Right!

What does it mean then, to be "right?" 

You live truth in accordance with what you are. You can judge what you perceive and are aware of, which is a complex amalgamation of genetics and environment and socialization and upbringing, and also all of the small and large efforts and acts which make up the trajectory of your life, which accumulate in your character and experience and the governing conditions of your lifestyle. 

How you are brought up, and how you are composed necessarily form constraints around how you can maneuver and act, but then how you maneuver and act can steadily transform the conditions within which you live, which in turn changes how you can maneuver and act. 

All sorts of people can be right about all sorts of different things, depending on what they are and where they are at and what they want. But this "rightness" has varying magnitudes of depth and duration, and its given premises proceed to certain conclusions with certain consequences. 

Warlords may look around at the nihilistic struggle for power in their war-torn homelands and correctly perceive that given their ambitions, their own ruthless perfection of organized violence is the path forward, and then in short order receive bullets in the head for it. 

And CEOs may correctly perceive the truth of the coercive laws of competition of capital, and build their empires upon heaps of betrayal and broken bodies, and enjoy breathtaking views from the greatest heights for some time, and perhaps die comfortably in beds as individuals, after which their progeny eventually watch their bequeathments crumble and their names cursed and dragged through the mud, and the conceptual compressing together of those extreme poles forms that truth. 

Or you could have an archetypal Diogenes correctly perceiving the nature of human material existence and choosing to live in avoidance of the pursuit of power, in the pursuit of a good life instead, and exist in material poverty for it, perfectly content sleeping in a barrel with the stray dogs, and that too is a truth. 

And one can occupy anywhere between these extremes. One could entertain trash opinions but feel quite right, supported by the buoyance of one's equally wrong peers and be given access to their pooled resources and exist with some regard and public respect for it. Before being proven wrong again and again until one's word becomes worthless and one's dignity becomes stripped, but this could take plenty of time too. 

And one could be right all along, but remain in quite modest or even impoverished regard and circumstances, and remain in obscurity for some time, or throughout one's lifetime. And to invert all of these scenarios, one could wallow in the mud indefinitely, wrong as wrong can be, or be quite right about the world and the nature of reality and enjoy material success for it. 

Sometimes wrongness is the point, as in the case with something like strategic deception. And the truth can be perceived as either a means or an end. It all depends on what one is, where one is at in time and space, and what one wants to be. And then as one's activities proceed in accordance with one's truth, the world changes and those new conditions are confronted by those coming upon one's heels. 

You might have noticed that this is an attempted synthesis of a relativist conception of truth and an absolutist one. Yes, truth can twist and turn in time and space in accordance with perception and historical and cultural positioning. But that moving in accordance with a truth takes on a path dependency in accordance with its premises, and that a given truth proceeds to a given set of consequences in time, which can be judged by its fruits. 

And that synthesis can be done well, and it can be done badly. And even done well it has certain strengths and weaknesses, and so too do its constituent relativist and absolutist parts. And such an attempted synthesis I'm doing in a particular way to further along a greater analysis, that has its own character, its own strengths and weaknesses, and its life trajectory. 

Empire's Hand Pt. 1

Talking about the recent high profile conflicts - such as Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Palestine - in terms of the US Empire's involvement is a tricky business. On the one hand, you do have clear geopolitical maneuverings like the US' long history of global occupations and bases, covert wars, punitive sanctions, political coups, economic warfare in the form of debt trapping, austerity, and privatization and the like, and also its motivated and cynical economic and political support of its allies' repressive politics, such as with the successive regimes in Israel, which point to a real material and geopolitical efficacy. On the other hand, you do have to acknowledge the long independent regional history of these conflict zones, as well as the autonomy and dignity of the actors struggling within them that are not necessarily a part of the United States. 

At any rate, the US Empire is there, its power is effective, and these things must be talked about and put into consideration, if anything, to develop the structural aspect to an effective analysis of the world system, as I've talked about before. 

Needless to say, this stuff is exceptionally complex and difficult to discuss, requiring years upon years of intensive study and experience to get a grip on, at last without sounding like some sort of sloganeer, but nevertheless it can be done. There are a whole galaxy of excellent thinkers and frameworks which develop effective critiques of the historical evolution of empire and its manifold effects, in all of its subtlety and nuance. 

Of course right here at this moment we have this here blog post and its functionally smaller space, so what I'd like to do is attempt to compress all of that, using a simpler metaphorical analysis to make a point - something I do here regularly - which draws off of that large body of work that has been put in to make it work. 

I want to start with the image of spinning plates, as in the exhibitionist spectacle. A plate - a generally symmetrical, balanced, round object made of ceramic, wood, porcelain, china, stoneware, plastic, or what have you - spinning upright balanced at the top of a pole or stick is not something you typically find occurring in nature of its own accord . 

No, that is a phenomenon that owes its sole existence to human intervention, a specific, delimited species branching out in a very particular evolutionary path, a complex and unlikely dance of energy winking in and out of cosmic history, which has become dominant in the natural world at this particular point in time and space, and so is afforded the surplus for phenomena like exhibitionary spinning plates.  That's a drop in the bucket of course: we can talk about unlikely surplus phenomena in the modern world all day, but we do have to start somewhere, and we all have places to be. 

What set of conditions makes something like a spinning plate possible? You're talking about generation upon generation of traditions developed and perfected to craft perfectly symmetrical and balanced dinnerware as well as the historical development of the aesthetics, needs, and sensibilities which implore those crafts, and the same goes for the poles and sticks used to balance them, and the production and manipulation of the materials that goes into making them. Then add in the history and development of the exhibitionary spectacle, which implies the human surpluses that make such spectacle possible, and also all of the time and energy that went into developing the techniques and methods and the imaginary for conceiving of the spectacle in the first place, time and energy which must be afforded by the collective labors required to produce the necessary food, shelter, and security.

Given this set of conditions, if one drops a spinning plate and it shatters on the floor, it isn't typically said that gravity and unbalanced movement finally felled the plate and the superior denseness and  stability of the stone floor shattered the plate for good, except perhaps by means of a joke. 

What is more likely is that one points to the person doing the spinning and locates the cause there, exclaiming, "oh, you dropped it!" and then asking: "what went wrong?" Did the person lose focus? Did the person lack the sufficient level of skill and concentration? Did the person's hand get tired? Or was it intentional? 

This is partially due to the thermodynamic unlikeliness of such an event happening of its own accord except through human intervention, so by convention we locate the genesis of the cause in the condition and intentionality of the person doing the spinning, which was the only likely place from which the event could have possibly occurred. Responsibility and consequence are properly assigned to the place where the energy is moving, and where the direction of that movement can be changed. 

With this image in mind let's address an earlier iteration of the world system. From almost two centuries away, the Opium Wars appear absurdly cruel and preposterous, and maybe they really were those things. But why would the British Empire traipse halfway across the globe to force opium upon the Chinese people, setting aside the comically villainous reason of "fun and profit," or the slightly more serious reason of simply wanting it all (the sun never setting upon the empire and etc.)? Considering the operation of the world system at the time, and Britain's interest in dominating and manipulating that system for its own gain, things begin to make more sense. 

To begin with, much of the civilized world from the ancient period up until then ran largely on silver (alongside gold, with preferences occasionally shifting), due to the various physical properties of the metal as well as long arcs of economic tradition and global convention, which through its histories and conventions, produced a magical property of trade circulation as it was introduced into an economy. 

A lot of the silver mines around the Mediterranean were exhausted in the ancient world, and since pure silver is more reactive and degrades quicker than gold, supplies were tighter and more precious. A lot of the discovery and production shifted to South America and Asia. And for various historical, cultural, and political/economic reasons, a lot of the world's silver trade was ending up in China, and China was holding onto its silver stores. 

In the run-up to the mid-19th century, British finances were shaky, owed in part to recovery from the Napoleonic Wars and the experience of a series of poor harvests in the region (yes, the Irish Great Famine was one of the many disasters directly produced by this iteration of the world system). More immediately, Britain's silver store was draining, a lot of which was going out to China due to a trade deficit caused in part by the British people's insatiable demand for Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain. 

Wow, the hemorrhaging of silver over tea? But besides a clear consumer preference for the pleasure and growing tradition of tea-drinking, the tea itself - especially black tea with its caffeine content and accompanying traits of concentrating focus and speeding up activity - was the perfect drug to facilitate a continuously accelerating and industrializing and modernizing imperial society.  

And upon further thought, this does make sense, especially considering the razing of whole societies and regions for the sake of tobacco, coffee, and chocolate, which continues to the current moment. And to put it really crudely, when a lot of people really want something, it behooves capital to give it to them, which makes it easier to extract value in unequal exchange. 

So silver was draining out of Britain; how to keep it circulating in Britain's favor? The West didn't really have anything that China wanted in return. How to set that silver free again? The East's long tradition of opium use was one weak-point to exploit, which like many traditions of mind and body-altering intoxicant use, could easily go pathological through imperial exploitation. 

Through its long history of conquest and monocropping, Britain was able to subvert large swathes of land in its crown jewel colony, India, for this particular purpose, where traditions of opium production were already developed and cultivated (introduced in India by Arab traders in the 700's CE). And so the opium was produced in India and then traded to China - another region of traditional opium cultivation and use, also introduced by Arab traders - in increasingly greater amounts, in exchange for that coveted silver. 

At the same time, opium usage was increasingly becoming a social and economic problem in China. Silver was once again draining out of China, but also opium use was going increasingly pathological since 18th century, which was then accelerating, not just because the country was being flooded with it, but also due to more complex social reasons, attributable in part to the decline of the reigning Qing dynasty, and growing turbulence due in part to increasing Western imperial aggression. 

This is all culminated in the Chinese destroying a large store of British opium, which touched off the first Opium War, with the British military prevailing, winning a grab bag of concessions in an unequal treaty, including trading privileges, acquired territories, and the forcing of opium back into circulation in trade with China, which formed an early part of China's traumatic "century of humiliation." 

So there you have it. To wrap this up and put things together, this phenomenon of an empire flitting around the globe, conquering through trade seems to be an important attribute of modern imperialism and conquest. 

Through historical accumulations of wealth and technological development, the British Empire was able to develop in particular the appropriate maritime and military technologies to be able to move rapidly and effectively anywhere around the world, engaging in brutal military conquests yes, but then accumulating much of its wealth through the rejiggering of existing conquered societies, subverting their economies and their land towards the intentionally asymmetrical circulation of trade and goods in Britain's narrow favor.

In many cases, wealth was directly expropriated and extracted, yes. But the deftness of the British system was such that it kept many of its subjects largely intact (save for the famines), so as to continuously circulate trade in its own idiosyncratic image, while the Empire would continuously skim and accumulate and concentrate value off of that circulation, at least before bleeding that value out again in its late stages, given its late 19th century onset of free trade fundamentalism, its advancing financialization, and its offshoring of capital to its colonies.  

The globe and its centuries of built up resources and economies became so much raw material for Britain's spinning plates. But as a concentrated intentionality manipulating those plates, eventually Britain would lose focus, and concentration, and strength, and the plates would fall, at least until someone else would come along to pick them up. We'll continue on into more contemporary matters next time. 

Wrong!

Besides having favorite legacy political, economic, philosophical, and literary works to draw upon, I've read, listened to, and in some cases been in conversation with a number of contemporary thinkers and communities whom I respect for quite some time now; at least a decade let's say, and I've had the pleasure of adding more trusted lights as I go. And despite the occasional disagreement, I consistently come back to them because I've come to trust them to be consistently right, given my own predilections, knowledge, experience and worldview. 

The notion of being "right" is so loaded with baggage that I just need to draw attention to that respectfully and warily, but then set that aside and move on.  

Anyway, what a lot of these people have in common is the vaguely cranky (this is me too) acknowledgement that they've been consistently right, all things considered, but that it has largely been a thankless and mirthless task. The Cassandra archetype comes up a lot if we're talking imagery. You see this a lot actually. So why? How? 

There is a whole lot to this, but I just want to explore something we've been addressing: the mechanisms and tools of abstraction. A lot of these people are what I would consider talented craftspeople who have given a lot of careful thought to their own thinking, which implies a much deeper and broader worldview that must be reflected upon as well. 

And when you do that you're talking about longer timeframes and timescales. When you are regressing to more and more general abstractions that are covering a larger amount of categories over a longer amount of time, you can get it really right, or really wrong (and we'll get to the wrong side). 

Because given a human lifetime, if you are talking about endeavoring to understand whole decades, and then centuries, and then even millenia and beyond, and then if you get a good working model of that stuff and it is serving you in navigating reality given that understanding, well, that understanding is good for your lifetime as long as you are continuously developing and maintaining it, because those arcs that you are describing arc quite a ways, and probably far past the end of your own life. 

If you've gotten to the point where you are accurately describing the arc of the US Empire for example, and then by extension the arc of Western civilization, you might miss some details and short term predictions, but you're probably going to be able to call the general direction of a lot of important events. 

Which looks like prophecy to a lot of people, and in a certain way it is. But to the archetypal Cassandra, you get a familiar and consistent attitude: big whoop. You've been doing it for long enough, and probably calling enough accurate shots, that you've gotten used to the whole repeated exercise. 

At the same time you've probably been in enough bitter arguments and butted heads with enough people, and read and heard enough boneheaded opinions, and then in turn come to the realization that the materially, politically, and economically efficacious world runs on those bad opinions and poor arguments. And no matter how many times you've been right on this or that geopolitical development, it ain't worth a damn, because the same bonehead ghouls are still running the show, failing upwards, and living proud amidst the widening ruins they've been cultivating. 

Which brings us to the shadow side of abstract thought. Because again, when you are talking about more and more general categories at greater and greater timeframes, you can go really, really wrong. On an individual level, this might lead to consequences in terms of misapprehending the world and making a mistake that costs you personally. But in relation to others - especially in steep hierarchical structures of power -you can be catapulted to the top with the wrongest opinion possible, oftentimes by virtue of the very wrongness of that opinion, favored by the powerful. 

In the end, abstraction is a tool: the mind assigns a simplified symbol to a complex state of affairs to decide what to do with that state of affairs or how to relate to it, which can then be fixed socially with language and written symbol, and so the abstract sign is quite flexible in its usage. 

When you map this onto gradations of power, you can have powerful people using these symbols to fix simple determinations onto complex states of affairs, manipulating those they have power over to adhere to those simplified truths, while at the same time having the power to maneuver around the consequences of those truths. 

And so you get powerful and sophisticated propaganda that specifies how the world works, how power is to be legitimated and organized, what types of energy should be invested in and used, what types of forces should be used on others for whatever reasons, what means should be worked for and disposed of in pursuit of the good life, and how all of these things effect the world in turn. 

And it is precisely the wrongness of these things that gives them their power. It is the mismatch of the symbol and the reality that allows the powerful to remain astride of the confusion and destruction that that mismatch causes. This game can be carried on for quite some time. And this is the nature of living in a general era of decline. 

That doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile to do the work, and that one should just drop what one is doing and try something else. No, I'm just doing a bit of venting and trying to have some fun with it anyway. Right thinking and right living are important ingredients to living decently in a generalized era of decline. You can profit handsomely in playing fast and loose with the faculties of thought, but even that gravy train eventually comes to a stop. 

Play

Oftentimes it starts with a faint idea. You notice a pattern in something, so you instantiate an idea that ties that pattern together into a cohesive structure, and then work on the structure until it is resting firmly upon the reality it is describing. 

I've expressed the thought plenty of times before that once you get down a working idea and let it sit and you get to looking at it, you can start to see additional ways in which that idea can be worked. You might start seeing a contradiction that needs to be worked out for example, or you might see some gaps in what the idea is trying to address that you didn't see before.

Eventually it starts to dawn on you that you can keep fiddling with the idea any which way, and it is good to have this flexibility. But there is only so much time and energy available in the day. Eventually you do have to stop fooling around and let the idea go and be itself. 

Something can be overworked and over-shaped. Never quite deciding on a coherent aesthetic for example, or adding too much ornamentation and the thing gets too busy. Or as I found working heavy wire on a fence, you can put an incredible amount of force and tension on that wire; it is incredibly strong, but then if you bend it one way and then decide you want to bend it the other, it weakens the wire and that's when the thing fails. 

But what this also reveals is that you can get a whole lot of play out of the idea itself. Yeah, there is a solid foundation down there that you have to work around and which imposes a real constraint, though hell if you have the means and the wealth you can cut right through the rock below if you wanted to, which makes the navigation of reality a matter of the availability of energy too. But still, at the end of the day you only have so much energy to work with. 

The idea allows for comfort and the navigation of the reality that it rests upon or sheathes, but that it is also all negotiable and mutable and that the bare reality underneath is really strange and baffling, and should be treated with respect, which implies a humility in the idea too. 

Perception

I've been talking about perception a lot, so maybe we could have a brief look at that one. What you perceive is what you become aware of, which is what you have to work with in the course of analysis. 

Your state of being matters to your perception. If you're afraid you notice certain things related to that fear, and you're much more motivated to pursue or avoid those things, and they take up more space in your consciousness and you are sensing them more thoroughly and thinking about them more thoroughly - which is what we've been exploring with paranoid perception in particular. 

The same goes if you are hungry or have some sort of appetite for something, or angry and wrathful towards something. Or on the sunnier side, you are satisfied or joyous. There are differences of perception even in your level of engagement towards something, whether you are intensely interested in something or whether your attention is diffused and your mind is emptier. 

Meditation and ritual changes your perception and what you are noticing and what is moving and motivating you. And eating certain foods and ingesting certain stimulating plant matter like teas or coffee, or intoxicating substances; these things too can radically alter your state of mind and your perception and therefore what you are motivated to think about and do, which builds additional structures through memory, analysis, and experience. 

Part of what makes perception what it is, is that it is a sort of pivotal point of mediation between what is happening in the world and in you, and what you are thinking and feeling and experiencing. 

Bent Reality

There was a hint of a contradiction lingering there in that previous discussion on the relation of ideology to reality, and I think working out that logic could be helpful and illuminating. 

On the one hand, we have the contention that part of an ideology's power lies in its ability to faithfully describe reality, and in so doing, allow its adherents to successfully navigate that reality, which seems to ring true. Bald lies and sad, desperate iterative representations of an increasingly irrelevant and bygone era can certainly hold things together for a little while and motivate some, but we can observe that phenomena to progressively weaken and eventually fail, and it often becomes ever more vivid and insistent before the moment it finally collapses. 

On the other hand, a mass movement charged with the prevailing instincts and moving forces at the time can achieve a sort of escape velocity all of its own, regardless of its proper descriptive relation to reality, and indeed, set in motion forces that confirm its own contentions, thereby functioning as a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

One example that comes to immediate mind was the emergence of neoliberal ideology in the 70s and 80s, which of course had its roots extending back long before that. There were complex reasons for this emergence and rise to dominance, but part of it had to do with the fact that its basic thrust appealed to a broad range of economic and political actors. The ideology's prescriptions of turning the private sector loose once again and setting free the suffocating webs of regulation and so on were enough to get the broadly stagnant and dysfunctional political and economic machinery moving again. Nevermind that its basic contentions were nonsense, and that half a century later we'd be cursing its name with clenched teeth and flying spittle, trying to kick it into the wastebin as it holds fast through its death throes. 

And for that matter, we have ideology after ideology that do in fact do a good job of describing reality while holding consonance with its moving forces, only to be smothered in their cribs or stamped out, or which have to go underground and subsist on roots while holding out hope of an eventual re-emergence.  

As always, we have to take into account the movement and concentration of power. Who is associated with whom toward what end, and to what extent can they bring ideas into their full embodiment in material reality? From the perspective of us truth-lovers, attempting to greet the world with an open heart and converse in good faith with the spirits, reality appears bent by the long historical evolution of human power, along the contours of which lies the aforementioned contradiction. But that too is reality.  

Paranoid Abstraction

There is something that can help alleviate the worst effects of the paranoid instinct, while at the same time harnessing the potential power nestled within that temperamental beast: the generalization of its focus. But, as we'll see, even this measure ain't so simple, and it ain't so easy. 

With the paranoid perception's "gaze of Sauron"-like specificity, the "spirit" of the matter becomes located in the limited object of perception, with all of its limitations and distortions that accompany that restricted perception. 

But upon turning the gaze upon object after object, becoming acquainted with them intimately and how they connect with everything else, certain patterns begin to arise that are further and further generalized as more objects of perception are assimilated and which can eventually become cosmic in scope, and the provincial paranoid fixation is dissolved, leaving behind a navigable explanatory and anticipatory framework. 

Well, in theory at least. If this latter phase sounds like the makings of straight-up conspiracy theory, that is because it often is. On the contrary, what can happen is that the provincial perceptions can be strung together and added up, and the object of paranoid fixation becomes ever more grand and malevolent in its all-encompassing power, and now the problem is much worse, because you've turned an anxious fixation into a potentially powerful and consuming worldview, expressed in the stereotypical wall-scrawlings and cork boards spider-webbed with networked post-its, photos, and red yarn. 

Part of the difference of outcome lies in the simple art of relaxation. This is something that is also common to people living with OCD - and paranoia can often be read as a supercharging of OCD in a lot of cases - in that part of living with it consists in attempting to function alongside it and with it and then disengage with it when it ceases to be helpful or productive. One of the structural aspects of OCD is the tendency of the perception to hyperfixate, making it difficult to smoothly transition from one object of perception to the next. 

The idea is that whether the fixation has to do with daily living and perceptual interest or a threatening object of fear, fixations can be quite useful for learning about various elements of reality to anticipate them and therefore harness them or navigate them or counter them in whatever way, but then too much fixation destroys the very ability to act. And this is true whether one is encountering a limited object in daily life or developing a worldview to live one's life. 

Anyway, to put it more generally, any sort of hyper-concentration of something can lead to dysfunction. Matter needs space to extend in. Water needs air to move. 

To use an extreme case, this principle can be illustrated in warfare, the effective exercise of the paranoid instinct par excellence, because the threatening objects of your perception are literally trying to kill you. 

There was this unforgettable account I read of a Kurdish fighter dealing with ISIS - I can't remember where I read it unfortunately - where he talked about their terror tactics in combat. They would breach defenses by setting off explosions and rapidly drive up in vehicles amid suppressing fire, basically moving fast and hard and making a lot of noise, which would terrify and overwhelm defenders. 

But the Kurdish fighter insisted: you just had to stay calm and concentrate. Choose a target, stick with that target, dispatch the target, and then move to the next one. Take one at a time; deal with the greatest priorities as they come, and with enough luck you won't become overwhelmed and live long enough to continue to be effective in combat, whittling down the opposition. And with more soldiers trained this way and functioning this way, the effectiveness of the fighting force is compounded, and the priorities are dealt with simultaneously and the enemy is grinded down. 

 

You see this principle appear in military training across armies throughout history. It was certainly true of the Greek and Roman phalanxes: the formations were built for stability, grouping together soldiers trained to remain calm through all conditions, with veterans placed in strategic locations throughout the formation and the entire body of soldiers trained to work confidently together so as to maintain the formation's cohesion and strength, so as to stave off that dreadful appearance of the god of Phobos, which can fragment the protective shell of the phalanx and trigger a panicked rout, which was where the real disasters often happened. 

But here it is important to point out: it is the paranoid fixation that develops and affords the calm. One fixates on the object of threat and trains to understand and anticipate it, to aim and shoot effectively, to properly hold a shield, or to thrust a spear, and all of that training produces a wealth of competence that can be drawn from and trusted when it counts. One fixates and prepares while it is productive to do so, and then let go and trust that the elements are in place and that the work has been done and one has done the best one can do with what one has. To continue to fixate on threat after threat in combat, to hold onto that fear and anticipation for all that is happening, eventually there is too much to fixate on; too much to account for and deal with. One becomes paralyzed and cannot act. 

And hell, we sure took the circuitous route, but that's living in so many words. Focus on the priorities that matter, do the work that is needed, and then take a rest with the trust and satisfaction that that was enough, at least until it isn't. Living well is also dying well in longer timeframes. 

That's what you can do anyway. What is happening in the world is another matter altogether.