I do not want the wishes of a happy Father’s Day, when we fathers and grandfathers en mass across the planet have failed to hand on to our children an Earth that they might survive on. Our collective participation in this system only deserves us recognition as failures, and reprimanding and ostracization by our youngers. Our lack of empathy, thoughtfulness, and mourning, that has led to our unchecked squandering of Earth’s vitality—ecocide—is made particularly visible with this now co-opted consumerist holiday of Father’s Day. Over the last 50 years, how much plastic was purchased and expected as gifts on this day? How much additional waste do we add? A celebration of father’s day is a sloppily-tied bow interwoven by insult and injury. Forget these contrived holidays—they’ve brought us to a wasteland, and to the edge of a lifeless abyss.
American Culture
notes 4 today: 2016-12-14 (The Protestant Control Ethic, and Relativism; Uniting With Mexicans; Gaming The Olympics; Poor Ritualization And Superstition)
title: The Protestant Control Ethic, and Relativism*
The implications of Max Weber’s connection between the Protestant Work Ethic— and how it evolved to buttress capitalist efficiency and productive obsessions—has some grand implications also for non-protestant inhabitants that have nevertheless been exposed to the protestant types (whether through already living in their community, or being victims of a culturally protestant empire). The effects (victimage) goes beyond being a mere colonial subject or the product of a neo-civilizing project (i.e. through missionaries), but to the way these encountered others were regarded by the deep-seeded protestant motives of their imposers. The logic is as follows:
Were the hard working Protestant types truly influenced by an obsession to get in to heaven and prove to themselves that they were the chosen ones—reflected in their secular successes, i.e. how capitalist they were—also would be their motives to discourage and obsesses over what others were doing, for they would be potential heaven-bound competition. This current in counter-tension with the forces within their Protestant culture that wanted to destroy non-Christian culture of “the savages” and carry out the Christian call to bring them in to the fold, but nevertheless I think that this was/is an actual undercurrent that seems evident in the obsessions of governing/policing the behavior of others. It might also go a long way to explain, in part, why Western programs since Lutheran ideas have failed so miserably to establish successfully dominated subjects despite huge advantages to hegemony. This conflicting agenda might be endemic to relations with imperial subjects. It has morphed several times over during many generations, but can roughly be stated now as the fear that others are doing something that oneself is missing out on; so rather than miss out on something special, one then just takes away the ability from others to have that something special to happen (through policing), or you make sure the events are captured and mediated on the news, in pornography, in advertisements, and somehow one’s own tentacles are entwined in the sinews of others.
To summarize: what was once a religious based deep fear and deep obsession that others might be the alternates who get in to heaven, is now a deeper fear and obsession that others might be having joy that does not include oneself or is not permitted first by oneself, and the goal is to actively erode the ability of others to do this. I think such deep, consciousness-buried, motives are wielded by among others, the Neo-Cons, and why within their psyche they truly must feel uneasy most of the time UNTIL they can see their projects of “full spectrum dominance” realized.
*I intuit that it is co-emergent with the rest of this argument herein, that an amoral relativism also conquers the minds of westerners under the capitalist yoke. Everything becomes valued in terms of its relative value—it becomes a mean towards the ultimate and only end which was originally one’s own acceptance in to heaven (with limited seating) but is now one with the most wealth and status, as designated in socio-economic terms.
—
title: Mexicans For Resident, 2017+ (Uniting With Mexicans)
For fear of being named ignorant and quixotic, I stall putting my name to such gross simplifications and stereotypes as may be contained herein, but for love of my dreams of a better world and in union with my fellow humans, I stall no longer. I am going to briefly speak (outline) my vague hopes in a people (Mexicans, especially those now in the USA) that I think naturally wield most of the answers the western humans need help with, whether or not either group knows it.
¡Español es la lengua de la revolución! The much more indigenous central Americans who yet speak Spanish due to early European colonialism—ranging from southern Mexico to Honduras and Guatemala—are now in significant numbers in the United States, and what a loss to us all if they are forcibly removed or feel compelled to leave these lands behind. I think Subcomandante Galeano (formerly Subcomandante Marcos) had an immediate intuitive sense of the decency and potency of these darker-skinned people a long time ago, which was in part what drew him to them. Whether or not this was true for him, it is certainly true for me, and I feel drawn to them for what I empirically observe. They are the embodied realization of so many of my idealizations.
They blow the leaves of others for economic surviving, but they leave their own leaves to sow eco-systemic thriving. First generation Mexicans, Hondorans, Guatemalans, and others I’ve encountered from Central and South America, still have cultural wisdom and often first-hand experience with agriculture, something northern Americans have all but forgotten. Their poorer places of origin are less dependendent on machinery for food production, a real benefit to their non-esoteric yet precious wisdom. They have voluntary simplicity built in to so many aspects of their lives, and are chastised often for living in such close quarters which is really something to be applauded by any who speak of reducing carbon. The culture of the Mexicans that have migrated to the United States is largely invisible (subaltern), even to the radical eyes who have utopian hopes and carry them out with intentional communities. May this not remain the case…
The Mexicans usually do not fancy to dress themselves in revolutionary ideology or ideas, which perhaps speaks to how truly revolutionary they are, in their naked unadorned selves. They ride bikes while we drive cars, they huddle together while we drift further apart, they relax and listen to music while we push relentlessly forward for profit or to pay debts we’ve allowed ourselves to incur. Perhaps not as radical as some un-contacted peoples, but fortunately for us we are in contact with them and they can do a lot for us just by following their examples, to help us realize our radical dreams. Learning Spanish can go a long way in going a long way with them. However, this is a time limited opportunity. The second generation Mexicans are imperiled by the American consumer culture whilst our generation and younger are actively being sterilized to the fertile opportunities that migrate in as pollen on the wind.
May we consciously open ourselves up to their beautiful ways and habits for a needed cross pollination, and so too their language so that we may learn so many balancing remedies that western culture is so obviously lacking. Again as reminder, I sense this is for a limited time only. ¡Adelante!
—
title: Gaming The Olympics
Merely an observation that there is a quasi-predominance of water games in the Olympics and it has come to favor those places and countries with a history of water interaction. Oceania, and previous coastal people’s prestige have set the tone with the engineering and adoptions of these games in to the canon of athletics, to the dis-benefit of largely arid and land locked nations (Mongolia?) as well as poorer ones (the two are not always in correlation), though not surprisingly sports are a reflection of political and sociological realities.
Yet, we do spend very little time as a species in the water regardless of our location relative to bodies of water, but still there are a whole slew of water events that require grand and esoteric infrastructural investment to propagate.
—
title: Poor Ritualization And Superstition
As a probable factor of how superstition grew in to cultural normativity, a hypothesis I am chewing on is that there were one or a series of poor teachers of some older, non-superstition imbued practice. For example, the original creators and practitioners of a Shamanic-vibration practice to acutely alter consciousness would as they aged probably teach a new generation, if the practice were found to be particularly useful by the culture. As generations wear on, there is a likelihood that a poor teacher and/or a quack practitioner who didn’t have the essentials of the ritual down, would continue the practice anyways and after some generations of this, and the uncritical cultural reverence for the practice, albeit now a morphed one, would render the practice impotent and empty, bereft of its original real energy. Rather than ridding themselves of the voided practice, cultures that are built on strict adherence to tradition fill in the gaps of the lacking-practice with a faith (belief) in the power of the practice without any real tangible evidence. Superstitions are part and parcel of this process, and they emerge to protect and keep people from straying from the practice or belief in its power; bad things may happen to those who commit sacrilege.
Out Voting: Rhetoric Of A Door-to-Door Anti-Voting Campaign
“I’m doing a campaign to encourage fellow Americans to consider not voting in the national election next month,” is what I’ve said on some surprise October occasions, following a knock at a door that was then opened (close to 50% thus far). Depending on their response or lack thereof, I commonly continue with the rhetoric that “by voting for either candidate you have to own what they do once they are in office” or the point that has been central to my argument, that “any vote—regardless of for whom— is a vote for the system that allows such corrupt, narrow, and elitist choices to get elected in the first place”.
Concurrently to my talking points, I’ve offered a copy of this flyer that has reasons listed for considering this no-vote alternative. Points such as disenfranchisement of the youth who have the most time left on this planet, yet no decision making power, is what I save when a high or grade schooler opens the door. Gerrymandering also came up once, but not yet the argument that prisoners should have, more than anyone, a right and need to have a say; a slippery issue is prisoners, perhaps analogous to taking sides with the Palestinians in that unending conflict, but nonetheless this hasn’t come up yet.
Generally, the discussions don’t focus on the flyer because of practical reasons (no one has chosen to read while an odd stranger stands there silently at their door watching them). The flyers have been what I lean on as my public speaking tries to grow out of its cocoon. Perhaps it was read later on, or thrown away—a fate unbeknownst to me. The depth of conversation that I had with three particular people (ranging over 30 minutes each) told me they at least would check out the flyer at some point. More importantly than that, it was nice for both of us to have the open political discussion that is so rare in this supposed democracy; so that has been refreshing. Several people felt they could open up to me about the things that annoyed or infuriated them, including the media, the constructed race tensions, political correctness, and the candidates of course. I got to introduce fears of mine that I had not considered at the time of the flyers’ mass printing: one candidate’s words and policies may cause a civil war; the other candidate’s words and policies will cause a world war; and both may cause both! Other natural tangents to our conversations have been on the option of third parties (being taken up by more than a few I have met). I have interjected at this point, somewhat of a reiteration, that “voting for a third party in a structurally two party system is voluntarily signing on for the system and agreeing to let it marginalize your voice further”. The canvassing I did at my college brought me in to contact with some third partiers as well as some asking, “what next: because really, what will not voting really accomplish?”. A good question, and feeling the necessity to give a quick response, I think I did well to the student by saying “growing our own food”. A point, perhaps a weak point, one that hasn’t yet arose in discussion, is: how to differentiate that one’s not voting should be interpreted by the authorities as the symbol of a person disgusted by the status quo and declaring themselves free of the responsibility of condoning government corruption, and a person who is merely apathetic. Not a central issue, but there is lots of room for ambiguity, and misappropriation of intent by the manipulators up on high.
Hopefully the above gives you some flavor of what we commoners are doing in this pen-ultimate month, and what some of our thoughts and reactions are to this continuing and upcoming shit show. There are still 3 weeks left and many doors to be knocked on until the nadir, and a November 9th Coalition for me (and you?) to promote in case it helps smooth out some of the hard landings that truly progressive (my definition probably is quite different than the amorphous term used by people who wear it as an identity) people will feel if they lock themselves in to electoral politics as being the be-all-and-end-all.
Say no more, &
Vote no more!
Voting is not zugzwang, though it is the legitimacy-thirsty oligarchs who like to force it, either culturally as mandatory or legally as compulsory.
November 9th Coalition
Politics in the context of the United States has for a very long time been largely directed (intentionally) in to the narrow forum of electoral politics and their election cycles. November 8 is this year’s ultimate day that ends an election cycle, after which the constructed consensus is that common people—either feeling as winners or losers based on election results—have played their roles in the democracy and ought to return to their private affairs, leaving the professional politicians to their business for some hundred odd days.
Not all, but most Americans have agreed—albeit through their actions and lack thereof—to this arrangement where they shut up and allow government to govern the majority of the time. The November 9 Coalition, now as a facebook group, is my humble attempt to introduce new fuel to chew on for the people fired up during this electoral politics season (especially Berners and maybe some Trump supporters) and provide an alternative viewpoint that doesn’t confine democracy to the highly controlled ballot box and supplementary corporate media bombardments. I have a disdain for facebook in particular, and social media in general, but I often make compromises and try to leverage these systems more than they might leverage me, and in this case the benefit of using social media is that is where many mainstream political people have confined themselves to, and there they can be brought in to quick acquaintance with other individuals (anarchists, anonymous) who do not see November 8th as the day to place all of one’s hopes AND fears. There are many allies that respective groups don’t know they have outside their own defined space(s)—I would argue it’s part of the job of electoral politics to create multiple blindspots to potential potent unions of peoples.
The group is just a platform for connection, my hope is to inspire some awareness that democracy can be more than just voting, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy (if we all act that it is true, it will become true). The group itself, due to my poor time management that I allow for my creations, will come to limp in to Wednesday November 9 and afterwards resemble a bastard child as I allow myself to be consumed by other interests. But perhaps not! Anyways, another set of dice that I roll, we shall see…
a car irony
Hi reader, I appreciate all of the probably undeserved attention I get from you bearing with me through my nit-picking critiques of this and that daily modern phenomenon. I don’t know if any of it will be for naught, or not—perhaps I should stop writing and make the full plunge in to farming? Farming is my body’s passion, if not fully my brain’s passion (yet). I just feel compelled (copper personality and ocd are probably big influences) to mention and publicize these little ideas about how the world is not working in our favor, hoping that if in accumulation enough are identified we can really make the world a better place. I remind myself to focus on problems that are theoretically preventable, and not so far removed from human tangible power that they feel disempowering just to ponder. Anyways, thanks for reading these sort of ramblings too, which you have if you got this far down!
To make it worth your time, what I was originally going to post about actually was perhaps nit-picking, but I feel compelled to mention it:
Instinctively, I would think that the act of sitting down gives a self-reinforcing feedback loop sequence to the brain->body->brain->body, and so on, that it is time to safely relax and let one’s guard down. However: one of the generally most dangerous activities humans partake in is driving, which of course takes place while we are sitting down (I am not suggesting we should have standing cars! I am quite of the mind that cars—and trucks, and most other metallic objects that move at high speeds—should be uninvented). We probably let our guard down far too often when sitting and watching things of consequence, and too easily falling in to complacency when sitting and viewing things of little consequence, but to keep this to driving—I think we are in even greater danger (unjust danger) because of things that are outside of our immediate control; such things as the very shape of the car, but also of course that cars weigh many times more than our little bodies and they move much faster too, a deadly combination when the metal frame collides internally or externally with the human frame.
As far as uninventing this system, this probably seems too tall a task and against what I previously said. But to the contrary I think there is a (parking) lot we can all choose to get towards the ideal of a carless world. The car-road-fuel system, like any other, can be atrophied by lack of engagement through finding ways to limit and stop the use of it. Living more locally is a big part of the fix, and would fix a number of things including a great deal of the psychological woes by being simultaneously under and over connected (a topic for another post, if I can ever get to it) to wide geographies that we (some of us) presume mastery over while really only have cursory knowledge of.
¡Park the car and move yourself, instead of parking yourself in a moved car!
¡A carless world can finally return to be a little more of a careless world!
Related posts:
Visceral Hypersensitivity: An Optimistic Angle
If you are unfortunate enough to already know what visceral hypersensitivity (VH henceforth) is, then maybe the spin I put on it can leave you feeling fortunate, or relieved for those close to you that have the condition. A viscerally hypersensitive person feels every bodily occurrence more (the brain not necessarily being exclusive from the body in this “feeling” regard either, I’d argue). As far as I understand, the criteria for the VH condition were generated out of a need to group and explain real somatic symptoms that people with digestive discomfort experience, but I think there is a lot more to VH than gastro doctors—or the medical community at large—have had the fancy or need to delve into, and certainly a great deal more than I can suggest here. Still, I wanted to offer the following as explanations, conjectures, and “symptoms” (or compliments) to VH.
We Who Are Viscerally Hypersensitive:
– are not suffering from a “modern disease” or neolithic condition (though in the context it would be defined as such), rather we have VH as a result of evolutionary pressures that made it fit to arise in humans (or it has always been in homo sapiens and probably larger groups, and we with VH have not devolved out of having it). Our hypersensitivity generally manifests most noticeably in our bodily reactions to a wide range of supposed foods. VH is our bodies saying, “don’t eat that shit, that offers no nutritional benefit and it’s full of toxins and anti-nutrients that we don’t have the enzymatic capabilities to handle.” Our bodies have a vigilance that makes them smarter than our eyes that just see sugar and salt coated non-food and throw it in our mouths; our bodies do what they do best and evacuate that non-food before it has a chance to do as much damage. With VH a person’s body which seems to be the torturer, is actually the teacher that points to the torture coming from something much larger and much more distilled: agricultural products and byproducts that aren’t at all healthy for human consumption.
– have quicker reflexes to prevent an imminent accident from occurring, precisely because we are so tuned in to the present (in a non-meditation sort of way) and the momentum of which toward physical things are tending. I have often stopped a water from spilling that I had just accidentally knocked in to, so I am very attuned to my own clumsiness and in its own damage control.
– tend to have some premonitions of the future as in a visionary, but we often end up being false visionaries in the eyes of others because we may preclude the bad event from occurring by being aware of its presence. This may sound like I am loading on a mystical element to VH, but I think it is something completely embedded in the total intuitive awareness that in general has been dulled by a birth into a prefabricated world. We are the canaries 2.0 that can warn ahead of time that the mine is dangerous for all living forms, especially to ourselves; we don’t want to die a martyr, we want to live smarter!
– are more aware of the feelings of life (or lack of life) “in the air”. Speaking of air, we don’t appreciate it when others attempt to dilute an unpleasant odor by spraying Axe all over it, because then we just smell the synthesis of Axe and awful, which is a new amplified awful (this is why as a paleo eater of cow liver, I don’t attempt to “hide” the liver in a larger recipe, but eat it plain and don’t want to drag the process out by mixing it with other diluting foods).
– are more acutely affected by seasonal affective disorder and we sense the malice in the season’s changing and the joy in an oncoming change for the better.
– seem to amplify bodily sensations. This may be true to some extent, but the larger overlooked “normalized” reality is that most others are more extreme in the opposite direction in that they dampen their sensations of pain and discomfort to a detrimental numbing level.
– have a very porous, open chakra, in that we feel other’s pains and joys and take onto ourselves lots of emotions and experiences that would seem to be other.
– tend to be of the O blood type (this is pure conjecture). To elaborate a little on why I am bringing up blood type, it’s not that I think type O blood is itself determinant for a wide range of generalizations about a person, but blood type I think can be used as a marker for a larger milieu of systemic and genetic entities that make VH arise in an individual. Blood type is correlative, not causative.
Some more information/viewpoints on VH:
http://thegirlinyogapants.com/2014/11/06/low-fodmap-diet-ibs/
https://visceralhypersensitivity.wordpress.com/
https://sensitivepepper.wordpress.com/
https://abominableabdominal.wordpress.com/
https://mastopedia.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/ketotifen-decreases-visceral-hypersensitivity/
and probably many more!
The Liberation Of Metals
“metals groove to their rigid dance, while we sit watching, entranced”
We are normalized to what is a very anomalous geographical feature, namely the high quantity of large elemental metals and metal-dominated alloys. The most striking image I can think to provide you is gazing upon a skyscraper under construction with countless tons of steel “I-beams” conquering the airspace, or a suspension bridge donning voluminous quantities vast metallic twine. These peculiar purities of structural metal, which we can go and see without much trouble (unless we are in an unmantamed jungle), were never available to strike our ancestors’s perceptions. In the past—geographically speaking—most metals were more dispersed and far less in quantity at the crustal surface and atmospheric level, intermingled as they were with other chemicals and compounds where they served an important role but in relatively minute presence. The metals circulating in human cultural activity today, however, used to mostly be below our visibility and buried underneath the soil level, and deeper still. At present, metals exist not just alongside us at a much higher rate and in a much purer form, they also exist within us: our bodily tissues and organs have quantities of metals and metallic compounds that are generally too high (thus the high rates of autism and many, many other modern health conditions). The corollary to the high presence of newer metals is that other, particular metals (e.g. zinc) that have an important symbiosis with organisms may exist within us at lower levels than necessary, as they are out-dueled by other, competing metals (e.g. copper; other organically competitive metals are molybdenum and tungsten, selenium and mercury, and more that I’m just learning about).
Metals—before human adventures into bogs, mining, and sifting river sediment—would be unearthed only by cataclysmic earthen collisions with asteroids (and other spatial bodies); a large impact would stir the earthen pot, adding some fresh deposits of metals and unearthing others more accustomed to the depths. These days, the slow unceasing meteor that is human industry keeps throwing more metals up onto the surface, constantly displacing organic life that previously dwelt in the space that is now the home of the metals. These metals that so negatively affect us are the key to the process of unearthing more and more metals—it is rather tautological. We must ask ourselves: are we using metallic machinery to dig up more metals, or are the metals using us to dig up more of their friends? Does our lack of apparent control mean the metals are in control? Humans certainly have become less culturally organic and transitioned onto what could be dubbed a “metalloid path”.
Metals In Motion
From the perspective of motion—if we exclude sea waters and atmospheric winds (see note L, first paragraph)—there is a much higher ratio than there ever was before of heavier metal dominated chemical compounds than organic compounds; metals are getting plenty of exercise, but at our expense. One extreme example of where metals have been liberated very quickly into the larger atmosphere is the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. Uranium and Plutonium, very organically destabilizing metals, have certainly restricted movement in proximity to Fukushima. The half-life of these metals quickly quarters a human life, if not “hexadecadenth-ing” it (1/16th). Perhaps the violent connotation of hexa-decimating life would not be inappropriate to convey what occurs after too much metallic-derived radiation exposure. Unfortunately, as opposed to Roman military decimation, nuclear radiation kills a far larger number of people without the strict control of human managers. Metals are in the driver’s seat driving, while humans are in the driver’s seat sitting doing little. The humans that do escape the effects of the potent metal pollution of a nuclear reactor disaster still have to deal with a restriction to their freedom of movement: DON’T GO ANYWHERE NEAR FUKUSHIMA.
Metals’ dominion of motion goes largely unnoticed, and there is a “textbook” physics experiment that goes to show how oblivious and uncritical people are of this fact. Inertial frames of reference are often initially demonstrated by physics teachers by using a particular space familiar to everyone: inside a moving vehicle. To prove that the space inside the moving car becomes it’s own inertial frame, the teacher might ask why no one ever feels wind despite undergoing high speeds; but to really bring home the point, the teacher usually gets us to think about a ball being tossed straight up in the car, and that it doesn’t fly into the rear window but returns to the thrower. Inertial frames of reference are now understood and everyone moves on, but no one thinks to ask, “are such inertial frames of reference normal to the planet’s history?” Even more to the point, no one brings up how despite the ~1,000 kilogram metal based car being hurled through (our) space with such violent force, that motion is almost completely sterile inside the car. Further troubling aspects are as follows: there is often a lot of boredom experienced on the part of the passengers; there is stale air that is frequently being cycled through a conditioner; there is light distorted and diminished by tinted, reflective windows; there is Earthen electrical isolation provided by the insulating rubber tires. The interior of modern vehicles in a large “sense” approaches sensory deprivation tanks, and surely the negative psychological effects of one forced to experience the peculiar space of a car, are ramped up as an effect. There are not voices raising this concern of why there is so little organic activity surrounding such a high energy event as a car in motion; perhaps the very energy available for thinking is cordoned off in the peculiar deprivation tanks that are our modern vehicles. Such an inertial frame of reference is an internal frame of restriction!
¿Carbon, Carbone, Cargone?
Where in this world of metallic motion is all the carbon going as a result? The question has multiple answers, the first of which is that carbon is not going anywhere, it is staying put, by suppression. Carbon that is enmeshed in living organic compounds—i.e. humans and all of our biological friends—is stuck in place or in a restrictive inertial frame which gives the illusion of motion. As for non-human animals, migration patterns are being reduced, forcing them to become “home bodies” or faced with becoming “dead bodies” (road kill, toxic-stream kill). Areas of habitability are being reduced through desertification, a complicated process that metals at least play a partial role in.L The inclusion of higher loads of metals within these organisms is also restricting them (and killing them), with some populations of water animals known to be dying off directly because of metal pollution. Essentially, the space in which carbon based life can thrive is steadily shrinking on all fronts.
The second place that carbon is going, is into the atmosphere, resulting because of its oppression. Simplified and alienated chemicals like CO2 and other building blocks of life are released in the processes that involve moving weighty metals; if from the dust we came, to the dust we are returning—the ~400 ppm (and rising) CO2 building blocks give plenty of proof of that! Metals are a lot more massive than carbon centered lifeforms, and to move them around requires a much higher calorie diet, despite whatever efficiencies adding rubber wheels (or floating them on the ocean) to the massive unleashed metal giants fretting through our environments provides. It is towards this end that the majority of human and metal activity on earth takes place: the extraction (via drill-mining) of high potency energy found in carbon based fuels. Millions of decades of condensed and concentrated carbon energy provide the only energy combinations (along with nuclear power, perhaps) powerful enough to feed the metal-moving agenda. Does peak oil exist, and if so is it enough to stop the metal hegemony?
The third place that carbon is going in the metal driven world is into enslavement at the purposes of hardening the metal. Carbon is intentionally alloyed to iron in small amounts (less than 5%) for the service of iron to make it harder for particular industrial purposes—it is marginalized; an interesting parallel to this ratio would be the aforementioned amount of movement of metals out-competing many-fold the motion of carbon-centered life. Another telling character in this story is oxygen. Metals underground used to be plagued by oxidation issues; now, above ground, metals routinely get rid of their oxygen, steel away our carbon, all while we carbon-based life forms seem to be bodily accruing oxygen as our own rusting agent, resulting in widespread oxidative damage. Oxygen is a turncoat—reactive and shifty—if we ascribe it agency in this narrative.
Metals In Charge
The metals in motion we have to deal with are moving as fast (or faster?) than a speeding bullet or shrapnel, slowing down then to modern transportation of planes/trains/cars/elevators, and then we have standing structures like buildings and transmission towers. Both the metals in motion and those standing give off some “destructive” electromagnetic interference, especially if they are carrying an electrical charge as in the case of the transmission tower’s thick power lines. Carbon-based life has adapted the best that it can in the face of all this metal, being more cautious (looking both ways before you cross) and passive (not crossing); it’s reminiscent of the Artilleryman describing humans adapting to Martians in The War of the Worlds (pages 248-251). One modern social habit that displays this passivity and awkwardness that people feel in association with the rigid spaces modern building technologies allow us is the over-utterance of “sorry”. It’s not completely a matter that “sorry” has changed meaning—though that is sometimes the case—but that some people are generally sorry for being in the way of a smooth flow of traffic. Whether it’s crossing the street in a very apologetic manner, waving and prostrating oneself to the massive car that is letting you walk pass, and seeming overly grateful that such a giant beast would have the kindness of heart to let you as a mere pedestrian cross first; or someone exiting a narrow corridor as another person is entering and saying “sorry” for being a body block to the other person’s continuing through the corridor uninterrupted. There is such shame many of us feel in our very existence, that we are somehow awkward and uncomely beings that are exceptions to the rule and need to be accompanied with constant apology.
Unfortunately, the latent content of our zeitgeist is that we’ve been conquered irreparably by metals (or computer technology, which is of the same logical blend) and there is no option to escape. In an inverted way to how Napoleon supposedly used language differences to use his conquered people to fight for him and not unite against him, metals have us all speaking their same language—which I think would be a type of binary—so that we are easily decoded. Words that could unite organic life to rebel against metallic life are not just marginalized from our typical linguistic use, they are being erased entirely as if they never had existed. Nuspeak—and universal efforts to have 100% literacy, including digital—is the cage that needs no prison guard because the prefrontal cortex is so effectively segregated from the other thinking regions. We are frequently unable to think, and thus communicate, the biological problems we are increasingly imposing on ourselves. All of these electric, metal-based infrastructured systems are regarded as essential to life—increasingly understood to be a priori to it—and so we put all our hope into its continuance and invest in its endurance, but all to our detriment.
There is still a warm, humid darkness at the end of The Enlightenment tunnel; sacred spaces un-scarred and less chronically scared are still available to those who want to escape the everyday metallurgy. One can choose to leave the metal majoritarian areas of contrived macro-climates in opting for a micro-climate where life grows and finds the healthiest niches. It is safer to be a freer life form in such a micro-climate, such as a commune where fast paced metal/electrical life is kept to a minimum (something which I recommend!). For those of us who want to battle (and succeed) right where we are: we are more complex than the metal creations we’ve unleashed, despite our very real depletion, and we do have biological systems within us and around us that are allies. The edible dandelions that grow on an untreated lawn are dynamic accumulators which restore soil health and mine up metals and other minerals in their proper balanced form; they can do this in some of the most abused landscapes and are vitality’s pioneers. We can build up oxytocin concentrations in our body by physically connecting with our species in a variety of different circles like massage groups (and other more and less taboo interactions) that does not include metal as a mediator. We can remove foods from our diet and undergo fasting when no healthy alternatives are present or growing. It is important to recognize that there may be much withdrawal pain (emotionally, and physically as with the Herxheimer reaction) as we detox from metal-dominated living, but it is a small price to pay compared to extinction.
THE ENDZ
Metal Appendages (Oppendices)
1) Artificial aging: Entire ages of “human development” are named after the particular metals introduced for weaponry, which is only the sharp tip of the great girth of non-metallic (mostly stone) developments early on in civilization’s history. This surely speaks to the level of worship—presumptively merited—that humans felt (and feel) in regards to metals. Metal was the cast, the clothing, the tip, to allow a widening of violence among humans whilst stone was at the core of the infrastructural project. Now, after the industrial revolution, it is metal which forms the foundational core, and stone that has been displaced as the superficial adjunct. To be literary—swords and axes only cut skin deep, but the electric grid penetrates right through us, deeper and more totally than Vlad the Impaler.
2) radar sdrawkcaB: Metals are not built to appear on the radar screens of organic life forms—there is no evolutionary precedent built in for organic life to recognize or deal with any concentration of metal that isn’t already sublimated in a properly balanced ecosystem. Bees are supposedly disturbed by radio and cellular phone frequencies, birds by that of wind turbines (ecosystem’s unfamiliarity with metal keeps the metal objectively intact for relatively long stretches of time where even common types of bacteria dare not populate on its surfaces—indeed maintenance is very efficient when the cleaning of metallic surfaces is seldom needed). The motion and concentration of metals is like a stealth bomber to our innate perceptual proclivities that we’re only able to see and recognize the potency of when we develop a “second” nature. As metal dominates more and more, nature does come second, it seems.
3) Metal as necrophiliac: The death of a carbon life form (then transitioned into a fossil fuel) is exactly what metals are dependent on for their own particular motion. Their intense motion on our Earth has heretofore in human interactions been dependent upon dead carbon matter. Their caloric needs met by gasoline ingestion is the destruction of us; it is metal feasting on the corpses of our carbonic ancestors. After digestion is finished they leave their excrement—plastics, pesticides, and other compounds—as donations to our cause of theirs. As they eat our carbonic fossilized corpses, they also have been eating us alive; if we include them as a specie-s, then we are not alone in our eating of food that is both alive and dead. The metals are borrowing on our credit, but they will stop only when we stop supplying our lives to work their hungry furnaces; until then we are just disinterestedly holocausting ourselves.
10) ¿Abiotic Carbonic Energy?: There are ongoing hypothesis that some carbon based fuels are not truly fossil fuels, as they are not in a lineage that once had some living biomass from which to be derived from. I muse here, but if this is the case could it be the higher levels of metals below the surface—using geo-pressures as a catalyst—growing their own potent source of combustible energy?
11) Yours, Mines, and Theirs: Metal mines us more surely than we mine metal. We spend our time drilling for them holding them as idols, and even as the metal idles in stagnation it drills against us, into us, with the electromagnetic force.
12) Iron Sharpens Iron: but concurrent to such sharpening iron dulls Life. We’ve betrayed the carbonic in favor of the ironic.
13) Sequestered: The concern of carbon sequestering is quite secondary to the very real need to bury metals. A great deal more could be said of this topic when I make the time to elaborate a juxtaposition between these two possibilities to heal the Earth.
20) Change versus Acceleration: We are not in an epoch of accelerating change—change is decelerating, it is dying, the becomings being beings; it is matter that is accelerating in it’s bundling and simplification to higher, larger amounts—metal here being the quintessential example. These concepts unfortunately are conflated and inverted which leads to a situation in which the problem is not appropriately intuited. Intuitive immediate imaginative senses are blocked, cobweb-ed over by destructive concepts such as “change is accelerating”. Matter is accelerating, not change!
21) We are our own key to open this lock: The liberation of Metals is the shackling of lighter non-metals. Metals are the cuffs that need no lock to imprison life. Their very concentration could have only been accomplished by our previously subtle intuitive abilities turned for destructive uses—we humans traded our synthetic imaginations for the pastime of analysis, and we project outwards the cutting logic that has us turning disparate metals into unified weapons against our own kind, reflective steel purified to great degrees for precise surgical uses. Mirroring our adoption of analysis as our inner monologue has been the ability to create extremely hot controlled temperatures as well as those extremely cold, this within small spaces where the general laws of thermodynamics are bracketed by metals and their allies. Metals could only have grown and gathered in such stature by our own fiddling with rapidly distinct and changing heats that separate and recombine old compounds into new ones, never before known to the Earthen context.
Notes
L The role that metals play in desertification could possibly be analyzed to be twofold, though more or fewer actual reasons may exist beyond the scope of the author. The first role is what has been mentioned in many places already in this essay, namely that metals in motion reduce organisms’ ability to be as dynamically involved in the environment, which might be a definition for a desert. To flesh this out a little more, consider how a lot of wind erosion on a mountain top keeps trees from growing there, but so too it could be said that a lot of trees growing there could keep down the wind erosion. Either way, the degree to which there is the homogeneous motion of larger, less subtle forces—a constant drying western gale force wind that acts as one large rigid force as opposed to a light humid breeze that dances between trees in no particular direction—is the degree to which smaller more complex developments are precluded. Along with the great currents of air that are eroding subtle areas that used to be rich with plant and fungal biomass, so too are greater currents of ocean water playing a role in eroding oceanic life, especially at the coasts where it used to be the greatest. Zooming way out, here’s a galactic example of the same phenomenon: think of a galaxy where large asteroids, planets, and even stars are constantly colliding and causing large violent impacts whereby thermal dynamic changes are undergoing huge changes in the local contexts; these large bodies gathering elemental matter and making it act roughly uniform (think of a giant gaseous planet with little chemical complexity) will give no chance to allowing any life to endure, whether carbon based or any other type. The celestial bodies interacting are themselves, perhaps, the lifeforms; however, it is a big waste of the smaller potentials within them: the variety of chemical elements from which they have pulled by gravity into strict enslavement could make such a richer tapestry, just as a one building with LEGO blocks can make something far more interesting than one can with DUPLO blocks.
The second role that liberated metals play in contributing to desertification is the way that their temperature fluctuations mimic that of a desert. Metals heat quickly with exposure to a thermal energy source, but also cool quickly when that energy source is removed (think of a pan being heated by a flame). This is the same process that goes on in a desert, whereby the sun’s thermal energy warms it during the day, but then when the sun sets the desert becomes very cool very quickly. Our particular earthly forms of life, at least, do best when under a relatively constant thermodynamic heat. This regularized temperature that our life needs is emblematic of the modalities of a life force: harmonization occurring through a common interactive vibrational level. The violent swings in temperature prevent life from spreading those deepening complex bonds because harmony is constantly being shattered/interrupted. Large concentrations of metals at the crustal surface are sure to exacerbate these swings in temperature, and so too will continue to diminish the global biomass which is so critical in regulating temperatures to foster additional layers of life.
ZThe beginnings—thankfully we haven’t reached an end, or else I would not be typing and you would not be reading. May this lore of metals help dissuade us from the lure of metals.
Some Affinitive Posts:
Political searching for a Kartoon: Ku Klux Korporations
A few different conversation lines that I would draw upon for a political comic strip, if I had the skill or digital know-how:
Scene: Corporate guy (CG) in suit talking to KKK member, both have drinks in their hands, the KKK member only listening and nodding in understanding:
Slide 1
CG: “Hey, no need to wear those bed sheets to commit your crimes, we have corporate clothing and technology that hides us from responsibility from the lynchings we create”
Slide 2
CG: “and you don’t have to worry about breaking the law, we have lawyers for that… a few of which will be appointed as legislators to keep the laws on our side.”
Slide 3
CG: “One more thing, we don’t wait for night to do our bad deeds, we get paid for them! And we spread out who we hurt, so it is less visible.”
A caption below might say: “Hiding behind layers of blankets, or layers of technology” or “Republican-debate House Party”
Political searching for a Cartoon
If I had the skill or digital know-how, I would draw this political cartoon:
A bunch of papers/books piled on top of one another, each saying something unprecedented “unprecedented gene manipulation” “unprecedented number of autoimmune diseases” “unprecedented distortion by a fiat currency: The Dollar” “unprecedented number of species dying off” “unprecedented number of children born with autism” “unprecedented disregard for future generations”, and possibly more. Each book higher on the pile would be further over-hanging the desk on which they were stacked. On top of the pile of books will be a classroom globe with the ironic word “earth’s first” which really means it will fall first and the hardest.
A commentary caption by one character could be “look how high progress has lifted us!”, or “we keep breaking our previous records, we’re really doing something right!”
A responding commentator: “yes”, sigh, “our children will indeed be inheriting all of our progress.”
Desertification
Desertification (As Earth’s Subtleties Are Extincted)L
The role that metals play in desertification could possibly be analyzed to be twofold, though more or fewer actual reasons may exist beyond the scope of the author. The first role is what has been mentioned in many places already in this essay, namely that metals in motion reduce organisms’ ability to be as dynamically involved in the environment, which might be a definition for a desert. To flesh this out a little more, consider how a lot of wind erosion on a mountain top keeps trees from growing there, but so too it could be said that a lot of trees growing there could keep down the wind erosion. Either way, the degree to which there is the homogenous motion of larger, less subtle forces—a constant drying western gale force wind that acts as one large rigid force as opposed to a light humid breeze that dances between trees in no particular direction—is the degree to which smaller more complex developments is precluded. Along with the great currents of air that are eroding subtle areas that used to be rich with plant and fungal biomass, so too are greater currents of ocean water playing a role in eroding oceanic life, especially at the coasts where it used to be the greatest. To give a galactic example: think of a galaxy where planets large asteroids, planets, and even stars are constantly colliding and causing large violent impacts whereby thermal dynamic changes are undergoing huge changes in the local contexts; these large bodies gathering elemental matter and making it act roughly uniform (think of a giant gaseous planet with little chemical complexity) will give no chance to allowing any life to endure, whether carbon based or any other type. The celestial bodies interacting are themselves, perhaps, the lifeforms; however, it is a big waste of the smaller potentials within them: the variety of chemical elements from which they have pulled by gravity into strict enslavement could make such a richer tapestry, just as a one building with LEGO blocks can make something far more interesting than one can with DUPLO blocks.
The second role that liberated metals play in contributing to desertification is the way their temperature fluctuations mimic that of a desert. Metals heat quickly with exposure to a thermal energy source, but also cool quickly when that energy source is removed (think of a pan being heated by a flame). This is the same process as goes on in a desert, whereby the sun’s thermal energy warms it during the day, but then when the sun sets the desert becomes very cool very quickly. Our particular earthly forms of life, at least, do best when under a relatively constant thermodynamic heat. This regularized temperature that our life needs is emblematic of the modalities of a life force: harmonization occurring through a common interactive vibrational level. The violent swings in temperature prevent life from spreading those deepening complex bonds because harmony is constantly being shattered/interrupted. Large concentrations of metals at the crustal surface are sure to exacerbate these swings in temperature, and so too will continue to diminish the global biomass which is so critical in regulating temperatures to foster additional layers of life.
Notes:
LThis publication is a footnote to a larger piece I’ve been compiling, “The Liberation Of Metals” and I thought it could stand on it’s own as a post. The upcoming ”’Liberation of Metals is about the role of the large quantities of metals we’ve introduced to our crustal surface, and how these metals are destroying organic connectivity, of which this note published here was an important facet that I struggled to fit within the linear narrative stricture. There’s even more I would’ve liked to publish in here about the ramifications of human simplifying/analytic interactions with our environment, that leads to such destructions as those wrought by industrial mono-crop farming methods. There are so many other things that we engage in that I probably am so normalized to that I don’t see. We are employing such an effort to average everything into a uniformity where the peaks and valleys of vital life are smoothed into a digital conformity. The “treatment” of emotions is another such example, where the dips and dives, highs and aspirations of a mood wave are sought to be controlled, averaged out, to a constant state of looking at things from a cool distance. We are estranged from our own bodily functionings by a rolling pin of pills. The blandness of eroding cannot be tasted for the taste buds are included in the wasting away…
Subverses 