

Just about definitionally, living systems are the movement of energy, more or less in response to the perpetual circulation of energy in the universe. Where there is less available energy, living things can move to better preserve their internal energy levels, whereas where there is too much energy, living things can move to disperse that energy or avoid its spillover into their internals. 

This becomes more difficult the faster the energy moves. This principle is quite vivid in the movement of the slugs, especially this season, where with the sudden inundation of wet weather and rainfall, slug populations exploded and expanded outward. At a certain point they were everywhere, cruising merrily along the moist grasses and soil, nibbling on the preponderance of fresh vegetation. 

And then just as suddenly, an abnormal heat wave came on and the searing sun caught many of the slugs in their tracks: you could see their fresh slime trails leading to their desiccated corpses. They were caught out of cover as the heat came on too quick, drying out in the sun. Sheared by those gaps opened up by energy and matter moving too much too soon. 

And in the Pacific Northwest, where people are not as used to higher temperatures, they are caught out in infrastructure and hung up in local and cultural techniques deficient in dealing with higher heat. And then there are the drownings in the rivers swelling with the previous rains and melting glaciers and snowpack. 

Going to Market

Many forms of market activity have an intrinsic stimulation on the sense of self. To bring something to market for trade, it is necessary to separate that thing from its context and remove it some distance from its point of genesis. To do that effectively, especially scaling up and at greater intensity, it is necessary to have a well-developed sense of self and a propensity for localizing personal advantage. Market activity intensifies this particular state of consciousness, and through its ubiquitous existence, initiates the multitudes brought up into its activity. And then of course, it was the evolving cultures of the developing self that produced the market activity in the first place.   

Domestication

Part of the odd dilemma that domestication poses is that you have to be simultaneously close and not close to your resource animals. With hunting, you can drop into some distant habitat, pick out a target which is still somewhat anonymous, and then make your kill and the animal instantly becomes meat as it is taken apart. The animal makes the switch from a revered object at a distance to a closer and more intimate resource such as food, shelter, and clothing, which also can still be revered in its own way.  

What many farmers have to do with the animals that they live with and kill for food - and even taking resources like milk and eggs requires some degree of exploitation and accompanying mental distance - is avoid naming individuals and dwelling too much on the individuality and personality of any given animal, keeping the animals in the sort of mystery of the wilderness as is seen with the hunted, but up close, compartmentalized away as not-quite-living things which are more like simple walking resources.

With milk animals and egg-layers, one may spend too much time with the individual animals and it becomes harder to eventually butcher the animal, though it is certainly done all the time in many culturally determined ways.  

Transition Season

Up in the Pacific Northwest during Spring and early Summer the clouds break and the sun is hot against the face, though as soon as the cloud cover grows again it grows cold quickly, as there has not been enough accumulated heat poured into the region to affect lasting change on the ambient temperature. Summer as we know it then is the concentration of heat. 

Water and Slug

The slugs, being so sensitive to moisture and which quickly dry out in the sun, accordingly have populations expand and contract with the movement of water and the intensity of light and heat throughout the seasons. The rains come and go and suddenly they are everywhere, and then as it dries, they shrink back to the shadows and the fleeting pockets of moisture. They move almost in concert with the water. 

Refuge

This is true in many ways, but the temperate rainforest gives quite a vivid and immediate illustration of this issue because of the density of living systems there. "Living system" is quite a loaded concept here, I know, as everything is alive! But I'll try to build something nice-looking and interesting real quick before sweeping it all off of the table again. 

Enduring resource piles one accumulates outside will quickly fill up with various forms of wildlife seeking refuge. Say, a pile of rocks, or a stack of lumber, will soon be filled with all manner of insects, reptiles, rodents, snakes, and the like if they sit for any kind of time. And then when one goes to retrieve those resources, all of those creatures are evicted in turn, fleeing in fear. The creatures are born in population waves with the seasons and environmental change, born on the run and seeking out energy and fleeting comfort, only to be agitated forth by some new disturbance. Like us too, no doubt. 

For that matter, one has to make the habitation airtight, as every insect and rodent will eagerly seek out the warmth and food inside the enclosed space, which many of us moderns are loathe to share with said cohabitants. And anyway, they have different interests. Insulation, wiring, food stores, and all the like can quickly be destroyed. 

A terrible sense of responsibility begins to emerge.

Bad Connections

Mechanically, when we are talking in terms of people relations, failure is easier to own and learn from if that failure comes from the individual's own efforts. If someone is forced into failure by another, for instance, or one fails and then the effects of that failure are magnified by the mockery or suffering of others, it tends to build greater resent, frustration, and/or social pressure. 

It is often the difference between "how can I do it better" and "so and so thinks this of me" or "I failed so and so." Of course, frustration and social pressure aren't necessarily negative or bad things, as is the case in competition. But when we have whole dense populations of people perpetually on the "losing" end, at least to the collective perception, but also in material terms, then that pressure can only build with no internal relief or outlet, and then we have a problem. 

If you have a society as dense and interdependent as ours, it has to be the case that that multitude of connections is allowed to "breathe" and "move."

And to put it in a more vertical sense, if you are building towers that stretch high into the sky, you better make damn well sure those foundations are quite strong, especially if you plan on spending a lot of time at the top. 

Sounding the Alarm

It is easy enough to become absorbed in the mechanics of a specific sort of crisis, and then one starts to sound like a crank, making various foreboding predictions that may or may not come true, and then pow, something we weren't thinking about - well perhaps some were, whose voices were drowned out - comes in with its haymaker out of the blue. But hey, let's not forget that this haymaker did indeed emerge, and they seem to be emerging one after the other at a quickening pace. What is important to continuously pin down and then illustrate is the general dynamic underpinning the various crises. For example, one looks at the behavior of the political and economic establishments and thinks, well they're just lying, they're not to be trusted, and they have no interest in the wellbeing of their subjects. One doesn't have to write a doctorate thesis - though it can certainly be welcome and useful - on the fine mechanics of this state of affairs and describe exactly how it will play out to provide convincing and useful analysis of what to expect in general. After that work is done, then there is the issue of: welp, they're not going to come help, and they will probably actively make your life worse, so what can be done with the resources you have to act on the general knowledge that things are going to continue to get worse and what in the world can be done about it? 

I Don't Like This

The so-called labor shortage marks a fascinating collective change in consciousness in the body politic itself. The argument is that a large portion of labor is still living on the proceeds of pandemic aid - which lets be clear, was paltry in the US - and now there aren't enough people looking to return to low wage, higher risk jobs, as there is still consternation about whether the pandemic is over, and for good reasons of their own. This is a simplified version what's happening of course, but you do see various forms of the argument coming up frequently with much hand wringing. 

Here we have decades of attrition and processes of runaway economic warfare and disintegration, which helped produce the pandemic and its general effects in the first place, which, included within are the collective responses to that crisis, which produced subsequent crises of their own. And now, after this massive traumatic event, many are struck on the individual level with a deeply personal and emotional notion that all this is bullshit, something is terribly wrong. In so many words, "I don't want to do this anymore" about sums it up. The reactionaries once again seek out the whip of hunger: remove the unemployment bennies! And labor digs in its heels, and the wheels of commerce wobble and shudder under the building friction.  

Fraud Unleashed

The corollary to widespread fraud is the stacking up of conditions that make it possible for that fraud to run away on its own momentum. Regarding autopsies on the 2008 financial crisis for example, what was really fascinating was the accumulation of systemic changes whose effects all had a sort of harmony of dissonance, so to speak, which aligned perverse incentives which in turn allowed a general drive in a large portion of the population to sustain the fraud itself. We can take together the historic re-consolidation of capital and finance capital in particular, the rightward legal, economic, and PR shifts and the political fruit of those labors, the changes in corporate governance, the dearth of wage and the need for cheap credit and the accompanying vulnerability to scam, the concentration of wealth and the dynamics behind that, the very nature of the operation of the market and capital, with its growing and culminating ideological emphasis on being "free," and so on. And then the specific innovations in the finance sector itself, and innovations in the form and processes of the scams which made use of those innovations. And then of course all of these processes were connected to each other and influenced each other, affecting and being affected by changes in the culture and in the composition of the world system, to produce a perfect storm, an enormous bubble of fictional wealth which then proceeded to unravel, itself in accordance with a human nature built up over thousands upon thousands (and beyond) of years of evolution. And this spectacular and highly visible crisis itself set forces and changes in motion, through its own massive displacing momentum.  

Where Are We

There is light and sound in the answers, and it can be quite stimulating and comforting, and a good place for building. But a question is a movement, and if you keep asking, you keep moving, out further and further to where there is less activity, less is established, and it gets darker and quieter, and more fundamental questions must be posed, and more fundamental answers must be put in place to touch down and get grounded. Unsettling maybe, but a good place to go for creation. 

Fraud

Because I see it come up again and again and again in virtually every sphere, I want to keep an eye on this notion of fraud and attempt to generalize this as an overall decoupling of image from reality. An image is always an entity distinct from the object it is representing, but in a healthy relationship between the two there is an open pathway of communication in which the two influence each other and respond to each other, suggesting that some sort of end is coming when the two are separated far enough to be severed and made discontinuous from each other. Plato's curious notion that "nature is carved at the joints" comes to mind, and thus something is ultimately getting butchered.

Again and again and again we see it, with depressing regularity. The manufacturing of goods, for example, which more and more resembles a perpetual movement of trash, trash which may have some ephemeral utility, designed more to part consumers from their social resources in the form of value, money, than to fulfill a living function. Soon the good breaks or unravels, or otherwise poisons and harms on its way out to the trash heap or down the drain or toilet. The contracting value in the goods themselves is hidden through the complexity of number and opaque packaging, and the distance of the goods' manufacture from the general public. 

The manufacturing and distribution of capital and allocation of resources via the financial sphere is another sphere, in which the complex economic, accounting, and legal rationales for the flow of resources are weaponized in service to hoarding and swindle. Warmaking, conquest, and global trade are other spheres, in which the imperium and hegemonic powers live off of the accumulated spoils of past victory while the instruments themselves atrophy, which can be hidden so long as the strong continue to prey on the weak. 

Or what of energy, and the sad scraping of the bottom of the oil barrel as the barrel itself becomes molten, and the concealing of the scraping and a hand-waving away of the superheating air? And the attendant vaporizing of dreams of alternatives as they are tested out as they themselves emerge and then sublimate?

Justice. Political organization. Academia. And so on can all be broken down and analyzed in this manner. All ruled and dominated by fraud and predation, a simultaneous and widespread cannibalization and disintegration in which the parts cease to become a whole and are sectioned and then consumed and/or rot. 

The social process itself begins in the vulnerable sectors of the population, say in marginalized groups, lower classes, disfavored ideological and political sectors, and so on, which allow for both the individual and social leverage to inflict harm on sectors targeted for destruction. But the process then spreads and generalizes as the predatory element gains steam and requires more fuel. 

In the abstract, there is a general separation of a functioning unity in which the bifurcated parts are mutually destroyed in their separation. The image which guides and animates the entity navigating reality is eventually shattered and bitterly discarded, and the reality of the navigating entity itself falls to pieces, to be subsequently reconstituted.

Fraud then emerges in reality as the ending of something, an emergence that is not necessarily an alien invasion, but integral to that something, a paradoxically true expression of the nature of that something as it ends, as if that something was being turned inside out. 

Capital can be made to work again! If only the financial chicanery could be cut out! Just like they talked about 70+ years ago. But we're out of time. 

I'll Trade Ya

We're very quickly moving away from the logic of capital, but there is a desperate attempt to adhere to its basic ritualistic actions. The consolidation of the various giant monopolies and their ruthless exploitation of resource and individual alike, and their shameless maneuverings for advantage amidst a global pandemic are a case in point. The vaccine hoarding too, and hostile clutching of intellectual properties without even bothering to negotiate the transfer of technologies and recipes for even paying customers, are indications of a profound shift in the world system, yet the basic operations of equal trade are desperately pointed to for the continued legitimation of such arrangements. 

Of course this sort of double-talk has always been a core feature of the industrialized empires, but the contradictions do seem to intensify amidst crisis and breakdown. 

Programming

I'd like to touch on this stuff more in depth at another time, but for now, a couple of thoughts. 

Part of the management of civilized society consists of the skilled shaping and manipulation of the various public opinions. There is a paranoid vision that such manipulative propaganda is a sort of malevolent and targeted project of brainwashing, whereas the reality of the phenomenon is closer to that of competing factions and interests locked in constant struggle to move the needle on public opinion and cultural benchmark, and ideally, the material Titanic is perhaps pushed a little further in the desired direction of whatever dominant faction has the reigns in hand.

Nevertheless, a softer form of the paranoid vision holds true: we’ve long since discovered through the dark arts of marketing and PR - and then deeper into more clandestine techniques and powers - that the collective and individual emotional base can be switched and persuaded in various directions with imagery and the manipulation of chains of symbols which elicit the desired response, much like one programs a computer through provisional symbolic languages, which set various lower operations in motion - say through electrical patterns and the operations of machinery - to achieve a variety of desired outcomes.

There is an underlying collective architecture that can be appealed to and then directed in a certain way, though of course the perpetual manipulation of this architecture eventually produces distortions that can build on each other, and even crash against other social, economic, and political tensions.

This becomes even more troubling when the soft manipulation of public opinion is required to steer a volatile body politic through a serious of escalating crises. The composition and behavior of the body itself, which grows increasingly violent and unstable as its own entity, becomes part of the crisis itself.

Today the violent flipping of the “on/off” or “good/bad” binary is a serious problem in and of itself, which produces a corresponding fear of the flip and an attendant attempt to further mitigate through finer and more refined propaganda, which does eventually backfire, destroying trust, increasing paranoia, and producing more positive feedback and pushing the entire dialectic to greater extremes.

Witness the constant churning of competing mutually exclusive points of opinion in the public space, and the fumbled attempts to navigate this churn with mealy-mouthed political pronouncements, half-truths, and dodges to attempt to construct and reconstruct a navigating image that is often at odds with the turbulent reality on the ground.  

One good example to point to in this respect is the vaccination debacle. In an ideal scenario, one could imagine a healthy and secure populace more than willing to weigh out the risks and benefits, clearly laid before them, and through measured reflection, choose the course of action best for themselves and the greater community. Instead, one expects hostility and through motivated reasoning pitches the vaccine as the way and minimizes any associated risks, thus betraying trust and further arousing suspicion when problems occur, no matter if the vaccine is a reasonable and effective measure to take anyway. 

Instability increases, and the fear grows, and the need for control grows with it, thus alienating and provoking the living field one is attempting to control. Rinse and repeat. There are plenty of possible implications and elaborations on this phenomena, which I'd like to get to at another time. 

Coming Up for Air

I do like it out here in the forest. The tighter day cycles, the feeling of being closer to the ground and grounded. But as I’ve expressed before, the denseness of social connectivity does leave its imprint, and it becomes like an appendage, or function. One breathes in feedback and breathes out feedback in the social space. Longer and longer out here, away from the connections, one feels the chest tighten, and the heart begins to beat faster. The need to take a breath begins to burn. There is a sort of death when you move past this point, and you become something else.

All of that, and the constant fight against the strong undertows of decaying capital and daily exertion. I know I’m a bit delinquent on several threads I’ve been developing over the past few months, the most pressing of which concerns the built environment and uncertainty. But as usual I’ll try to put out what I have when I have the energy and the will, and the moments to come up for air and pass something or other out the blowhole.

On and Off

Weeks of digging dirt, shoveling gravel, and splitting and hauling firewood, really start to catch up with you physically and even mentally. By all means, it is essential stuff, but then as the body recoups and rebuilds itself, the active mind is muted and dulled. One thinks and instead of producing forth thoughts, there is a dull and vague mass that sits and hums where the content should be. But here rest and sustenance is appropriate, it will be back in good time, so long as one continues the regular exertions and keeps the psychic muscle defined so to speak. Plenty of ideas bouncing around to be expressed, but the actual expressing, well I've had to punt a lot of that as of late in favor of a number of material projects and social obligations that beckon. 

For those reading, such chaotic patterns of writing productivity could be somewhat frustrating, at least from my own speculation of the outside looking in. Kudos to those writers and outlets keeping a regular schedule, whose dependable works are a great comfort and source of daily stimulation, perhaps to be coupled with breakfast and tea, in my case at least. 

But from the inside on my end, and in relation to my own work, all of the chaotic expressions and intermittent utterances make perfect sense: work where it is necessary and effective to work and do good work, whatever the form that may take, whenever the means and the energy are available, in accordance with the structure of one's life activity. I chose some of it, but a lot of it also chose me. 

One has to make a number of carefully considered choices and compromises in the face of a voracious and exploitative society that, contrary to the loudly proclaimed individualist aesthetic, is wholly uninterested in the flourishing of the individual, outside of that individual's energetic and battery-like contribution to the engines of perpetual accumulation. There is a constant churning tide that one has to struggle against, to live with some sort of idiosyncratic and local satisfaction that exists apart from the cheap, half-hearted, and manipulative approval of one's managerial "superiors," depending on how deeply situated one's assorted appendages are in the so-called "rat race," which is difficult to leave entirely, but with some effort and surplus exertion, can be pulled away from far enough to afford a breath of fresh air or two. 

Enough of the vague rambling for now. Maybe there will be a time to elaborate on some of the stray thoughts expressed here. After all, I do believe that the fruits will be good when they come, and that the work here is indeed worthwhile, or I wouldn't be continually coming back.    

Endure

You can really feel it in the production of infrastructure and to a lesser extent in the production of tools and equipment: the really dense and heavy stuff, meant to persist, takes incredible energy and work to manipulate. Moving the heavy stone, shoveling gravel, moving dirt, manipulating steel, iron, and lumber -  in these activities the energy transferred from the body is easy enough to detect. One makes enormous exertions, and then as soon as one comes to rest, the deep ache, the fatigue, the ceaseless hunger is palpable and dramatically affects the consciousness, but those very things can lend a deep satisfaction of their own as they are addressed with deep rest, and the pots of chili, curry rice, sausages, hamburgers, medleys of potatoes and onion and cabbage, and what have you, taste all the more delicious, and fill the holes and cracks. 

Besides, the difficult and strong exertions can produce lasting effects enjoyed by many: perhaps a century or more for good solid infrastructure, well done. And for the ancients we can talk millennia, at least in terms of the remaining bones still standing in those haunted historical monuments. Though we shall see how long our quality steel and iron constructs last, and of course the stone and brick built to endure. And there is always the question of who is building what for whom. 

Us hypermoderns have become accustomed to the belching and squirting out of plastics, which erupt and cool into slick and colorful shapes, which then begin to crack and flake and photodegrade and melt away nearly as soon as they are instantiated, but not completely disintegrating a moment before they are temporarily appreciated and then bought, after which they can then proceed to fall apart; the perfect material for a society of marketers and conmen. It teaches: nothing lasts, nothing is to be trusted.

For things to really endure, it does take quite a bit of time and energy to put into something, at least in my experience. That feeling that something challenging really took a bite out of you and knocked you down for a bit, is, contrary to initial impressions, a reassuring and satisfying feeling, so long as you can be confident that what you are doing is worthwhile. 

With all fairness to plastic, we could say all of that chemical and technical knowledge is a deep and enduring work of its own, all of which of course rests on a dense and solid infrastructure, but the concentration and nature of the labor varies wildly in its geographical and temporal spread, and who is doing the laboring and why and who is benefitting from the labor, and then there is the matter of whether the project itself is worthwhile or even sustainable, a loaded question for most people anyway.  Bah, another set of arguments for another time. 

Boom Meet Bust

As revealing and illuminating as a great crisis can be, as a massive distortion it can also produce equally sizable distortions in perception. Say, with the ongoing pandemic, everyone is talking about stimulus and vaccination, and boy, we've got a handle on the reigns again pal lets take this thing for a spin. The feeling of being locked down and under the boot of the virus is a palpable one, and one starts to huff and puff under such strain, and of course, the light begins to approach at the end of the tunnel, and one can't fire out of that long tomb quickly enough. As I've expressed before, it will be good if some of the danger dies down again, and things get a little better, and we get to do some nice things again, and strike while the iron is hot, carpe diem, etc. etc. But the memory of the low and the dark is a valuable one, especially concerning the how and the why, and whether it will be back.   

My Place

At least since the dawn of agriculture, when this instinct really took off and dug in, so to speak, we've been quite territorial as a general tendency. Not in the sense of being unwilling to share space with anything else; on the contrary, we fill space with just about as much noise and bustle as we can pack into it, just so long as that noise and bustle is organized to serve whomever has the power to alter the environment and benefit from that alteration. Herein lies the territoriality. 

Once it was a dominion over the land one claimed, a claim usually backed by some kind of organized political power. Now it lies largely in a sense of proprietorship over whatever one purchases, including the temporarily bought labor of other human beings, which is often tied to the land, things built on the land, and things which interact with the land to produce the things we want. 

The ability then to affect change in one's living environment is a coveted one that is often hard won with social permissions, and on the backside of these social permissions is the threat of sanction. This is especially the case the denser arrangement one enters into, as typically there is a larger cultural, economic, and political harmony that one must harmonize with and at the same time be accepted by to interact with it in a meaningful way, or else it is altered with enormous expenditures of energy, which require social power. 

After all, there is a wide range of possible aesthetic expressions, manifestations, and functions in the modern industrial - and globalized - world, and these things take social power and resources to permit, and once they are expressed and manifested, they must be frozen into place and maintained with all of the wrath of the legal and enforcement mechanisms backing them. 

There are many ways to lay down a wall, or carve out and pave a pathway or road, or to put up a house, or to arrange a garden or even landscape, and an equal number of ways for these things to visually appear, and then the ways in which these things eventually come to pass are also dependent on available traditions, techniques, skills, materials, and social impetuses for organization. 

One steps foot in the typical modern American city for example and finds it to be essentially a home for cars, and all of the infrastructure bends around this fact, a state of affairs that is owed to a particular form of culture, political economy, and lineage of historical events with their own ascents of particular interests. Which work just fine for certain classes and individuals, and for others, there is profound alienation and dispossession. Some wiggle room certainly, but how much, and where, and when?

Metaphor and Illustration

 A lot of metaphors make use of a material "objective" imagery - which is simple to understand, and just as importantly, universally understood - which is then juxtaposed with a subjective, phenomenological truth, or a relational truth that may be invisible to the senses, but which can be grasped with mental abstraction. 

For various reasons, basic material objects and physical relationships - at least on the plane that concerns us, the plane of Earth - can be readily comprehended by the senses and immediately understood, which we call "simpler" than say a subjective, social, or even a technological reality, and so we reach for those understandings for leverage in explaining other truths. 

There are many subjective truths, for example, that go beyond the simpler and more universal experiences that individuals have ready access to and which can be immediately recognized without much ambiguity. These deeper and more specific experiences have to be witnessed through a certain progression of events or experiences that may be more difficult to access depending on conditions and individual faculties, which can nevertheless be elucidated and made comprehensible through corresponding metaphor. And experience can be time-sensitive, requiring the stepping into of a psychic space to see the relations and truths. 

This also goes for larger, more complex relations like complex societies and historical progressions. With good writing and communication, through a kind of magic, these relations can be brought into being in the perception through metaphor and illustration and exposition for the reader not previously attuned to such truths. And when brought into the perception, they can be acted on. But then the structures brought into being through language and image are nevertheless constructed, a crucial thing to remember.