a psychohistorian responds

In response to: Which brings me back to the ubiquity of things. The heights of manufacturing and technology we've reached allow things to be all the more common. In 2009, we simply have more opportunity to paste ourselves onto objects. In doing so, we run the increasing risk of defining ourselves in impossible terms.

Indeed we do, it is a risky venture. You see, we've been on the upswing of an exponential increase in our capacity to create, and we appear to have tagged our consumption level straight onto this. We are beginning to level off onto the plateau of carrying capacity, or should be if our response function was, well, functional. But the coefficient of the negative quadratic term in the logistic equation that should control our consumption has creeped up dangerously close to zero, while the coefficient in the world-itself's equation has gone deep south. It's been well known after the fall-out of the Westermark Wars that the only trustworthy solution to such a dislinkage requires new inputs into the coefficients of consumption growth and control. Yours, HS

My dogs are hungry

This is unlikely to feed them: Red Sails

It's hot in Albuquerque

Two verses

OR

A lesson in humility

Creep

patio folk

Got Swept Away

back,

back from mexico,

gas from texaco,

a little stop and go,

back,

back to the show,

so much to sow!

high ho!

ay papi, un micrófono...

blues song

Water and Elements

"Drinking water which contains the element lithium may reduce the risk of suicide, a Japanese study suggests."

This brings up all sorts of ethical questions. I don't want mind-altering chemicals added to my water! Then again, water itself has been known to alter brain chemistry. So I really don't know what to think.

Also, I'd like to note that thanks to April, my posting rate is asymptotically approaching zero. I pledge to reverse this trend. April will prove the nadir. I'm already on the upslope.

Objects and the Self

In a recent column at PopMatters, Rob Horning ends with the following thought:

"It’s easy to let oneself off the hook and say, Oh, it’s human nature ... to use objects to define ourselves, but it seems ultimately more fruitful and hopeful to wonder what about our current society invites and provokes this sort of thing, which seems to trap our identities in things to a degree that seems unprecedented."

It got me thinking. To what degree am I defined by my objects? And what does it say about me that I'm typing this rumination on a laptop I pulled out of the trash that runs Windows 98 and turns off if I so much as touch the power cord? *Sigh.*


We are certainly living in a highly materialized time. Perhaps the ubiquity of things necessitates that the current age of object-as-self is unprecedented. But did the medieval peasant not engage in this behavior? Something tells me he would measure his worth (and therein define himself) by the quality of his horse, the sheen of his blade, and the fields he sowed. And before that, the Greeks and the Egyptians. The remnants of their civilizations are self- (or in this case society-)defining objects. Pyramids and columns.

Which brings me back to the ubiquity of things. The heights of manufacturing and technology we've reached allow things to be all the more common. In 2009, we simply have more opportunity to paste ourselves onto objects. In doing so, we run the increasing risk of defining ourselves in impossible terms.



Are there precedents? Where are we headed? Those are questions I leave to the esteemed psychohistorian...

cheezy? yes...

snake eyes saw the first fateful bite

that let us think, to know at all

and it was that same serpantine sight

that let cassandra foresee the fall.

double ones have killed and made a thousand men,

cubes of bone turned kings bereft;

chance now brings the how and when

that the right eye finds the left.

Let's investigate this core of light more closely by putting a source at S, a photomultiplier at P, and pair of blocks between them to keep the paths of light from wandering too far away.

R. Feynman QED p.54

S = Sam; P = Paul...? A grand metaphor...?

p.s. you know what happened when a grand met a four? something around 1004.

i found this poem by jack white

courageous dream's concern

i have driven slow,
three miles an hour or so,
through highland park, heidelberg, and the
cass corridor.
i've hopped on the michigan,
and transferred to the woodward,
and heard the good word blaring from an
a.m. radio.
i love the worn-through tracks of trolley
trains breaking through their
concrete vaults,
as i ride the fort street or the baker,
just making my way home.

i sneak through an iron gate, and fish
rock bass out of the strait,
watching the mail boat with
its tugboat gait, 
hauling words i'll never know.
the water letter carrier, 
bringing prose to lonely sailors,
treading the big lakes with their trailers,
floats in blue green chopping waters,
above long-lost sunken failures,
awaiting exhumation iron whalers,
holding gold we'll never know.

i've slid on belle isle, 
and rowed inside of it for miles.
seeing white deer running alongside
while i glide, in a canoe. 
i've walked down caniff holding a glass
atlas root beer bottle in my hands 
and i've entered closets of coney islands
early in the morning too.
i've taken malt from stroh's and sanders,
felt the black powder of abandoned 
embers,
and smelled the sawdust from wood cut 
to rehabilitate the fallen edifice.
i've walked to the rhythm of mariachis,
down junctions and back alleys,
breathing fresh-baked fumes of culture
nurtured of the latin and the 
middle east.
i've fallen down on public ice,
and skated in my own delight,
and slid again on metal crutches 
into trafficked avenues.

three motors moved us forward,
leaving smaller engines to wither, 
the aluminum, and torpedo,
monuments to unclaimed dreaming.
foundry's piston tempest captured, 
forward pushing workers raptured,
frescoed families strife fractured,
encased by factory's glass ceiling.

detroit, you hold what one's been seeking,
holding off the coward-armies weakling,
always rising from the ashes
not returning to the earth.

i so love your heart that burns
that in your people's body yearns
to perpetuate,
and permeate,
the lonely dream that does encapsulate,
your spirit, that god insulates,
with courageous dream's concern.

Responding to Tashbeg's Dictum

I think the problem is that it all depends too much on the vagaries of individual perception. Although the dictum acknowledges collective consciousness and its arising from a mass of point-actors, it operates under the unspoken conceit that this consciousness is self-aware.

I'm all for finding mutual common ground and agree that it is the only way past conflicts; however, the simple perception of common ground can create the very problems we wish to combat. Take the imperialists for example. (Let's assume that they even had a consideration of mutual benefit in their minds - which they most certainly did not.)



Or maybe we should consider small-pox infested blankets. Imperialists think it's good. The natives think it's good too. Both for the same different reasons. "Hey... dirt for blankets is not a bad deal at all!"

On second thought, let's not use the Imperialists as an example. But nevertheless, we know it is possible for people to be so deluded so as to think they're truly helping others when they are not. Oblivious in the face of their detrimental effects. So then: it seems we can't rely on ourselves to do the norm translating. Who will do it then?

Our context is the only one we know. Others know their own. Even within our own limited circles, context can vary greatly. The people living in the apartment above may think it's okay to harvest organs, while those living down the hall only think of playing organs. Across the street the organ meat is sacred, across the ocean, they grind it up for sausage. Behold the sacred sausage! But to all outside observers, we are of the same culture, living in the same environment, much the same context. Commonality is harder to find than I thought. Dubious.

Lest we become mired in the morass of relativism, let us consider the family below:
They seem like nice people. Sometimes there is just not enough overlap to find common ground. Or maybe the overlapping areas hold no uniting power.

Like you said, to find true understanding we need some form of concentrism - both being born from the same locus. Now, I ask you, how do we find that point?

Top Albums of 2009

As you discover them, list the best albums of the year:

Alela Diane - To Be Still
Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
Antony & The Johnsons - The Crying Light
The Decemberists - Hazards of Love
Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele - The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Various Artists - Dark Was The Night

Shoot, I would put Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual, but it came out in 2008. Also, Howlin' Wolf. He came out with an album this year, didn't he?

List those you're anticipating here:

Final Fantasy - Heartland
Regina Spektor - Far
Midlake - Courage of Others
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Kings of Convenience?
Joanna Newsom?
Sufjan Stevens?

Sidiqjan Tashbeg’s dictum. To the extent that you share something with others that makes you, with them, a community based on that X [with all recognizing the importance of the sharedness of X; otherwise it is not a community], you may participate in defining its rules. This is not imperialism; it is citizenship. That humanity which is shared provides an avenue for subjective participation in a process of electing what should be valued, but only to the extent to which the basis of the appeal is shared. (You’re lucky, this is sometimes self-policing—that is, adherence to this rule does not rely on my thinking it should be that way—because you get too far off of your experience, too far out of your fish bowl, and folks will look at you and laugh and go about their ways. [Shit, but what if you’re too powerful, and you can push them around despite being out of touch? (I bring this up as a challenge to my immediately proceeding statement.) Then you would be able to impose all sorts of horrible stuff thinking you’re righteous. Dang, and I still think, in the context of Imperial Europe in sub-Saharan Africa, that imposing those norms should not have been done. The proposed rule did not self-police there. 

Lothar van Trotha

So this tells me that we do need to make it a prescriptive norm, if we want it apply more widely, to prevent genocide. On what basis can we impose this norm, the thinking man wonders to himself? How about on the basis of the very dictum proposed here (Mr. Tashbeg's own norm norm itself). It is compatible with, uh, itself. (Would a rule that isn’t compatible with itself survive? [God says believers in God should stop believing in God.] Honest question. Perhaps, but I wouldn’t want such a rule in my head, and I wouldn’t want to propose that kind of bullshit to my community.)) We operate (and/or should operate) in the center of concentric rings of just moral projection. I suggest that if you want to change what’s going on somewhere, and your arguments rely on a basis of appeal that is not shared, you better find a common basis of appeal for that change; if you cannot, maybe you were wrong and the norm is not appropriate to translate across the contexts. I am proposing it should become the norm. What do you think?

I am unconvinced that Positivism was or will be the new Right. I believe we are, at all strata, and across time, consistent Positivists; The Dominating West was not the first to think, hey maybe we could figure this thing in the world out… That was a Red Herring upon which too many are still snacking.

God demands we kill the natives,

God demands we save the natives,

God damn it, why won’t he make up his mind?

Alight, oh nation.

Levitate the langues

that, by our loins, are linked,

Lance the Left, cleave (to make cleft)

our brothers bereft.

Chaulked up to ignorance,

driven by affluence,

gifts at each level,

to buy in 

and to settle.

A Litter Ation

The Lichtensteinian linguist
lost in a reverie.
labor though he must -
languished lackadaisically.

Chinua Achebe Was Right

You must forgive me for not posting in the last couple days. I was making this. I still am as a matter of fact.

B

You and I sat together, your arms around me tight,

A                                        B

And the trees were barely visible in the evening light.

B

I was thinking I could trust you, that you would play it cool,

A                                   B

but watch out for the yeomen in the vestibule

F#

You shouldn’t pretend somethin’s a joke

F# A  B     F#

if it ain’t funny.

And the trees were barely visible in the evening light
Watch out for the yeomen in the vestibule
You shouldn't pretend something is a joke
if it's not funny.

women are like diamonds.

they're pretty,

but they end up 

getting people killed.

imagine vast rhizome limb markets. only previous customers can handle the merchandise. first-timers are easily strong-armed.

P.S. You stole my joke about double entendres.

entendre * x^(n-1)

And the rhizomes,
reaching,
rent his limbs.
While he waited for
the skies to split
asunder.

------------

alright, now that we've had some days pass, i wanna get to the heart of this one. ambiguity 1: are the rhizomes paying a fee for the temporary use of his arms, or are they ripping the man apart. ambiguity 2 (less certain, tho I'll admit less than perfect certainty for 1 as well): are the skies a cue for his splitting, or does he sit in anticipation of theirs? tell me how close.

Two resources for psychohistoric inquiry. 

(1) this, especially the figures.

(2) the events listed here (0-1700) sketched out:

[Biases: Historical memory; European and Christian only]

what luck, the demons in the blog demanded a double entendre. or are we up to 4?

entendre?

i can't see the black keys

b/c i am playing the guitar.

i don't have enough money

for a ticket

or a piano.