I wanted to give a regular update on method, as much for processing these things and representing these things to myself as for anyone reading. I'll start with a simpler construction metaphor, which as always is an attempt to isolate a few fundamental principles, but which will quickly get complicated. Hopefully before losing the thread we can apply that to the notion of constructing ideology and living by such things, which involves reading, thinking, writing, communicating, and acting.
Let's just consider a simple picnic table. For complex evolutionary and historical reasons, we have a certain anatomy and physics: we have a way of existing and moving in the material world. Generally we like to be upright for activities like eating and socializing and so on. Our head itself likes to be relatively level and also upright. There is a symmetry and distribution to our bodies that allow for a state of rest against gravity, where pressure is exerted on our frame and joints and muscles, hopefully relatively evenly and proportional to the regions built for holding that weight.
Sitting against a solid object, it helps to have that object level, with gravity acting equally on its surfaces, so that when it is sat upon one's body is evenly distributed against gravity in turn. If the object has a slope for example, we might be sitting at an angle, our head uncomfortably slanted, and the body and muscles are shifted upon to compensate. Over time that uneven pressure gets more and more uncomfortable, and the body protests, and we get tired and have to move.
So a good picnic table should be relatively level and even. For another set of complex cultural and historical reasons, there are specific ways to do this in the modern age. By counting and measuring and using tools that make straight cuts and lines, timber can be cut with flat planes at precise lengths, thicknesses, and proportions in relation to each other, and then these are set at the right compound degrees to achieve the total right angles necessary to square up flat sitting planes and the vertical planes of support which are to reach the ground.
This level of precision in the construct itself informs the way in which it is to sit upon the earth: that is, its feet must be flat and level, and the earth underneath it flat and level, so as to keep consistent that level quality. The ground can be checked by placing a straightedge upon it, which is embedded with vials of liquid with air bubbles floating in them - a level - which amazingly, indicates the degree of slope on the plane it is put against.
This is a long-winded way of saying that our constructs have to be built upon the earth and exist with the earth - that mass of soil and rock held together by gravity, lending to a continuity that allows for sustained life and subjective experience - and as such, they must communicate with the earth and harmonize with it and with us in turn. And this building must occur within a historic time and place: its form is culturally determined and it is carried out in a specific way and appears in a particular manner in accordance with what came before. Everything that exists is built upon itself and in relation to itself, and in constant transformation with itself in specific configurations over time.
To build anything is to use energy to arrange matter in a way that improves the human relation to the earth, or to preserve the energy differentials that allow for the perpetuation of humans. Even such a fundamental statement is quite contentious, as to perpetuate oneself too well can mean perpetuation at the expense of the earth and one's relations that one rests upon and within. For that matter, things can be built well, or they can be built mediocre, or they can be built badly. And things built persist, and change in quality as they act on the earth and the earth acts on them.
To build ideology is no different: it is the process of creating mental structures that are to rest upon the earth in a way, or structure ways in which we act and interact with each other and the world, which are in accordance with how we are and what we find the world to be.
But what happens when something goes wrong with those structures, and they fail to harmonize with the earth, and increasingly harm and set against those caught up in them? How to isolate the problem? Today there is a widespread sense that there is something wrong, but we live in a state of degradation that is not easy to articulate, as there is so much historically accumulated material, technologies, practices, and information that we rest upon. There is such a mass of material to reflect upon and act on and judge that it has become difficult to isolate the problems.
We are awash in language that is regularly used with confidence and without reflection on its meaning and origins. Much of this is naive and earnest, and then much more of it is cynical and manipulative: words are twisted, information is manipulated and cherrypicked, statistics are willfully misinterpreted, and so a collectively experienced reality gravitates to this growing wilderness of contention with a background of rising unease and panic, all the while with real and objective material problems intensifying and complicating underneath as they continue to go collectively unaddressed. What to do?
I'd suggest that there are many ways to address this greater problem, but here I only have the one life, and only so much time and energy, and here I address the problems I'm interested in with a particular way that I've come to find more and more useful over the past couple of years.
To go back to physical construction, whether you are talking about a picnic table or a house, the consistency of the relations in the structure itself depend on its proper relation to the earth. An unsound foundation introduces flaws which become progressively worse as they travel up through the frame and then into the roof: flaws which endanger the innerworkings of the plumbing and heating and electrical and fixtures and everything that makes the structure live and breathe. A building can be propped up and banged together in all sorts of ways to maintain its consistency upon a crumbling foundation, but eventually when that foundation becomes unsound enough, it endangers everything above it. Past this point, one can go mad in the structure itself attempting to prop up all of the many doomed relations.
Anyway, here it is about going as low as possible, getting at the earth where one can and taking a look. I still have to use and live in many of these structures, and trust these tools and techniques, and love the richness and power of the many material and ideological and spiritual accumulations of the modern experience, while at the same time casting a suspicious eye at them and moving lower and trying to get to a lower point of rest in turn; one shouldn't make enemies with gravity so to speak.
Ideologically that means not only focusing on the constructs themselves, but also surveying how these constructs communicate with the earth in a way, by feeling them and living them and meditating on acting with them as well. This shit ain't level, but in the past I'd risk going mad spending too much time thinking about the constructs themselves. One also has to live, and see if any of this is even working.
If this still sounds abstract and obscure, yeah maybe so. I'll continue to address these issues in time, and work along the lines of this given method. It's an ongoing process.
