Watchful Eyes

There is a whole lot to say about the current Israel-Palestine conflict, but for now I just wanted to situate it within the greater geopolitical crisis which has been unfolding in slow motion for nearly a century now, and which is very quickly picking up speed. 

Israel's situation in that region makes up what I and others have previously called a "bleeding ulcer," or you could call it a "hot spot" or a "pressure point" or a number of other metaphorical encapsulations that could be useful. Another could be located in the Ukraine conflict, and though these two points are some of the most intense and capturing most of the attention - for good reason; they're both quite awful for one thing - there are plenty of other pressure points around the world that are intensifying as the world system undergoes increasing strain. 

Structurally, it is mostly the weight of the US Empire that has been bearing down upon those pressure points for most of the century. You could call the US' larger rivals - like Russia and China - empires as well, and they would have to be to pose a real challenge, but we've been able to see where most of the world's resources have been extracted, and where they have been concentrating in the last century, and in the unfolding of the geopolitics of the last century, we've been able to make out who the hegemon has been. 

And so a large part of the nature of these pressure points is the revolting of local and regional powers against this greater state of affairs, which in uneven geographic concentrations has become intolerable in those places, and the shifting and concentrating of power into different geographic concentrations so as to start to alter that state of affairs in a different direction, mainly by appealing to the power of alternative rivals who may offer alternatives. 

The US has strived for geopolitical monopoly, what the military liked to call "full spectrum dominance," and so as it and its allies weaken, it has to work harder and more viciously to maintain that position, as those growing rivals emerge in bolder and bolder configurations to challenge it. 

So, here is one thing to look at and speculate upon: in the modern world, information travels very, very quickly. Historians like to point out that during its later periods of crisis, the incredible highway system that Rome built facilitated the rapid movement of its invading enemies. With that in mind, consider a modern analogue, which is by no means the only one: the rapid movement of information globally. 

The intolerable conditions within these conflict zones generated their own crises for their own reasons, but one thing to keep in mind is that the powers at play in these conflicts are all sizing each other up and gathering intelligence on each other very quickly. Everyone knows of the increasing internal political instability of the US, as well as its increasingly heavy handedness and incompetence in a vast array of global affairs, which also goes for all of its allies taking its marching orders or who are otherwise supported by it.

On a more technical level, anyone can get on the Internet and learn of the increasing supply chain dysfunction of the West in particular and the increasingly embarrassing struggles to procure and move materials, such as ammunition, artillery, equipment and vehicles, and so on to the conflict sites. This is just one of many windows into the ongoing operating power of the empire. As that power is perceived to wane, rivals may attempt bolder and more direct challenges of their own, and as the disasters for the US pile up, and the victories for its enemies increase, it will all be perceived and disseminated quite quickly, and of course, acted upon. 

Learning and Development

There is a plasticity of learning at the crest of development, which itself rests upon older striations which have calcified into their respective strata. The former depends upon the latter and vice versa: to effectively learn, one has to stand upon the stable and held-fast and dependable with confidence. Too much flexibility of trial and error and too many possibilities means the dispersal of one's efforts and a loss of movement and purpose. One has to be confident of what works and what is true, to measure further attempts against those things. 

But on the other side of that coin, it helps to have some flexibility in what has been developed as well. As greater conditions change, what works and what is true could change, and if one is measuring all of one's efforts of trial and error against an increasingly falsifying body that refuses to change, one is also in trouble, and dispersing one's energy and movement in a different way. 

 

Accumulating Influence

I think paranoid ideologies present a good opportunity to describe the increasing influence and effects of a growing body of people moving in concert with a given coherent ideology, so I wanted to take a minute and look at that sort of thing, and perhaps try to come to terms with it somewhat.  

In popular culture there is a lot of wariness and poking fun of the genuinely paranoid modes of thought and action, such as various flavors of conspiracy theory or general crankery. 

As someone with a paranoid side and who has directly experienced the movements and consequences of those modes of thought, for the most part I'm fine with that in the context of a relatively stable society. At the extreme ends of that behavior and perception, paranoid people are searching for very specific signs and indications, and when they think they can confirm those signs and indications, regardless of whether those signs and indications mean what they do, paranoid individuals can act very suddenly and sometimes violently when triggered. 

So having a bunch of people around on hair triggers that can lead to rapid and potentially vigorous action when exposed to certain stimuli is probably not the best thing for the stable functioning of a complex, stimulus-dense society. Better to tamp that down a bit if possible.

There is a catch though when your society is becoming increasingly unstable for various reasons. One of those reasons could be the greater proliferation of paranoid ideologies themselves: when you have a bunch of individuals on hair triggers who carry the same coherent set of beliefs and stimuli-triggers, the movements set in motion when those triggers get activated can get larger and more powerful as you add individuals in concert. 

But at the same time a lot of the power of those ideologies is derived from their successful anticipation of and description of the realities they seek to navigate. Critics of the paranoid style in politics for example like to point out that when increasingly bad things are happening to increasing numbers of people, and the reigning government partially responsible for those bad things refuses to communicate a satisfactory accounting of those things, then a vacuum opens in the collective discourse and the conspiracy theories and fear mongering is able to rush in. 

The mass paranoia itself creates a gravity of its own to contend with: it doesn't matter that the ideas themselves are wack and out of touch with reality, the instincts and behaviors nurturing those ideas generate volatile forces of their own, which annoyingly can require a paranoid perceptive element to analyze. 

Because one signature of the paranoid perception is a hyperfixation on potentially destabilizing elements, and so a given individual might obsessively learn everything they can about a certain element to anticipate it and act accordingly. 

Walking across a bridge, one may obsessively fixate on a pattern of supports, declaring that the bridge may fail at any moment. This behavior on a perfectly stable and sound bridge can be thought of as preposterous, but if the bridge is actually in danger of failing, well that behavior is something else entirely. And so how to properly judge all of these elements in relation to each other, while entertaining a healthy apprehension, without giving into the fear? Aha, very carefully perhaps.

It all brings to mind that hilarious adage which can be sometimes true: "you may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean that they're not out to get you."

Powers of Abstraction

Abstractions correspond to real things, and they matter, but they can be used in very different ways, and so they can have very different effects. Oftentimes we abstract to describe a grouping of things that are very complex, but which tend to move together, and so a simplification of something on a lower level can achieve an increasing complexity of understanding when relating more of those lower level things together. 

I can look at one of those towering giants, generalized as a plant for how it moves and grows and produces food and energy, and call it a "tree" in complete ignorance of the great mass of its root system and its movement of nutrients and its colonies of micro-organisms, and still succeed at cutting it down and turning it into lumber. What you are seeking to do in relation to the tree and how all of that is bound up with culture and economy can influence what sets of abstractions are called forth and how they relate to each other, and the effectiveness of those sets of abstractions depends on their fidelity and their correspondence to their referents and how actions and impressions and perceptions move and change when they act on their referents and whether all of those things are good. 

We attach then to our abstractions and love them for their power, an attachment that can even outlive the results and fruits of their application. Which is how one can build enormous relations of abstractions that describe a certain state of affairs in great detail, such as the life and evolution of the US Empire, and still be hated and despised for it, if it is not prescribing a certain preferred direction and unfolding of that life and evolution. 

All of which is to say that I like to regularly remind myself that it is good to love and trust good abstraction, and nevertheless always be wary of it as it relates to the world and to one's self and one's place in the world. 

Seasonal Movement

Now the cold is really setting in up here. Things are slowing and quieting down, which in a way allows me to get back into action with the reading and writing and thinking. That localized seasonality lends to a circulation of its own: constant heat and long daylight leads to a constant growth and flourishing of living things running on solar power, which paradoxically leads to a repetition and stasis as one tends to them, which is finally put to rest as the daylight wanes and the cold sets in and everything goes dormant, and one's thoughts turn inwards and one's patterns of activity and consumption shift in turn. And then one eventually gets tired of the quiet and the dark and greets the coming sun and shoots of green with joy and relief. 

This is of course a privileged conception. It could be that one greets the coming winter with dread and consternation: was enough food produced? Was enough fuel gathered and stored? 

The modern advanced built environment flattens this seasonality and flings it outwards. That movement and circulation makes the transition, and indeed, is accelerated in some respects. The seasonal foods are gathered further and further outwards from regions conducive to their production, according to parallel seasonal movements of their own, or which otherwise have such long seasons as to be effectively perpetual. 

The movement and variation and circulation is for the most part available to those wealthy enough anyway, but it is often available all at once. There does remain a seasonality to shifting ideas and focus, but then there also arises a new internal logic of a sort of self-referential seasonality, in which thoughts and activities move in accordance with the interests and preferences of the most influential and powerful, and then of course the reactions and counter-movements to those things, all of which is in relation to what the greater system is doing and how it is changing. 

Anyway, this is mostly a warm-up post as it gets cold out there. I've got some rough and abstract bones to lay down as I get going again. I've still got a whole load of things to wrap up for the season, but I wanted to get some writing in as I go. A warning that the writing might be a bit vague and esoteric for a bit as the rust gets sanded off and the joints get oiled again, but eventually we'll get going here again. 

Where We At?

OK so it has been almost a month and I do need to get something down; too much silence can get pretty loud, especially as the pressure grows to break it. 

In terms of something really meaty, I'll have to continue to kick the can for a bit. I've got a growing list of notes: I keep thinking of things to elaborate on and then am continuously pushed downstream, having to put off the writing for one reason or another, and now I have a shit-ton of things to write about. Hopefully things don't get too diluted with thoughts going every which way. 

Probably not the most pleasant image to contemplate, but one does get a certain sense of constipation, if one is accustomed to regularly writing and formulating and representing thoughts, and then to have all of those thoughts pile up, not fully processed or moving completely through the system. 

And in a similar way, its taken a lot longer for the heat to go away this year, up here in the PNW. The weather itself seems constipated. We had a good long rain last week, and then it dried up again and the heat came back on for a couple of days. The land has soaked back in a hell of a lot of water and the streams still haven't recovered. Unprecedented from what I've seen living here for the last couple of years. Up in Washington at least, it starts getting cold and wet throughout September, with a couple of possible last gasps of summer, and then in October the switch gets flipped and things turn cold and wet for good. Not this time. 

The poor bugs - I'm always observing and worrying about the bugs it seems - keep trying to get ready to winter over and go into hibernation, and then the heat comes on again, later and later. In a temperate rainforest there is a dense, constant, and intense quality of striving, where the many forms of life are vying for their niches. The fall and winter provide a sort of relief, where everything takes a rest and goes dormant. Not so with the heat continuously lapping in again after having seemingly gone away for the season. 

It seems as though the raw energy itself, in its surplus, is continuously pushing the web of life to strive just a bit further, confused, bewildered, half-hearted, half-awake and roused prematurely from the beginnings of its slumber, perhaps wondering in its own instinct-language, "what are we doing, where are we going?"