The Council of Edmond – Meeting Minutes

TIME & LOCATION: The meeting took place on October 25, 2017 in an undisclosed location in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

PRESENT: Edmonds (host & facilitator), Ley, Gulian, Fred, Brian, Giovanni, Earl (note-taker), Gabriel, Geoff, Alex, Gendry (alias), Brendan, and Samantha (“uninvited”)

0) The meeting began with Edmonds reading the following excerpt/handout:

‘You will hear today all that you need in order to understand the purposes of the Enemy. There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it. But you do not stand alone. You will learn that your trouble is but part of the trouble of all the western world. The Ring! What shall we do with the Ring? That is the doom that we must deem.

‘That is the purpose for which you are called hither. Called, I say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.‘

‘Now, therefore, things shall be openly spoken that have been hidden from all but a few until this day.’

Part A – Worldly, Historical, and Future Problems

1) Sub-topic 1 – Oligarchy (introduced by Giovanni). The powerful were believed to be a major problem by all, but questions of what power is and where they got it (are hierarchies ontologically real) were discussed. Critical commentary from several members, and a salient question was if oligarchy is responsible primarily for the world’s ills, or if something systemic and infrastructural is more to blame.  The idea summarized that oligarchs themselves are still in the prison: “Property and money are the prison, the oligarchs merely the current prison guards.”

2) Sub-topic 2 – Racism (introduced by Earl). Racism is a major problem, yet after discussion it was believed to be a symptomatic resultant of other oppressions that has only become foundational to the racists’ identities as culturally learned. Also the concept of white privilege was downplayed in favor of a new understanding of “colored disprivilege”. Further, a unique struggle not normally elaborated in acceptable discourse was discussed, namely that many whites (WASPs) have deep community (and previously resource) deficits that explain the roots of their aggressive individual and national policies throughout history. Further discussion was tabled to allow for the next sub-topic which grew from the racism discussion.

3) Sub-topic 3 – Imperialism (introduced by Gabe). Lenin’s work on imperialism was averred to, and the notion of capitalism as a disease that will inevitably keep spreading, if allowed, was generally agreed to. Along these lines, it was posited that imperialism is not just the “macro” taking over of resources on other continents, or planets (an eventuality?), but also should include the control of biological life at the cellular (genetic modification) and even down to the quantum control of sub-atomic particles (accelerators and quantum computing). Imperialism comes from an internal weakness on the part of the oppressor, so despite its widespread devastation, it is still symptomatic in its origins.

4) Sub-topic 4 – Suburban clusterfuck (introduced by Edmonds). Credit was given to James Howard Kunstler as a general introducer of the suburban perils (physical and psychological) as well as the coiner of the term, though none were sure if that was truly the case. Dependence on electrical grids, food and resource supply chains, automation (tabled), depression, sameness versus difference grew out of this discussion. Also, cities as death-traps for a variety of similar reasons of fragility, but also violating and perverting to an extreme degree Dunbar’s number. There were a plenitude of apocalyptic scenarios put forth which one member pointed out was ironic to be coming from such a mundane thing as suburbia.

5) Sub-topic 5 – Civilization(S) (introduced by Gendry). The discussion of urban and suburban woes naturally went to civilization-as-a-whole (initially), where problems of sedentism were expounded upon. But there were some ardent defenses of sedentism, with references to scholarly work that said not all sedentary people in early history and pre-history needed to create ecologically destructive agricultural practices. It was pointed out that it was in fact nomadic people that often became the conquerors, but this idea was then problematized by the fact that most nomadic people were not “imperialistic” like this and that imperialism stemmed from intrinsic weaknesses in relation to a given land, especially were that land already occupied and “distorted” by sedentism. There was agreement that the effects of civilization to create climate change, by way of soil erosion and poor/ignorant land management, including domestication of animals and crops for mono-cropping, were huge factors in causing desertification and atmospheric carbon increases.

6) Sub-topic 6 – Propaganda (introduced by Alex). It was agreed that the powerful have always utilized multiple methods to coerce people, often resorting to misinformation instead of overt violence (for example through exaggeration or outright lying). Western representative democracy was forwarded as a prime, ongoing example of propaganda: representative democracy is when oligarchs take up acting. Propaganda was found to be a deep cultural force that goes beyond just social class, governmental, and economic oppression, but it can be found in parallel in all sorts of everyday relationships where manipulation is consciously or unconsciously utilized. The question to see if it’s pre-civilized went in to a discussion of other animals such as birds, namely peacocks, to know if the bright feathers males flaunted were representative of their virility or a sapping of their energy for the sake of a veneer; the oily sheen on a dog’s coat or even on a leafy plant were mentioned, too. Contemporary propaganda was agreed to be holistically inefficient, mentally enervating, and a parasitical draw on available resources that could be used elsewhere, except when it was itself highly artistic and its own end regardless of the distorted representation for another end.

7) Sub-topic 7 – Identity-Politics (introduced by Gabe). There was no consensus on whether or not identity politics was itself a problem or representative of many problems existing and a means to counter them. A conciliatory approach offered by one of the members on how to approach identity politics was that it depended on what the unifying identity was, and if it was a pre-existing alienated group defined by the oppressor, or an identity created by a loose group of marginalized (and not-so-marginalized) people to vent, gain attention, and/or seize power. The reconcilement centered on the idea that even if the problems for which the identity-based group was created were not solved, and even if new problems were created by the social group rising from their challenges, there often resulted positive internal community growth that filled the vacuum, and the issue(s) themselves could be viewed at the least as a vehicle to unite people in to community which they were all lacking. The discussion then became more genealogical in how identity politics ever arose, and then was tabled.

7a) 15 minute break followed by a 5 minute quiet reflection on the topics covered so far, and then a singular generation of a list of problems not yet covered so far.

8) Sub-topic 8 – Legality (introduced by Brendan). Brendan started off saying that law trials are not about justice, they are a sport between highly paid professionals who compete at the onlookers expense. This served as a beginning to the discussion which went quite deeper in to evaluations of what legality really is. It was put forth that more often than not that even were laws able to not contradict and negate other laws (for which biased and unbalanced lawyers and judges were paid to sort out), that the human channeling of energy in to legal systems over the millennia, regardless of the cohesion and coherence of the justice system, has been synonymous with greater and greater purging from the individual person an innate sense of vigilance and justice. Laws are the blindspot of justice, and now with an entire legal class, the laws have divorced everyday sense of ethics, which is in effect how the human disease can unleash itself on the Earth without any self-checks or thoughts to do so. Environmental stewardship was such an example of innate human consciousness that it needed to linguistic codification, and yet it has now taken centuries of destruction of the environment on the part of humans to finally render it in to law, and it is still ineffectual because it is contradicted by the rights of governments and individuals (corporations namely) to rape the land. Justice is a terribly long walk of the pen, with countless victims written over along the way; or is it?

9) Sub-topic 9 – Industrialization/Technology/Globalization (introduced by Brian). Though the topic of industrialization seems to have been overlapped with already in the sub-topics of imperialism and civilization, the discussion was qualified for additional insights that Brian, and then others following him, surfaced. Firstly, because many non-primitivist socialist-utopian affinities were present in group members, it was important that a discussion around the role of technology be had, presuming that the technology was in the hands of, for example, a gift-economy or worker-run city whereby it wasn’t used for individual profit, but for social progress. Industrialism for human use at the hands of worker-councils should be a good thing, if it could be done ecologically. However this very question became a central problem, and the open question remained on whether or not all technology or just certain technology is bad for the planet. The deep attachments to technology were admitted to on the part of all, however whether or not this was a bad thing or merely part of evolution was discussed. Some reductio ad absurdum examples entered the discussion but will not be listed in these notes. Suburbia was brought up again in this discussion but with attention to the many roads that industrialism required to connect the parts for the conquering of evermore of the land to convert it in to industrial use (if this was the type of industrialism that even a humane socialist economy would seek for). It remained an open question if industry could ever reach a utopian point where it was not destructive to any living things as was aspired to (presumably) in the Soviet Union.

10) Sub-topic 10 – Money (introduced by Fred). A discussion of mediation in general that first focused on money, but expanded to particularly the quantification and reification of consumer goods and services so that they might be translated in to monetary quantities, and the chafing down of all things to fit in to the cash nexus or other human categories of thought, and physicalitys that conformed with artifices. The social losses incurred when money was given legitimacy were discussed, and how other/older forms of kinship and resource sharing were weeded out; a huge quantity of money middle-men that emerged to bureaucratically manipulate it giving way eventually to huge “money making” institutions; money is the clothes that imperialists are dressed in. Also, intrinsic problems of money will always exist, it was argued even were there benevolent money-managers (such as automated robots, tabled for later).

11) Sub-topic 11 – Science (introduced by Geoff). The science sub-topic discussion continued right where industrialism and money left off, but quickly mixed in philosophical ideas revolving around what reification really is and if it’s the method of science to do so (dissecting and then analyzing). What is science really and if is used as a term so broadly is it really multiple things conflated together? Is it just mere empirical observation? How does science choose its objects and what mereological assumptions does it make? Representationalism (and misrepresentation) are cultural and shifting far more than they are objective, and yet this is the way of science that constantly disproves itself, meaning it is a long history of being wrong, outside of the aspect of science that is the humble recording of observations and drawing minute conclusions. Thomas Kuhn was indicated though his name couldn’t be remembered at the time. Specific examples of science’s direct impact were brought up. Science enabled nuclear power (or was it the human imagination, and science shouldn’t be given deistic agency?), and now in peace time there are black-holes created routinely with great hubris, and great danger. Will modified organisms really be helpful in evolving the planet forward, or are they a murder of life with life’s own corpse? Discussion went further, into the imperialism of knowledge, the unceasing human quest to know things, that has been conflated with evolution of the species; it has led to a great weakening of the human because of the time investment into obsessing about knowledge piles to the loss of in-body time that humans need. The poor posture overweight cubiclite was referenced.

12) Sub-topic 12 – Science/Fiction (introduced as “Artificial Intelligence” by Giovanni). Edmonds chose to title it Science/Fiction for writing purposes and to include a broader discussion beyond artificial intelligence. Immediately too the question was injected of if artificial intelligence can even attain artificial consciousness, for machines are not self-healing and evolving organically and are uncontained by programming, yet computers seem to have this fundamental restraint. If artificial intelligence is created (presumably organically and not electronically), or even if machines advanced enough to be almost autonomous and controlled by the oligarchy entirely, they would be deadly to all humans that didn’t serve some purpose. Ley had lots of background in science fiction and had written an unpublished essay titled “Fictional Today, Experimental Tomorrow: The Real Dangers Of Science Fiction” where he argued that the human imagination was very important to defend us against most crises, which are preventable if we take their precursors in our imagination (this in parallel to using intuition to sense the future). However, Ley said imaginations can conjure futures that are radically different yet could then be realized by a determined people that imprison the present for their own twisting purposes. Science fiction does just this, as it provides enough of a blueprint (it seizes the imagination) that we then force (engineer) the present in to. Engineers are not neutral actors in all of this but actively decide which of a myriad of directions reality will go in. Comedian Bill Burr’s routine on Steve Jobs was mentioned as exemplary of this arbitrarity.

Further, and perhaps most dangerously, science fiction goes to normalize dystopian situations and neutralize our critical ethics faculties to something that would otherwise be quite shocking. The “saw this in a movie” effect is widespread and has allowed great leaps in perversion and destruction on the part of governments and corporations. The abnormal is so quickly made normal and digestible through movies (again, propaganda)

13) Sub-topic 13 – Health (introduced by Gulian). Gulian confessed he had been thinking about this topic all along because of the variety of food options we all were partaking in, some very healthy and some very poor food choices “winter storage foods built for sieges”. Lack of sunlight exposure and the work of Stephanie Seneff were asked to be included in these notes, too, which he mentioned briefly but self-tabled. He took a show of hands to point out who of us were fading during this second half of the meeting, and who was still going strong. He did this from a standing position, standing being something only he and Edmonds did during the meeting that he pointed out. He went on to say how adversely affected modern human health is by all the previous sub-topics we had previously listed, and a vicious feedback loop ties them all together. And it was agreed that if our own health was not managed in preventative ways not dependent on the parasitical medical-industrial complex, we could not hope to fight these other issues. But questions of how to do this, and what makes a person feel healthy and whole beyond merely eating healthy and exercising bodily and spiritually were discussed. Samantha, a dweller in the location of the meeting who is a practicing nutritionist, happened to overhear the discussion and offered some practical tips for all of us including intermittent fasting, using a salt-water infused water drink called “sole”, and sleeping at the same time every night. The need to express our creative energy was brought up as a health initiative, particularly sexual contact and release, and also very important skin contact such as cuddling.

14) Sub-topic 14 – Sexism (introduced by Samantha) – This meeting, as Samantha pointed out and others admitted noticing earlier, didn’t formerly include one women, or one openly LGBTQQ person (as far as she knew). How could the world’s problems hope to be alleviated and turned without the voices of the other? There was discussion of how to go about including others who they didn’t happen to be acquainted with, and how to not make it merely in to a tokenizing inclusion, as would be the case with several of the member’s wives. Also the assumption that all those who identify somewhere in the LGBTQQ spectrum, or too as straight women, feel oppressed, and would have any interest in taking on the task of evaluating the world’s problems and then saving the world. Rights to be nude entered the discussion, and one member, followed by two others, stripped for effect and to re-normalize the surroundings.

15) Sub-topic 15 – The Over-looked “ism” (introduced by Edmonds). Edmonds confided that this he was hoping to end with, in what he saw as an overarching problem not yet clearly defined or considered. There were a few headings under which the idea might be introduced, and he chose it under it’s negative terming as an ism, namely ageism. He felt that the fight against ageism opened itself to a proactive fight rather than a reactive and defensive fight, as has been and would be the case when fighting most of the other causes of global death and oppression (because they were fighting to defend something that enabled a different version of rot to dwindle within. Fighting for the youth to continue is what life inevitably had always done, and not through destruction but creation and cultivation. It was a fight far beyond mere cultural contrivance, but in line and with momentum coming deep from instincts and the whole trajectory of life on Earth. The Earth had chosen billions of years ago to have reproduction as the part of how life continues, and humans had now severely interrupted this. Ageism against the youth was discussed and agreed to as a major issue to cap off the problem listing phase. Another member pointed out that the humanizing of the event as an ism against humans might fail to include what was really the fight for life on the planet, whether animal, plant, fungi, or other. The sixth mass extinction if allowed to continue would eventually preclude fights against any other of the problems, and yet solve many of the human-made ills on the Earth, but for few species left to benefit from.

Part B – World Saving, History Redeeming, and Future Freeing

It was agreed upon that this portion of the meeting would be extremely brief and focus upon devising solutions for one of the single problems listed. To the surprise of all, one member put forth a motion, and then another seconded it. Including this process was quite spontaneous, and to Edmonds’s delight it was in favor of the problem just elucidated. “For the children!” said Alex with a fist raised, and then all raised their fists and said it again. Alex then shared powerfully that we ought to not focus on the Enemy, referring to the LOTR reading where “the Enemy” was underlined, but on the friends. Giovanni then ventured that restoration permaculture is the best way to be “pro-life” wherever anyone of any status and means happened to find themselves. He shared a specific idea he had been contemplating on how to make the “Water Is Life” movement more proactive using permaculture. Essentially his idea was that instead of just defending by use of laws and pleading, westerners or indigenous peoples should actively make new sources of water and “green the desert” through swales and pond creations to inspire people to create once again what had been lost. All the members agreed to go and research permaculture, and Fred, also a permaculturalist, shared that he would work to revive the “Permaculture Campaign” that he had launched earlier that year and had let fall to the wayside. The meeting was closed with the idea that they would meet again in the future after having chewed on and researched what was discussed (and reviewing this document), coming up with any proactive campaigns that might be suitable. A last comment and commitment was by Gendry who had shared that he was already looking at intentional communities to visit on IC.org, and that another best thing to do for the future generations was to provide them with the option to be part of a tribe. Several others thought it was a good idea and told him to forward information to their emails and that an intentional community exploration sub-committee should exist alongside the permaculture researching.

So concludes the minutes on the Council of Edmond, October 25, 2017, 100 years after the Russian Revolution, and 1001 years before the Council of Elrond, in the Third Age of this world.

Advertisement

notes 4 today: 2017-01-05 (Permaculture/Propaganda; Wicked Timing Of An Intentional Disaster; Hacking; Extinction Vent)

title: Permaculture/Propaganda (memes)

 

 

Alternative Wording: 

Sorry to break the news to you, but its always been fixed

 

 

title: Wicked Timing Of An Intentional Disaster (draft)

If there is an oligarchic “they” who decide they want to diminish the human population—and even if it is only a plurality of the oligarchic class in disagreement with their peers—they are sure to do it at the weakest link. As for humans controlling populations, it’s an empirically derived fact that our species in general has both intentionally and unintentionally “controlled” population numbers of other animals for a very long time—why wouldn’t the same be true today 2016 for the human animal? It’s true that our passive herd like tendencies have been amplified by modern food-culture-infrastructure-medication crowding out, dampening, and alienating our tabooed vigilant tendencies to such a high degree that we are already self-drilling for population control. Indeed, literacy is such a severe control mechanism that we euphemize it is facilitating communication, but it is a very specific communication; I am not above this control, for though I have quite a lot of anger against being controlled that I will not sedate, I channel it into words which is a very effective way of controlling me—controlling myself—for the benefit of those who might parasite away my energies. I won’t digress further, I won’t deviantly stray too far from the corpus that I am trying to get at, from the herd of words I have conjured; besides, these or similar arguments have been made frequently enough by liberation-minded leftist and conservative thinkers. Here I want to speak of how this devolved reality we passively inhabit can most acutely be used against us.

Such an approach by a “shepherding” group [uncompleted thought]

                                  → A polylemma: What or when is the weakest link? ←
There is such a plethora of weakness, so many vulnerabilities, that one must wonder that anyone deciding on a specific programme to diminish the population would have a real problem in the decision making stage; not a dilemma, not even a trilemma, but a very large polylemma is what they would encounter, seeing all the different opportunities to hit the masses hardest. Indeed, I think many of the oligarchs are probably of the mind that the best approach is to sit back and let humans diminish themselves through their own sheer stupidity (though such a course might drag their interests down as well); humans really are very similar to the corn crop that we have contrived (explained by Michael Pollan), very frail and subject to death without specific input needs being met at regular intervals. We give ourselves health problems, we expose ourselves to weapons’ dangers, dangers of travel and transport, and dangers of misplaced emotions, among other dangers that I am normalized to and cannot see/hear/feel (yet), such as sonic and emf vibrations. I am not sure what specific system (finance, the electric grid, water contamination) or what specific place (Western Europe, Eastern North America, Brazil, China, cities, etc.) we are truly the most vulnerable in—and such a calculation would besides be severed from accuracy by the whims of the executing oligarchs—but I am more confident that there is a time window when the damage imposed is to have greatest impact:

The hours of mid morning when parents are away from their children, when children are ready to be kept from their parents by state mandates “we are keeping them safe”, parents would die trying (maybe that’s the goal of these oligarchs) to get their kids from their school.

The more kids you have, generally, the more vulnerable you are to such a timing, and the more you are intrinsically a threat to the oligarchs in that you are keeping the population going in a direction that they don’t particularly like—whether on the path of decadence or deviance.

title: Russia Hacking

It’s pretty telling, but this article—Top U.S. intelligence official: Russia meddled– in election by hacking, spreading of propaganda—and so many headlines I’ve seen flashed over the last few days have this phenomenon where if you cross out “Russia” or “Russian”, and any adjective or adverb adjacent, the title always changes to the more sinister possible reality; I will leave you to cogitate on what that reality is.

title: Extinction Event

I do not put it out of the realm of probability—and I do not think you should either—that some of the most powerful people in the world have some poor ideas on how to remedy the state of this planet. Those who hold the levers of power can pull them to make a wide range of bad things happen (good is precluded with such hierarchy, thus an expression of the asymmetry to which I have been so attracted to); and some of them surely think that the human population growth, being so out of sync with the obvious depletion of the environment and life-fauna, points to a necessary solution (a final solution) of killing back humans (or letting us die by our own devices) to a much lower number. They would view this as a “vent”, a pressure release, to “save” the viability of the rest of the world. A range of motivations among the powerful, crossing over this specific idea I’m presenting, could potentially contrive for a concerted action of sorts to reduce our numbers, with most of them viewing it as an “ends justifies the means” good thing.

So personal biases notwithstanding (I’d like not to be targeted for extermination), I think this is a faulty solution even if humans have made themselves in to a disease threatening the extinction of many many lifeforms including themselves. This ocd mentality that so many have, to get to a clean slate, is very dangerous when acted upon, and yet it is the zeitgeist. In regards to diseases and animal domestication the dominant thinking, despite its idiocy, is to confine separate and in the case of diseases kill them by direct force (think about how scary the word “anti-biotic” really is).

So, the way our medicine regards diseases “kill the disease” is how some of those with the levers to great power presumably view the human disease. I think the ethical way to deal with the diseased human presence, is to remember that life is resilient, especially when in the ecosystems that it holistically evolved with, and so rebuilding the ecosystems, rather than killing their destroyers, is the best thing. Humans will be guided by ecosystemic forces that will naturally

Maybe the planet can support 70 billion humans, but not when there is no other life on the planet, but a plethora of life. We can approach this great number, but at the very least we have to evolve our miseducating cultures (by and large get rid of them) and we will inevitably evolve many degrees away from the current, poorly developed, humans that we are.

So the ethics that I would hope any with levers of power, for we all have some levers no matter how small or how large, is to let go our levers, let go our control, and only re-move what we have erroneously put in place to the detriment of the ecosystems, and become active stewards of life. Carbon won’t be wildly out of control in the atmosphere if a resilient life with an appetite for it is unleashed and allowed to consume it. Rebuilding ecosystems along holistic/permacultural lines is the surest way to have an extinction prevent.

notes 3 today: 2017-01-03 (Captured By Dunkirk, The Beauty Of Thy Piece; Milking Your Mind With Milkdrop; Situation Activated Bipolar)

title: Captured By Dunkirk, The Beauty Of Thy Piece

I don’t remember much else about the movie, but I remembered this scene enough to go back and hunt for it, and… Wow, this is one of the most beautiful cinematic scenes I’ve beheld, especially the music and specifically the major-made-minor choir segment of “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”. Dario Marianelli goes to such depths with this song, my unmediated impulse is to worship him. The beauty of this piece…

I wanted to briefly say about Dunkirk now that my thought has concentrated there, that it is a crossroads between the waning of the absolute worst empire in human history (the British), and the waxing of what could have potentially been an even more brutal empire (the Nazi empire). Hitler very much liked the British and thought and hoped that they would join him. Not unrelated to this hope (probably) is the little known fact that the British were the first major nation in Europe to cast out the Jews (back in the middle ages). Yes a lot of confluence of negative energies surrounding Dunkirk specifically and WW2 generally.

title: Milking Your Mind With Milkdrop (2013)

Since I was little I would close my eyes and let visions emerge and then play with them and change perspective frequently, diving in to new beauties, it really was quite an enhancement of consciousness. I think of it, though it shouldn’t be reduced to this, as a workout for our brains, particularly our visual cortex combining with other regions of the brain (and there can be great enhancement with music, particularly for me at least non-lyrical music). So in my college years I was exposed to milkdrop and had an immediate affinity with it, especially that it was paired to play next to music that I chose, and I would choose almost always my already mood altering trance music.

Here is a video I found sans music:

 

title: Situation Activated Bipolar

Doubtless “Situation Activated Bipolar” will never be found in the DSM (unless they are quite desperate for publications, but the psychiatrist and psychologist phds seem quite creative at churning out new diagnoses and the civilized masses at exhibiting new symptoms of decadence), but it seems to me that SAB has a great deal of merit as a some what qualitatively distinct phenomenon that might encapsulate elements of the on-setting of all bipolar types, thus deconstructing them as internally caused as well, somewhat. Here I’m choosing to focus just on the manic state, but there are probably parallels with the depression swing (and removals of manic inducing situations).

There are non-artificial environmental situations that can bring about a manic state, such as extended daylight found in non-equatorial regions during their “bright” solstice, but so too during the darker solstice this can happen (I have recently found); during or preceding electrical storms; when viewing a wide landscape from a mountain view. There are probably many more possibilities depending on the person.

Artificial environmental situations: social interactions that go well (huge elevating factor); emotional music (trance and a couple of emo songs); an open and free highway where acceleration won’t be curtailed by the thoughts of a speeding-ticket; performing really well in an already hyped up sporting event; stimulating drug induced highs; many others.

Of course mood elevation need not be bipolar inducing, but it is a thing of degree not quality—the easing or inducing of oneself in to a mania. It just seems that chemicals can follow just as readily as chemicals can lead. I feel the need to problematize the wholes are built of parts, on up, in the realm of physiology specifically, but in everything generally. We are a lot more powerful to self-cause than we readily allow ourselves to imagine.

Gerard (and friends) have found a Way:

notes 4 today: 2016-12-15 (Particle Decelerators; Framing Infrastructure As The Ontastricture; Exo-DNA; Tripping Yourself)

title: Particle Decelerators

Acceleration Seals A Tunnel Narrow

Hundreds of thousands of people choosing to spend hundreds of thousands of their own hours, leaving relationships, abandoning their children, expelling all emotion from their bodies, all for a single obsession, is what particle physics has become. They are married to another ring, or marred by the ring—abused brains turned to victims that don’t want to imagine escape as vital. It is an explosive ring, a bomb for the subatomic, creating a world broken down so small that math is used to speak of it. Breathe enough life and energy into math, you’ll come to believe that the math breathes life into you. Perpetual circling without ever diving for prey. Endless bricks being gathered for a house with no vision; as long as it’s tidy and fits on a standard or standardizable map. Messy guests like Niels Bohr are chided and cursed (and then worshiped), leaving piles of debris, gaping holes, and suicides in their wake. These brilliant outsiders, though left without accommodations, are posthumously elevated to legendary and cleaned up after with tireless effort. I focus on them, because they are the completed bridge with a landing on the other side. They are both thinkers of the world of particle acceleration, but their brains are obviously perfect specimens of…

Particle Deceleration. The human brain is a particle decelerator, functioning especially well in this capacity during times of sleep and when adequate nutrients are being provided. The terrain is one of a lightning storm where the ground and sky switch places, waterfalls rise, lakes rain, effects create causes to pull them, where versa vices, and where temporality is extended and morphologized with a rapidity and slowness that is astonishing. It is quite on the opposite side of the spectrum from the time-crushing black holes—the dangerously violent infinite acceleration that humans foolishly try to emulate.
Brains, on the other end, can make a couple of seconds of well used time reverberate into eons upon of vital time. What barriers are there to keep a couple of minutes external time to being stretched out in sleep to days of dynamic internal dreaming time?
New particles are created and dispersed with great ease as the mereological forces of the complex consciousness dwelling in the brain push downwards. A new world is experimented with and built, conceived out of the utmost love rather than the violence of PA collisions. Space is opened by curvaceousness and low temperatures, and particles that are unpredictably unpredictable. A new world is being cultivated, largely built now primarily in ephemeral nomadic fashion in the brains of humans, but to the benefit of the whole universe as the first generation of particles wanes in a few billions (or trillions) of years, depending on who or when is counting. The zeroth generation of particles, the generation to come, can be much more plentiful for they are made of energy many orders of magnitude lower in quantity. They can be part of atoms and chemicals that are liquid and gaseous near absolute zero whereas our first generation particles, atoms, and molecules would fail to be more than frozen at such temperatures. They are the mercury bridge to the warmth of a colder, even more complex and spread out Universe than the first generation of particles has offered. To get there, all we have to do is dream…

—
title: Framing Infrastructure As The Ontastricture
*This note and the next one “Exo-DNA” have been paired together, though this one is from 2015 and the Exo-DNA is recent.

When you wipe away all the wealth attribution and the large dwellings and fine clothes, oligarchs are merely opportunists who use the infrastructure of the last 10,000 years of civilization that’s been afforded them. They give themselves the biggest cages, but yes, not even they—the great shadow groups that drive some of us crazy thinking that there is no hope when control is so complete—are free from cages. Not one of us is born outside of a cage (or if we were, we would essentially be encaged by adjacent cages, an island in an ocean); not any animal on this entire planet, save some temporary and opportune species, is doing any better in vital terms than since the time when human civilization was first spreading from insignificant permanent dwellings to land management that shackled ecosystems.

Perhaps because of the realities of man-made environmental catastrophes and extinctions, there is an incorrect assumption that we four generations of humans alive today are not only to blame, but also wield the ability to undo our damage. But much of this is out of our control, evidenced because we—a 10,000+ year we—are killing animals we didn’t actually intend to and did not have the power to foretell. We are not only not fully in control of all the bad things done previously, we are not fully in control of the bad things being done. Importantly, it is not the ghosts from the past that need to be blamed for the ongoing problems being proliferated (though they’ve done much to deserve it), but the infrastructure that survived them and is currently plaguing so much of our planet, looking to survive it too. So, it is idiotic and an act of hubris to think the wars against life are all of our making and that we need not pay attention to egregious historical momentum; we are the inheritors of a vast accumulation of wastelands that are eroding because of the adjacent land’s erosion caused by the roads and yet other erosions, coming with deforestation and desertification of particular lands. We are not completely the dominant of the civilization but we are subjected to it, yet we have unique abilities to curb the influence.

The infrastructure laden land is not the only problematic terrain that we’ve inherited. So, too, we are the inheritors of cliches that guide behavior down very unthoughtful paths. Language, itself, is the arbitrary compilation of sounds beaten in to heads that had no intrinsic sonic merit of their own on which to stand; they only find their value in relation to other words, or objectified “things”. Anything built on such vacuous grounds is sure to do what vacuums do—suck other things in to their zone of influence—just as a black hole does via gravity.

Infrastructure, even the root-word “structure”, brings to mind a series of hard surfaces that are relatively impregnable to softer forces, such as carbon-based life. And what is life if not the impregnation of adjacent materiality with more space for further life? Here we are, the human life-form, building things that keep life from getting a hold. We aim for clean and plane surfaces, and we now support these perverted efforts to keep things “tidy” by actively spraying and respraying anti-life chemicals to keep these surfaces geometric. We design things to be “proof”—weather proof clothing and cars, decay proof food, imagination proof instruction (though there are some promising directions towards holistic education). As things continue to be proof of life, proof of life will be harder to come by.

—
title: Exo-DNA

Most genetic encoding information is endogenous to the affected genetically reproduced animal. Humans, however, have in effect added a supplementary genetic code from outside of themselves that deeply effects (stifles) their development; counter genes are expressed by our accumulating artifices, beginning with tools and culminating now in what we might call infrastructure (including digital infrastructure). It repeatedly informs our development in a recursive sense that sees both the humans changing as well as the genetic “infrastructure” itself, an integral process in the co-evolution of a life-form and its genes. Infrastructure has evolved rather quickly, faster than our intrinsic DNA could possibly keep up, and it goes a long way to explain how we could be so similar yet so alien to a person from even two hundred years ago. The rapidity and frequency of “editing”—deriving from the controlling genetics of infrastructure—blends from being genetic to epi-genetic, but I’m not sure it qualifies as epi-genetic because of the largely one-way impact of the genes, though exo-genes do turn off some and turn on others in our own genes (an epi-genetic process?).

*I don’t think of this note as being partied to the technological singularity notion, and wonder if it might even run counter to some of it’s basic premises.

—
title: Tripping Yourself

Abstract: Those who let hallucinogenics do the work of removing the false barriers that dampen connection with the holistic reality will not develop the ability to remove these barriers themselves. When the fungi runs out, so will you…

I have by no means developed anything close to what presumably the hallucinogenic compounds would do automatically. However, in their absence and in my constant quest to de-normalize reality for “accessing deeper truths” I have been employing with some success tactics that take my mind to a different space.

→ Saying a normal word over and over and over again makes it sound arbitrary and foreign (which it is), for example: “normal normal normal normal normal normal…”. “Each” always gets me, very quickly, too—”eeech”
→ Mental gibberish not only helps me with falling asleep, but it is quasi-meditative (or pre-meditative), and it alone—but especially in combination with the next self-trip mechanism—can be evocative, depending on the rhythm and activated energy pre-existing in my body.
→ I take raving breaks, and if in a social/professional setting I go to the public bathroom and rave in front of the mirror. The mental benefits are a secondary concern to the bodily benefits of moving my body after it was locked (generally this the case) in to a seated position. Come to think of it, I will take such a break now. As opposed to the standard curvy flow of warming up my body via bathroom raving, when explicitly looking to trip myself I will evolve the raving so my hands to swerve right in front of my eyes and I will percolate my fingers to give uneven visual light distribution. This twisted tai chi, in combination with making strange faces at myself in front of a mirror, makes me feel much more animal. I wonder if along different lines there are people who voluntarily wear an eye-patch for a day, switch it (or not), and then return back to double vision to get a new appreciation of their visual capacities, but also to strengthen their singular eye faculties. Perhaps I will become one such person, but I doubt I would last more than 15 minutes before frustration sets in (though perhaps a build-up of tolerance would be necessary, or a reminder that there are those of one eye who have no option).
→ Imagining I am a giant and all the little things around my living space are being looked at from a great height. If I do it right, this “trip” will be more than just a rationalized telling of myself that things are relative and a deep world exists down in the microspheres, but the trip will be independent of self-speech and will be a coup d’œil (of sorts) that has my occipita step out of itself and my head shivers with the overflow.
→ Note: though the following entrancement mechanism may technically better go under the first arrow of repeating a phrase, it is unique and has more to do with the arrow immediately above. My saying “nothing existing, ever, nothing to exist for ever, no time to ever exist, there could have been nothing to be nothing” will eventually give me a sublime shiver that really pulls me out of myself and scares the shit out of me; this feeling is sort of akin, though more intense, than the “I am a giant” induced feeling. If I’m really scared I reassure myself of Des Cartes’ “I think therefore I am”.
→ This may be more cathartic than mind-altering, but over recent months I occasionally moan out loudly in different tones to expel any negative frequencies that I sense are there. It’s all very intuitive and feels quite obsessive-compulsive, but I trust the impulse as one of healing. I wonder if the adjacent apartments hear it and have to absorb the sound I am ridding myself of.
→ LZGEWV JMQRFNYAT BHX DUP KOS I&C, now I sow my LZGs…
→ Bursts of cold water while in the shower, where I turn the nozzle quickly to all cold and then back to warm does something, though it’s usually very short-lived. During the summer I was taking cold dark baths which were exhilarating and refreshing.
→ Dancing, in social situations, has always been a way to trip myself. It is very beautiful to happen in a club with great music and strange lights, but it is less completely bodily created and much more dependent on the vibrations of the music as support. An interesting experiment, but it would take a lot of willing people, would be to dance without music or even the allowance of bodily-made percussion. Sans music it would take a lot longer and greater force of personalities to create, but it might be all the more profound once reached.
→ This last one is breaking the rules of what I feel is environmental-influence free mind-altering (or at least mood altering), but it is listening to trance music that I know induces euphoria and an epic sense within me. Some other select songs also have quite an effect on me, entrancing me the way a Shamanic ritual might.

All of these arrows are just precursors to allow the mind to wander more freely and sensually in strange directions that wouldn’t be normally allowed by sterile environmental indoctrination. I have been doing most of these for a long time without doing them for the express and explicit purpose of tripping myself, but rather they just evolved along with others that I can’t probably recall because I haven’t inducted them in to the newly created “trip myself tools” category. Alas, I will stop the ineffective babble here, and perhaps start the more effective gibberish…

My Thoughts Inexactly: R is for Recurring, otra vez

Laws are the blind spot of justice.

When a person is frugal the belt is tightened around their waste; when a corporation is frugal the belt is tightened around another’s neck. We haven’t executed any corporations, but they’ve executed plenty of us.

A politician echoes the interests of those 18 years and older who might vote; a leader hears the interests of those 17 years and younger who may never vote.

If a thing has no intrinsic value, then its propagation is sure to do intrinsic harm on the value of others.

You teach a man to fish and he eats forever; you give a man his fish and you choose when he starves.

To take the lesser of a great evil as your friend is to be your own enemy.

The life energy isn’t hidden, we hide ourselves from it.

We can roll with the punches, but when it comes to cars and guns, we cannot so easily roll with them. At best we can survive their rolling on us.

Watch for the hidden prick hiding behind the veneer of a safety pin.

If your revolution has few elements of joy contained within as viewed from the perspective of its vanguard, then what power does it have to attract a full investment on the part of the rest of the society? Harken to the words of Red Emma regarding dance, and dare not conflate joy with the ephemeral and empty promises of possessions that keep misery in oscillation.

Self-absorption is the implosion of any space for a self to emerge.

A martyr is usually co-opted by a prime institution of power of which the martyr’s death was essentially in opposition to. Jesus’s co-optation by the Church is just such an example we can witness today.

The touch screen is mightier than the pen is mightier than the sword is mightier than the lot of us; what increasing sophistication cages us these sunless days.

Civilization has maimed us and so civilization has named us. Regrowth is not precluded, and injury is not death! Fight back with all that remains, and gift yourself a nom de guerre—a name such that within is symbolized your war against naming itself.

A man robs a bank and the man is imprisoned; a bank robs the world and the world is imprisoned.

Lack of a refuge does not erase the refugee. Erasing a house does not erase the home if a group is shouldered by the tribal.

That which you get used to you will inevitably get used by.

That which milks you today will surely bleed you tomorrow, and the milk is starting to run dry; as a matter of fact, so is the blood.

Crooked by 360 degrees is what it is to be straight.

Necessity itself is an invention, but it is an insult to all others to regard it as mother.

Those involved with Christianity are mostly X-centric. Happier to dwell on the death of a great man and its ramifications for them personally as opposed to the life of a great man and what it exemplifies as a corrective to the western way of being.

A fish out of the water is today’s dinner, and a human off the land is tomorrow’s breakfast.

Police yourself with the laws of an oppressive society, and you are under the dome of the state; police yourself with your own laws, and you are living in freedom. So says a Kantian anarchist.

I pledge allegiance to liberty and justice for all. Quietly protest the rest, with gusto!

The primary difference between capitalism and fascism is the spelling.

Animals so free we wouldn’t even call them human; thoughts so free we couldn’t even recall them.

Government for the masses will always suffer from a staff infection, and its bureaucracies will always be the most resistant to treatment.

Our fears for our health in this life allows entry for the parasitical medical industrial complex, just as our fears for our health in the after life allows entry for the religious industrial complex. What unadulterated life is there to turn towards but a fearless life?

Sitting is hard to get around in these sedentary traps we have set ourselves. Fight the paradox—rise up, and take a stand!

---

Related Previous Aphorism Posts:

R is for Recurring

R is for Resisting

Q is for Quelling (my thoughts inexactly)

Slavers don’t lure their victims with a closed cage.

Karma might kill you but your dead enemy won’t.

Dystopia doesn’t taste bad, it is flavorless. It is to drink without ever quenching any thirst.

There’s nothing more dangerous than a criminal that needs to commit more crimes to cover up previous ones. The string of crimes around is sure to thicken in to a rope.

To kill a governor, a person must oversee murder; but to kill a government, a person must oversee themselves.

It’s better to should all over other people as you do on to yourself. Don’t fear being labeled a hypocrite, fear being without dreams of somewhere better that should be.

Most did not choose to leave the land, yet here we are, just as fish who have left the water by the pelican’s envelope. We are dying but not yet fully digested… return to the land before the death of either we or the bird precludes such a reunion.

The church bell is the official toll for the great variety of death incurred—the death of unguarded polyamory, the death of unmarked temporality, the death of unconventional spirituality, and the death of untold bodies. The allure of its curving form is no less a straitjacket, and it is non-ironical that it is composed of metal, for it displaces an unbiased gathering of evidence that henceforth must conform to a statistical distribution. A cracked bell has not led to liberty, only with its dismissal and burial under the Earth can such hideous vibrations yet be quelled.

Wishing for that which is not, is a sin against that which is.

Part of being stupid is not knowing that you are stupid. Part of being unconscious is not being conscious of your unconsciousness.

We love to cry and cry to love. A growing dystopia shows us that these two expressions of feelings do not stand opposite one another, but die alongside one another to be replaced by their absences.

Those who take the stance of “wait and see” will get to see their own demise at the hands of those who act without full evidence.

Revolution that rises and falls with one man is not very revolutionary.

The more time spinning words, the less time available to pirouette ourselves.

If we only take our revolution to the comfortable shallow levels, we cede the great depths of the ocean to the powerful establishment that will dilute our efforts quicker than a tide changing.

As we continue to lose steam from this peculiar suburban era that is quickly burning through natural resource piles, visit places that make sense, rather than cost dollars. If you must, go by car, and go to places fully aware that you are a visitor, for your next trip may be one way as a refugee.

Humans are the deep roots of trees, the mobility of swinging primates, and the vision of eagles. Yet if we stay in one place there’s little reason to swing, and our vision atrophies because of the lack of light with our roots twisted in to the ground.

Laws that justify other laws which justify the original laws—let yourself not be part of this chain of prevents!

---

Related Previous Aphorism Posts:

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/m-is-for-masquerading-my-thoughts-inexactly/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/j-is-for-jousting-my-thoughts-inexactly/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/v-is-for-vanquishing-my-thoughts-inexactly/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/11/03/my-thoughts-inexactly-w-is-for-willing-otra-vez/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/my-thoughts-inexactly-w-is-for-willing/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/my-thoughts-inexactly-e-is-for-escalating/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/08/07/my-thoughts-inexactly-g-is-for-gathering/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/my-thoughts-inexactly-z-is-for-zeroing/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/my-thoughts-inexactly-l-is-for-lamenting/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/07/02/lternate-lphabet-lliteration-training-regimen/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/my-thoughts-inexactly/

V is for Vanquishing (my thoughts inexactly)

Die and lie down, not the other way around!

You won’t see that machines have replaced your brain’s capacities, when machines have replaced your brain’s capacities.

We roll the dice even though all the 5s and 6s have been rubbed out.

Think Machiavellian and you can stop the enemy; act Machiavellian and you become the enemy.

In a 100 years all that will remain are our scars and perhaps our progeny—it is up to us to make sure the two are not the same thing.

Related Previous Aphorism Posts:

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/11/03/my-thoughts-inexactly-w-is-for-willing-otra-vez/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/my-thoughts-inexactly-w-is-for-willing/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/my-thoughts-inexactly-e-is-for-escalating/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/08/07/my-thoughts-inexactly-g-is-for-gathering/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/my-thoughts-inexactly-z-is-for-zeroing/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/my-thoughts-inexactly-l-is-for-lamenting/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/07/02/lternate-lphabet-lliteration-training-regimen/

https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/my-thoughts-inexactly/

Mastering A Class: Priming to Pump the Middle Class into Enslavement

¿The Slave-Master Dialectic of Hegel^L at Work?

The middle class for the United States—and probably for many other western nations—is often cited as being specially targeted by various policy measures to take away its wealth and social standing. While I don’t disagree that this is one of the major ongoing trends, the complaints and protests often seem to come from a place of entitlement and are only mildly less distasteful than when the upper classes bemoan “their” wealth being targeted. What isn’t focused on in the context of the 21st century war against the middle class are all the perks of being served by a service economy. The servants serving the middle class are both the array of technological conveniences and the lower classes themselves (often comprised of the children of the middle classes). Such a scenario goes a long way in showing complicity on the part of the middle class in their own demise, and build the appropriate “scaffolding” structure to allow their future enslaving. Let me delineate and lean on Hegel a bit:

The master of a slave over time will atrophy in body and mind because he is being spoiled by the benefits of his powerful position, and eventually in his utter weakness can be overthrown by a bold slave who all the while has been getting stronger and more knowledgeable during the years of hard and unjust toil. Now, this is a summary from a lecture I heard on Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, but I think that this lesson can be generalized and ordered differently^Z to explain some of the tendencies at play in our current western situation. If someone is neither a slave nor a master (the traditional middle class, arguably), but a middling sort with many peers whom together form a mutual defense against enslavement, how might they nonetheless be turned in to slaves by those who would see them in bondage? One solution is overwhelming violence to coerce them in to submission, but this is not always feasible or desired. This may come to be used, but if so it will be in tandem with a longer term priming that even the future masters might not even be entirely conscious of. Namely, the middle class is brought up to master status with regards to all the comforts that would seduce them in to ceding their modest power gains; this new master status is vacuous of real power that might be afforded a king who could demand one-of-a-kind treatment, but there are enough pleasant perks (debt funded) that can hoodwink a middle classer in to conceiving of themselves as a master. Delusions such as post-scarcity can infect their judgement to thinking they have landed successfully over the classic notion of shortage, and are masters without need of slaves; but as such this is both fanciful and misguided. In reality, the system leaves the consumers of consumer capitalism thinking they are capitalists, when really they are being made ripe for consumption/cannibalization.

We (of the middle class) have a view of a large and ornate beautiful backyard, we are just failing to notice that we are confined in a dog run. Many of us think our efforts have earned us our perches of sovereignty: some are paid to toil over meaningless abstract piles of data, or are given paper or bank account digits in return for managing some sector of the illogical supply chain, or in very real terms heighten the means by which the oligarchs can have an order of magnitude more power over others. But really, in both our leisure and our toil, we are fenced out from attaining actual important skills both of body and of mind that would serve us to defend ourselves from oppressors. Thus the middle class has been brought back in to the fold—a failing master ripe for overthrow and possibly new enslavement—it’s just up to the real masters to decide when and whether to seal the envelope. Perhaps worse than enslavement, they might decide we are junk mail to be sent to the shredder…

L I rarely condone any of Hegel’s work (rare are the times I’ve read any of it), and usually I condemn it on the grounds of its being profoundly wrong, not unlike Marx’s critique that Hegel got the whole world inverted in his thought. However, I’ve always enjoyed ruminating on one of the master-slave dialectic lessons that the slave ultimately overthrows the master because the slave gets stronger and the master atrophies (though I believe such a fate is not teleological determined as Hegel implied and Marx believed). Thematically, but in a reverse direction, I think something similar is happening to a whole class of people right now, namely the middle class…

Z Putting it in terms of this idiom might more clearly convey it: putting the cart before the horse doesn’t necessarily conjure a horse, but the cart won’t go to waste either—if need be humans will be dragged in to the horse collar of their own invention.

Speaking Out Against Upcoming Moments of Silence

Monday morning November 16, 2015 will be the time when across much of the western world the Paris attacks become officiated and legitimized as terrorist attacks by institutional heads on loudspeakers, such as principals and CEOs who feel it is incumbent on them to say something. Some of the more anxious of these “leaders” are right now mulling over what to say so that they are accurate and general enough on their facts, with a degree of compassion, and also inserting some resolution and embodiment of the institution’s core values. The one item that most will be sure to turn to is the age old “Moment of Silence”.

Speaking Out To The Silence, Walking Out?

If the weakly institution I currently find myself in attempts to have a moment of silence Monday—we do not have loudspeakers so the person calling for it would be in vivo—I will be saying the following roughly, if my courage shows up:

“I am not okay with giving silence to these particular victims when our world loudly and uninterruptedly talks right over the thousands of daily victims who succumb to starvation, thousands unjustly killed in traffic accidents, and the thousands killed by gun violence and governmental weapon abuses. I expect to hear a lot more moments of reflective silence on these daily systemic victims before I acquiesce to give silence to one specific, infrequent, and quite honestly misunderstood grouping of victims. One last thing as for prevention, as this event is being called a terrorist attack, I offer the intelligent words of another: The best way to stop terrorism is to stop participating in it.” (I will decide then whether or not to walk out based on the reception, if any, to what I have said; I wanted to also mention something like coral reef bleaching and other ecological disasters but think the audience would then be pushed away)

---

Contextualizations:

1) There has been such a numbing to normalized violences—perhaps ushered in by two world wars though probably starting earlier—in the human psychological environment, that it is no wonder much of what is truly silenced will never have a moment of reflection for its ceasing to exist. Paris, as with cities in general, is an accretion of human-only systems that silence by slaughtering a wider holistic eco-system. Because humans depend on eco-systems whether they admit it or not, eco-systems far away from cities like Paris need to be subjugated for human needs—mostly food and heating supplies—thus a large impetus for colonialism/imperialism that still goes on de facto through corporatized globalization. People—not to mention animals and other things that would draw sympathy from us—die daily in these places of systematic exploitation and sometimes as the result of a proxy war die in the thousands. France has very bloody hands in this respect with places such as Algeria and Vietnam, but I would not presume to blame the Parisians of Friday night for the atrocities of their forebears. However, by the very fact of their living and employing a city they have inherited and are acutely furthering a proven-deadly system that will naturally give them enemies. Because of the nature of their system, however, their enemies will generally be too weak to ever do anything to them. It’s a one way stream and they are generally the ones on the toilet not in the sewer.

2) This event happened in the backdrop of a Western European theater where Russia is boldly involved, and seems to have plans for corralling in as many countries under it’s domain through use of it’s energy supplies. Russia now has the pretext for an even greater involvement in Syria if it wants, as now they can maybe say they will go and take on ISIS because the United States seems to be helping the organization grow larger (I won’t speculate further on this point…). If an accurate text on the history of this era is ever written, it will certainly find both the events of Russia’s 2015 forays in Syria and this terrorist attack highlighted on a chronology of related events.

3) This was an attack of civilized people on civilized people. They both (or all, not limited to 2) may have very different ideas of civilization and come from different epochal idealizations, but they all share civilization and its attraction to using advanced weaponry. To the extent that religion is involved for some of the individuals, that too is a civilized activity that informs many violent acts. Civilization by its very nature is violent, and so long as it continues, so too unfortunately will violences like these and others that are not seen but are felt by its victims.

4) One penultimate note—and this may just be in the “ranking” of how particularly evil we want to tell ourselves these people are (I’m sure this will inflame anyone who lost anyone in these attacks) —is a curiosity to me that they chose a night time attack in a place where there would certainly be a limited amount of children to no children at all. If you want to see this as an act of war as French President Hollande said it was, then you have to note they weren’t attacking children and were either intentionally or unintentionally doing that, perhaps to avoid damage to their image or perhaps because they are not anti-human, just anti Paris, France, whatever larger enemies they believe they have and are fighting.

5) A final note on November 20: a presumed dichotomy exists in the western mind that I attempted above to shine light on with the vocal rejection of a moment of silence, namely between acceptable and unacceptable victims. The moments of silence are to be for those unacceptable casualties that are supposed to emotionally move westerners as they somehow challenge their core values; acceptable victims, on the other hand, are those overlooked casualties that I spoke of that are not mourned for or considered by any great many people, despite the violent and preventable deaths they have to succumb to. These acceptable victims are rationalized as a cost of doing business, or somehow other kept off of the radar screen so as to not interrupt the smooth flow of operations with “unnecessary” emotions.

free writing fight and flighting response

Our problems are given agency, as if they are somehow ghosts that haunt us… the human mind has been so tortured, so fucked, allowed too much time to sit in it’s own shit. Too much sedentary time allows us to objectify and then subjectify aspects of our tortured selves and then personify them to be real things. Well, something deep inside me calls bullshit, and I say emphatically you CAN run away from your problems—mobility isn’t just something life does, it is the very thing that life IS (life is motion). Problems will die and atrophy, or stop being a problem, if you have time away from the spatial milieu(s) in which they originate. Flight is a form of fight! For those of you narrowed to the American historical narrative, look at George Washington’s strategy for winning the revolutionary war! Try telling the squirrel she’s better off staying where the wolves are and inventing some way other than running up a tree and to another area; try telling the birds this season they should try and overwinter instead of always flying towards the sun and away from the cold. Why would the human experience be so different that we have to face our problems? It’s true you might have the same problem if you leave one suburb for another, because suburbs will always and continue to pile up problems just like stagnant societies always have a sewage problem. Flight has been so denied to us, and always fighting is too burdensome on such weakened, malnourished creatures as we are, that just accepting the problems is cathartic and healing, radically accepting. Accepting our medication, our docilizing, accepting the loss of control, the loser status, the subaltern voiceless people we are. We can just meditate unto death, learn how to be compliant caged birds who can get the joys and live vicariously through stories that are other to us (reading books/blogs, writing a blog, watching television, plays, and other cultural constructions that are available for distraction and soothing); we can be imitate our cages and oppress other cellmates through physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse. And we can then have the experience of what are officially labeled prisons, to learn horrors that we were usually numbed and hidden from. Another route to channel our energies is that we can put on a play and force an audience to accept our role—they’ll believe our performance and we will also, because there’s no outside referent allowed through the narrow perimeter prison windows to show what life actually is. As a priest or politician, either will be fulfilling enough as long as it’s self-fulfilling. A king who rules over anybody other than himself is just a king of the small pond, no matter how large it appears to be. All are forbidden to be kings of themselves—they are coerced to dress in clothes of many fashions, including tattoos and jewelry. Public undressing is usually an act of coercion or somehow other absorbed into the culture industry Adorno’s thing about dissenters/protesters being absorbed by the totality.

Maybe this perverted mode of thinking is itself originated from perverted circumstances which deny both effective fight and flight. Perverted almost as if by an agent (perhaps agency is relative, and our lack of it does give our infrastructure some degree of it?).

Perhaps domesticated humans aren’t animals anymore, but not because we are something elevated as many stories we tell ourselves would indicate. No, animals are said to have the fight or flight response, but humans usually have neither, and just bow down and “wish it were Friday”. Looking forward to recess, or looking back to recess, because the present is so intolerable. What a social contract we have signed on to…

Edit: I’m going to babble more: Life is largely un-examined when we focus on the individual we find a narrowing of choices because we have narrowed life down to a single cell, we have chosen the part over the whole. the noun life refers to an individual human’s experiences to the negation and detriment to the wider range of life, but also so too to that individual human’s. We will never reach the experience of hell because our very ability to experience anything of great depth is constantly being compromised by the dumbing and numbing wreak of our own shit (and I’m referring to our possessions)… depression isn’t sadness, it’s the being weighed down.

it’s not the lack of feeling with depression that has people kill themselves, it’s an acute feeling of the oppression of things like depression, or like something dubbed “mania” that speaks to how life could and should be, but how it is not actually being lived. depression is adaptation through downgrading to a hopeless situation, unfortunately we’re not built and taboos don’t allow hibernation, but other animals do pretty well in handling their depression, they medicate it with sleep and a quiet vegetative state. We try to make it some metaphysical and physical thing which needs to be overcome by medical technology, but really it is just the geo-forces way of trying to balance us, but we resist balance as evidenced by so many of the things we entertain and make part of our daily lives.

Oh and I did want to say and am not sure If I did say it above, that running from problems will weaken the problem immensely, as a hostless disease, so long as your not running on the treadmill that changes scenery but not the grounding.

Our problems got to the strength and embodiment that they currently wield precisely because we haven’t run from them in the past. They’ve grown as we’ve stayed to tend their furnaces always putting ample new fuel in. Concretely, if humans did all leave the planet, and ran from this place we’ve made such a problem, the planet would surely heal our deep wounds, and wouldn’t be a problem for us when we returned. It might be more appropriate to say such a thing would be our planet running from us, making us so dissatisfied as to eject us through persuasion of ugliness.

Oh and this post I found aggravating and representative of the cliches that so anger me:

http://philosiblog.com/2013/09/11/running-away-from-your-problems-is-a-race-you-will-never-win-so-just-face-them-head-on-and-overcome-them/