What's new, america?

It is barack obama's second term in office. we do not think much of the drones he uses, it will not be long before there are robot air battles in the sky. war has always been horrific and this new horror does not disappoint. a lightning-bolt from the the sky ═ whistle, slam ═ and a terrace in tears. just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you.. it's really horrible to think about. but we think it's a lot less stupid than starting two land wars in central asia.
We hope dearly that the surveillance drones aren't too intrusive in the coming years, no matter their form. we hope dearly that personal manufacturing technology will one day subsume commercial, and thus the people might have their own tools, atomized finally to the point of vaporization within the populace. we think the prospects of this is greater than is generally thought. we love the world dearly, and hope that its impending destruction is as well-managed as can be, but as yet we worry that the governments will continue their baffling refusal to acknowledge the obvious need for infrastructure and technology investment to partially assuage the coming tides and build the methods of space colonization necessary. we do think that the private sector will eventually take care of it, but is that a way to live? stay tuned.. against our better judgement, we think a hillary clinton presidency would probably be okay. we still place our faith in the commercial space industry and perhaps its attending titans. (titans after all are gods in our land).
With everything we struggle and hope, yearn and expect. we have really let ourselves go recently, in manners most unfortunate. we are reckless and often obtuse. we keep foolish taboos and lack ones required. this world will be united soon, we hope and we pray. the coming times are likely tumultuous but there shine bright lights. we humans are at the beginning, we are lucky to see it.
Our task is to mutate.
We must evolve.




≡snowstorm≡

the second great turn

{written for a geography in the middle east class, our apologies for the academic references}

Trying to make sense of history can be a difficult process. Here, I would like to sketch the outlines of a peculiarly feasible future-history of the world, as modulated by a sort of Islamic enlightenment arising out of the current sets of youth movements originating in the Middle East.

As Reza Aslan diligently points out, “. . . religion is the foundation of America's political system.” (Aslan, 262) If we take also his point that “. . . religion is to this day an integral part of the American national identity and patently the moral foundation for its Constitution . . .” (Aslan, 262), what we are left with in a strange sense of non-terror about the prospect of an Islamic democratic system. In fact, we can begin to construct a narrative: if American democracy, arising during the western Enlightenment period and, as per Aslan, couched in the moral presuppositions of Protestant Christianity, can rise to become the prime example of effective democratic systems, ostensibly the model for all other modern democratic nations, then what of an organic, Islamic-normalized democratic system? Such a thing would be a distinctly 'fresh' reorganization of democratic principles, alive with contemporary knowledge and potentially healthy tendencies.

Key here is “Islam's quintessentially communal character . . .” (Aslan 264), which may be contrasted with the contemporary marriage of American right-wing conservative individualism with American right-wing conservative (Protestant) Christianity. While both scriptures involved place great value in communal effort and collectivization, contemporary Christian political discourse has become thoroughly Capitalist in nature, conveniently forgetting virtually all of the recorded words of the Christ. In Islam, there is a sense that it has strayed less far from its collectivist origins. Even in images, it is easy to conjure the groups of the faithful, moving in unison during prayer or the Haj. Perhaps it is because it is the youngest of the three Abrahamic traditions. More likely, like most other things, it is simply the way things have happened, due to any number of individually discernible historical mechanics. Regardless, if Aslan is correct that an Islamic bill of rights would primarily “. . . take into consideration the protection of the community over the autonomy of the individual,” (Aslan, 264) then Islamic democracy may be precisely the jump-start that our globe's decaying political systems need!

Visualize, please, the notion of American democracy arising from a hegemonically Christian background. Indeed, as Aslan points out, “[a] democratic state can be established upon any normative framework . . .” (Aslan, 262). And so we may posit that the America-centric, Christian-normalized democracy that is taken for granted in the West is in fact the 'democratized' version of a Christian morality. Over time, the pluralistic and secularizing “. . . process that develops naturally within a democracy,” (Aslan, 264) has digested this system into the quasi-secular, mostly-pluralistic America-type we see today. Thus, a system that arises organically within Islamic hegemony and given time (which is always occurs faster and faster throughout history) to similarly digest its theocratic underpinnings may well be the next grand set of governing ideas that revolutionize the world. We would do well to look to Tunisia's soon-to-be-hammered-out new constitution for the inklings. If this is indeed the path that lies ahead, it seems that those communal instincts of Islam could end up being the perfect antithesis to the sick, dilapidated, corporate state of Late Capitalism we in the West and across the globe are newly and correctly seeing as the oppressor.

There are new shapes on the horizon!

beta

"We all know the story of the stock market crash. We all sat and watched CSPAN as congress reconvened to pass the emergency powers bill. There isn't a deliberative body in the world that won't pass on the opportunity to place responsibility elsewhere. It became politically untenable for the president, however, and he was forced by conservatives in congress to appoint a steering committee of wealthy industrialists to "revitalize" the economy. When the corporations started hiring the private armies, we knew we had to do something. In a month, they had forced congress to terminate the federal government. It helped that almost half of the members were all for the idea. Today there is no currency. They tell us the union still stands. The conglomerates own branches of the military. We had already been letting them run our prisons, it wasn't so difficult to make the switch to a private penal system. They tell us the union still stands. They tell us, don't you still have your television set? The state governments each went their own way. There's a few loose federations here and there. The's even a confederacy. Two midwestern states are at war. But most of those governments dissolved, too. If there's anything corporations are good at, it's merchandising! They tell us the union still stands. They tell us, don't you still have your television set? They tell us, your lawn is looking a bit under the weather. You should probably buy an irrigation system!
We are here because we remember the way it used to be. We're the only thing left in this country. We're lucky to have the skills we have, because if we didn't, the struggle would be all that much harder. We hack their computers, we keep ourselves anonymous. We try and do little things here and there. But we're growing in number. And it won't be long before they hear from us again."

alpha

"When the stock market crashed again, it just seemed like we knew what to do. The first few days were quiet, it seemed like the world had finally just stopped. There was very little traffic...most of it to bars or grocery stores. Soon, the campuses started to fill up. The cameras caught on, and in interviews, the students always said the same three things: abolish the banks, abolish the pentagon, call a constitutional convention. Of course, we found out later that they had rehearsed. Soon, what remained of the labor unions called for a general strike. After that, the national mall was filled for two weeks before washington caved. And then we went to philadelphia. The silicon valley types had an idea: crowdsource it. And the so-called most important website ever went live; anyone could suggest ideas, and ideas were voted up and down by the population. Corporate influence was banned as a matter of course. The silicon types assured us the security was all very state-of-the-art, but the result spoke for themselves. The ideas that floated to the top were almost universally lauded, and by the time the document was passed to the committee, it was a matter of pride for the vast majority of the population. It seems absent the corporations and the political parties, americans didn't have all that much to fight about. Labor relations were modeled off of germany's highly successful system; a national health service was bought and paid for by a graduated tax on income. Corporate taxes were kept low, but reformatted to prevent offshoring. Income tax was graduated steeply, and when it became clear that the wealthy were trying to buy votes against the tax system, violent demonstrations were held on property known to belong to the culprits, the first truly violent aspect of the entire revolution. The military budget was drastically reduced, and it was constitutionally mandated that any military action would take 80% of the popular vote. The voting system itself was radically overhauled, and became modeled on the process used to develop the constitution. The national social security system was preserved as one of the few remaining functional systems in the old government. No parliament was deemed necessary in light of the popular voting method. The president was replaced with a council of three popularly-elected executives. They mainly just try to raise awareness about particular issues. Companies are required by law to be majority owned by their employees. Finally, twenty percent of all of the federal taxes collected in any given year is dedicated to scientific research. Because of this simple, inalienable spending, our economy has flourished and the world once again looks to america for inspiration. It took us three years. Three years, and we put the first human on mars. That was six months ago. And here we are, in the first colony ship on our way to the red planet. We have much to be grateful for, ladies and gentleman. The future shines brighter than many of us could imagine. Let us remember the time when it didn't."

the twilight zone

Consider this past week that the united states just completed. A week ago, we were hearing that there was probably a deal in the works and so the government would not be defaulting on its dept. By wednesday we were out of the woods, and the democrats had arrived tortured and pathetic. On thursday, the dow jones index lost 512 points, about 4% of its value. On friday there was a slightly less dismal than expected jobs report, and the market fooled itself into hovering for the day. On friday night, last night, standard & poor downgraded the u.s. credit rating. The arguments they gave rang true for many, but washington disputes the legitimacy of the downgrade. Here is a blockquote from s & p's press release, although if you haven't heard it by now i don't know what you've been doing:

 More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.

S & p is saying that the government has ceased to function reliably. Reliably as in 'does this thing, which determines most of the aspects of all u.s. citizens' lives, actually do anything?' Let alone anything of value? They are saying that because of said cessation, why in the world should anyone completely trust that we're responsible for our dept? As it turns out, a small contingent of ultra-right-wing conservatives have successfully convinced themselves that defaulting would be a great thing for the country. And they have apparently convinced everyone else in washington that raising any taxes whatsoever is tantamount to treason. It should, but doesn't, go without saying that believing that a government can't tax its citizens for the common good is in effect an existential threat to said government. That is to say, treason. (we don't think anyone should be prosecuted for treason anyway, but the point should be made.)

Oh, and china decided to use the opportunity to vent some frustration with the world's favorite debtors, as well.

But the most harrowing detail is that this downgrade mostly came through after the stock market closed on friday. Today is saturday. So we have another day and a half of speculation, and... . . . we'll see what happens on monday?

What is clear is that standard & poor is correct. Taken objectively, the united states has become quite unstable and unpredictable. The wealth gap is the worst it has ever been, higher even than it was immediately preceding the great depression. Societies with gaps like that tend to either collapse or revolt. We've never quite been down this road before, although the great depression was similar. What is going to happen to america?

/*

American empire, n.; a large and wealthy late industrial empire whose power and influence peaked after the second world war, in the 20th century. It had grown from a large set of colonies which had rebelled against the british empire, a colonial and mercantile power in the centuries prior. It is generally credited with popularizing republican democracy as a form of government due to its successful revolutionary war. It expanded across the north american continent in a centuries-long pillage and conquest of the native population. It was a uniquely multifaceted place, as it was populated entirely by people whose ancestors had immigrated at some point in relatively recent memory. It had a civil war in the 19th century along the fractious line dividing the industrial north from the agrarian south sections of the early territory of the country. The south was economically dependent on slave labor to work its fields, and the legal issue of slavery became a sticking point in the founding of new states. The southern states declared themselves a new confederate, and the north invaded and defeated them over the course of three years. Slavery was abolished, although the country's population would remain racially divided through most of the 21st century. Around the turn of the 20th century, the country experienced a burst of innovation and efficiency gains. The assembly line, the telephone, and the skyscraper all originated in this period of prosperity. The global conflagration in the early 20th century caused instability in the country, but it ultimately prevailed. After the second world war, the american empire, which had grown exponentially more productive in the past fifty years or so, was left amid the ashes to claim economic and military dominance over the rest of the occidental world. It helped rebuild europe, and was the first nation to send a human to the moon during this period. Soon, however, the forces in favor of laissez-faire policies in the government grew more and more entrenched. A right-wing faction leveraged the newly-emergent forms of mass media to spread a message of fervent christian evangelicalism coupled with the type of economic libertarianism favored by extremely wealthy industrial tycoons. In a few decades the grip these forces had on the government's general decision-making ability meant that by the time its economy finally collapsed, it had cut taxes to the lowest level in the contemporary industrialized world, it had deregulated entirely the markets which had caused its great depression generations earlier, and it had even normalized bribery as a completely normal part of the legislative process. It had spent several times as much money on its military as the entire rest of the contemporary world combined. It also holds the distinction for contributing the most in history to the global level of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

*/

We are in limbo right now. Can you feel it? Just a day and a quarter or so until monday..

the Metaculturalist top 10 in the 10s (full cycle)

{We continue our list in the new year! For the first cycle, click here!}

vi. The climate gets dangerous. While this trend clearly has its roots in this past decade, climate change seems poised to begin some real destruction very soon. Naturally, 2010 was the warmest year on record, much like virtually all of the last ten years before it. This is not only a warming trend, though. It is to be more accurately thought of as general instability, with more energy in the system causing a virtually unpredictable slew of new norms.

vii. The culture improves. While it may not seem like it on the surface, popular culture is rapidly improving. While it may be an entirely subjective measure, it is extremely difficult to contrast lady gaga with britney spears and not feel as though propensity for artistry and artifice has greatly increased over the last decade. Gaga herself has been a large part of this, waving the 'strangeness' banner higher than ever in an explicitly mainstream context. While the commercialization of popular culture is clearly not going anywhere anytime soon, the values that the most commercial artists seem to represent are indeed mutating very quickly, and have come a long way since the naughty schoolgirls and clean-cut boy bands of the late 90s.

iix. Everything bad is good (in moderation). Drugs become much more commonplace, not necessarily in quantity but in role. The younger generation's familiarity with (and cultural digestion of) pharmacons of varying types breeds a shimmering blossom of cultural expression, both echo of and development upon a similar revolution which had it very beginning precisely half a century ago. Obviously, this element is inextricably tied to vii. That late capitalism has its upsides!

ix. A new revolution in transportation. From highways to outer space, in ten years the way that humans move around will be completely different. It had better be--just ask those aussies from vi. The first private orbiting spaceflight a month ago heralded the coming of a new era. Think of it as the Actual Space Age, a time when market forces will actually cause some good in society and make near-earth orbit the norm for rapid travel, tourism, and perhaps even industry. Innovations in distributed networks and robotics will take the fear out of driving, even if we no longer get to (or have to) actually drive. Teenage mortality, as a result, flatlines, and your humble metaculturalist will no longer have to worry about all those miles of highway they drive on (a topic for a future post).

x. The architecture remains awful. In spite of all these changes, The Most Backward Profession will remain obstinately rooted in the 19th century. Building practices will remain the same, and building a house in 2020 will take the same absolutely absurd amounts of time and money as it does now. What little innovation happens will, as always, remain on the fringes. Despite vast improvements in materials science, it will still be extremely likely that your home will be built of the same shit it always has, wood and prejudice.

And that does it for our year-end non-review! I hope you've enjoyed your stay, and please remember to rss if you've been enlightened!

the Metaculturalist top 10 in the '10s (first cycle)

All hark! The fresh turning of the solar system is neigh! As my original intent for this weblog has remained as an encompassing monologue generally regarding advancement and the future, it seems only fit to record a few predictions upon this new year and compile them into a 'top 10' list, as per fine blogging tradition. These should be seen as general predictions or thoughts about various aspects of society and how they might change in the next decade.

i. Economic leveling. By now it must be obvious that the global economy in the 2010s will be vastly different than the one that has characterized america's late-capitalistic phase. The BRIC countries are all slowly shoring up their economic bases, and by the end of the decade world commerce might just seem a lot more..let us say 'market-driven?'

ii The decline and slump of the american empire. The united states' half-century hegemony is beginning to recede. Related to i., this concept encompasses the global zeitgeist as both product and substrate for the economy. Cultural trends have gradually begun to show signs of shifting away from americanized capitalistic ideals, and the cultural rise of asia seems poised to make a dramatic impact in their wake.

iii. Neo-medicine. Stem cells, genomics, and more will allow for unprecedented medical advances. The technologies will force humans to wrestle with issues unlike any before (voluntary limb amputation, anyone?).

iv. Governmental shifts. Whether it's filibuster reform or coup d'état, governments are unstable, and there's no sign of settling.

v. The internet evolves. Having invented a means for every single human being on the planet to communicate effortlessly with one another, the challenge of the next decade will be defending the human right to internet access as vigorously as we defend the right to a free press. And now that we have this tool, what will we do with it?

{In the spirit of this celebration of liminal states, the latter half of this list will be published..in 2011! Joyous liminal celebration, everyone!!}

The Holographic Lewitt

Note well: this is a paper that i wrote this past semester. As part of this weblog, i would like to begin to unfold my personal artmaking techniques into a public realm. This particular paper is a 'part 1' of sorts. Stay tuned for the much more thorough 'part 2'

Walls are important things. Humans, from the wealthiest WASP on the East Coast to the most destitute resident of an Indonesian slum, spend their time in the constant presence of walls. It can reasonably be expected that the vast majority of humans are born with walls surrounding them, and that they will just as surely die with walls surrounding them. Walls not only surround humans at virtually all times, they also comprise the entirety of the furthest extent of said humans' field of vision at virtually all times. Thereby, while the physical presence of the wall dominates our locomotion, the visual presence of the wall dominates our vision.
Sol Lewitt seems to be dimly aware of this. His vast collection of wall drawings housed at MASS MoCA occupies acres of gallery space, taking up three floors of a large building. And yet something of a stagnant atmosphere seems to have settled in around the area. There is something unmistakably monotonous about his work when viewed as a whole. It is not for want of variety; the drawings range from the finest graphite detail barely discernible on a white surface to loud, saturated colors in shapes completely covering any hint of 'bare' wall underneath. It is not for an overstatement of ability or importance; the walls are humble and executed forthrightly. The culprit here is a distinct lack of imagination. The walls have all been treated in specific ways. They appear as varied as the animals in a zoo. But very few of them make anybody stop and stare, let alone gasp aloud.
Take the case of Wall Drawing 462. First executed in 1987, the description for 462 reads, “On four walls, one room, arcs 4 inches wide, from the midpoints of four sides, drawn with alternating bands of gray and black ink wash.” Predictably, the work presents as expected: it is a set of walls, each with concentric black and white circles originating at the midpoint of one of its sides. Coincidentally, this drawing is one of the only ones in which wall, pigment, and situation all meet to create a space that is not only notable for its rigorousness, but memorable for its perceptual impact. It seems in his years upon years of muted and impotent experimentation, Lewitt happened to stumble upon at least one design which actually maintains the ability to compel.
In this rather embarrassing ratio (one compelling piece to one entire building of walls), we can begin to trace the outlines of a helpful conclusion to take from Lewitt's work. Why is is that of all of the wall drawings on display, 462 seems to me to be the most enduring one? The answer is not simple, but it may be obvious. What Lewitt's other drawings lack in impact, 462 makes up for in the regimented execution of visual contrast. The simple shapes (circles), taken to a visual extreme (covering entire walls), impart a clear sense of dynamism. The piece achieves its perceptual domination through the effective leveraging of the walls it inhabits. To spend a few minutes engaged in this piece is to walk away dizzied and somewhat itchy. These aspects are by far the most successful of the piece, and they should rightfully be praised.
If 462 is most successful in its visual hegemony, it is the least successful in its poor execution at MASS MoCA. Instead of being presented in its entirety, the MASS installation is only a “detail” of the full piece, since the fourth wall required by Lewitt's stipulation is conspicuously absent. The drawing resides in a U-shaped alcove across from a window rather than in, as per the artist, “one room.” Not only must this have been a flagrant equivocation on the part of the artist himself (we were told that Lewitt participated prominently in the planning and execution of the gallery at MASS MoCA), it demonstrates a complete ignorance on the part of the artist of the power of his own work. That is to say, if Sol Lewitt knew intimately the qualities that make his work successful, he would never have allowed a drawing whose success relies so heavily on perceptually enveloping the viewer to be executed without that key fourth wall.
And why four? The main problem with Lewitt's work is that it is dreadfully unimaginative. Not only are the drawings he chooses to enact upon the various walls rather bland, the conception of the walls themselves is perhaps blander still. For a man who spent a large chunk of his career supposedly thinking about how to command draftsman to execute specific drawings onto walls, he seems to have given the walls themselves virtually no thought at all. Even when given three entire floors worth of open gallery space, the most Lewitt could bring himself to come up with was an orthogonal grid. An orthogonal grid. Sol Lewitt is presented with an entire building of gallery space for his walls and he decides to make cubicles. The man should have been an architect; that field would have loved him.
The time has come to attempt to distill something useful about this work. The intent of the artist is unclear; he seems to have been infatuated with the notion of leaving instructions for his wall drawings. These instructions encapsulate completely each drawing, and are presented along with the medium as information about the drawings in the gallery space. As relayed above, the instructions for 462 are primarily concerned with the arcs made and the midpoints used. Secondarily, there are specifications for the colors to be used, although they are vague on which kind of gray. Not surprisingly, the draftsman for this drawing had to step in on that aspect and make the gray very light (presumably) in order to make the drawing more interesting. In a case of deep irony, their decision may have been the only one that contributed positively to how compelling the final product is. It is important to note that this instruction-leaving aspect of the work is perhaps the most rigorous and distinct component of it (if John Cage hadn't done it some twenty or thirty years prior, it might even border on original!). This aspect, these instructions, can justifiably be seen as the de facto “actual” work of art, as authored by Lewitt, with the various executions of them seen as sort of deployments of this particular type of artistry.
It follows, then, that the way to truly activate Lewitt's work in the present day is to begin to challenge its assumptions. We can literally do this from the ground up. Why did Lewitt never create floor drawings? Floors are arguably more important than walls, and people are aware of them in a similar, though perpendicular, way. If Lewitt had included the floor in his instruction, not only would the viewer be presented with a significantly more thorough visual hegemony, but the room-ness of the piece would be absolutely necessary and no piddling three-wall half-attempts at reproduction could even be conceived. As for the walls themselves, stipulated and accounted for, we can immediately observe that never does Lewitt use a curved wall in any of his drawings. Why? Is Lewitt unaware that curved walls exist and in fact have existed for millennia? Why the flatness bias? Finally, there is no ceiling present in Wall Drawing 462, nor any other. The walls simply end, and there is a sizable gap between the end of the installation and the bottom of the floor above it (there are no dropped-ceilings in the gallery). If one wanted to be as rigorous with the concentric circles as possible, a ceiling would complete the viewer's perceptual sphere and make the disorientation complete.
The ultimate way to take Lewitt on at his word is to design a space that successfully combines a set of his instructions with a room that is designed specifically for them. This would allow for a sort of testing of the limits of his model, showing precisely what his instructions can and can't do. Over time, a given individual could embellish the room to their own taste, allowing for a sort of meta-art with a pivot point centered on any given wall drawing! In this way, Lewitt's work can be seen as a holographic image of sorts, with each given 2-dimensional wall drawing giving way to a full spectrum of 3-dimensional interpretations. A necessarily scientific act, this would be an engaging and intriguing take on an artist who is otherwise decidedly flat.

the horrific procedures of democracy

This election-eve, things are stirring. An odd manner of events have led to this particular point. The biggest picture being the election and subsequent administration of barack obama, along with the events having to do with its deployment legislatively (and the monumental oppositional hurtles forced by a stagnant, malicious minority party). The administration thus far has, in your editors view, felt overwhelmingly sombre and daunted, and it is very easy to see why. If we atomize our immediate history, one might claim that the deepwater horizon oil spill this summer was and endures as an appropriately apocalyptic image to summarize what has occurred in our country over the last decade. And even more recently, the flare-ups involving our muslim minority have pointedly emphasized the fear and instability that has become the new normal in is country. Undergirding all of these images and emotion and events is the deeply unsettling reality: this country is faced with an existential threat. Not from without, as the government and many other propagandists would have you believe, but from within.

Accurately portrayed in kos's American Taliban, the american rightists are for all intents and purposes an exceptionally powerful theocratic bloc in our politics. They believe that their god is implicit in this country's founding documents, and that our government must act accordingly. They believe wholeheartedly in willfully dismantling our government from the top down, arguing on the surface for states right but subliminally for the abolishment of virtually all social institutions. Alone, this would not be an especially remarkable position; the political right in this country has for years been oriented around those goals. What's new is the virulent anger, the mindless droning, the doublethink, and the complete unwillingness to deal in what people consider to be logical or factual. The right in this country is an epistemically closed system; fox news can legally call itself "news," and it can legally cite andrew brietbart as a source. They have the right to propagandize as they see fit, and, incredibly, they are not required to disclose that their parent company donates millions upon millions to the political right. What is the end result of epistemic closure? The american right has no method for entering new knowledge into their belief system. This was made manifest in an extremely visceral way when, in 2003, the country was swayed towards invading an actual other country based on fear and paranoia. When it quickly became apparent that those fears had been unfounded, the political right used its position of power to enforce its resolve and cultural relevance, and opposition to the Iraq war became virtually taboo among not only our politicians, but our public. We were forced to 'stay the course', watching helplessly, sometimes enthusiastically, as our citizens and theirs died for literally no reason.

What makes the american rightists so horrific is not their vehemency or passion. It is their complete rejection of the entire notion of thinking. Not only are their policy proposals far more radical than what had been generally deemed acceptable in American politics, but they directly participate in and encourage an entire culture of illogic, blind devotion, fear, and uneducatedness. They desire not a return to the reagan years, but to the feudal ones. Their thinking is a product of pre-renaissance ideals retrofitted and repurposed for the modern era. It is not so much that they consciously desire to be ruled over by a lord, its that they have never been presented with the facts about the things they have been told to believe. This is the greatest benefit of epistemic closure as a method of control: it is a sort of fascism of the mind. Citizens indoctrinated into the rightist ideology become inoculated against counter-argument. There is literally no arguing with them, because even if all of the people involved in a debate are courteous and civil, their philosophy allows them to write off all other participants as strange and nonsensical to their worldview. Because, simply, they are. No one using logic and reason can debate a contemporary Republican. Many of them running for office barely seem to hold anything even resembling a policy position, opting instead to run on what essentially amounts to fear, emotion, and good old-fashion throw-the-bums-out american mentality. How much can the system take? We live in a halfway approximation of democracy: representative government. It follows, then, that we might want somewhat more stringent standards for those who represent us. We must not be afraid of calling the insane in our midst precisely what they are: unable to be swayed by reason; un-sane, unfit for command, a form of mental illness by some metrics.

The eyes of a shark are dead to us because they are mindless automatons. They are perfect killing machines, engineered by evolution to consume everything around them as efficiently as possible. The actions of a shark are dictated only by consumption and self-preservation. They have no capacity to surprise observers, because a shark is a shark and a shark wants only one or two things. The logic of a shark is one of the most simple logics of the world. When we humans see these beasts in action, we look into those black sockets and see only darkness. An absence. The lack of a self, the lack of a compassion. The void, uncompromising and simple. A candidate in Nevada who can barely formulate a complete sentence. A candidate in Alaska who literally employs a suite of private guards because apparently such a thing is legal. A candidate in Delaware who has spent her life advocating for sexual abstinence. None of them say anything that bears any resemblance to actual knowledge or insight. The void, uncompromising and simple.

Vote early and often.

sensing

Look! Especially the bit at the bottom.

What is the logical conclusion of camera design? A tiny spherical sensor that could capture all of the visual information all around it in a single photograph. A veritable tiny black hole of a thing. It is pleasing that such a device would replicate the "floating sphere in space" physical form of stars and planets. It always seems that the universe enjoys the replication of particular forms at various scales. It's all just fractals, all the way down (and up).

information and the progressive distributions thereof

What is it, precisely, that allows for the entire project of human culture? What is it, precisely, that distinguishes our great cities from ant colonies?
What is it, precisely, that makes homo sapiens unique among the living objects on this particular planet? It is not our organizational ability, as a shoal of fish will tell you. It is not our efficient use of resources to expand our population base nor our complex building techniques, as an ant colony will tell you. And it is certainly not our emotional capacity, as any pet owner will surely testify.

Perhaps one of the few developed traits that truly distinguishes us from the rest of the known natural world is the conveyance of information unlimited by geography or time. With the invention of writing, homo sapiens struck out on a course of development completely unprecedented on this planet. Along the way, we have encountered a few inflection points that have radically altered the courses of civilizations.

Perhaps the most relatable of these inflections to the modern gaze is the invention of the printing press. Particularly notable is the manner in which this invention impacted the religious apparatus of the time. Before movable type was widespread, interpretation of religious doctrine was quite literally exclusive. A peasant seeking to know more about their world had precisely one option: to go to the cathedral. While it is often glossed over in architectural histories, the fact is that the old gothic church designs that some romanticize are incredibly complex pieces of architectural propaganda designed specifically to induce awe and faithfulness among the illiterate masses. So the people go to the church and the priest (who is can read) reads the bible to them. Inevitably, the content of the bible is parsed through the church's own ideology and priorities (and if memory serves, this process is actually formalized within the church doctrine). With the invention of the printing press, the exhausting process of prying exclusive knowledge from the few who possessed it began. Bibles could be printed for relatively little cost, and entire new sectors of the populace had access to the texts. The lutheran movement and the resulting schism followed in roughly a generation; the catholic church had lost its millennial grasp on its unified masses.

The printing press (along with wider literacy programs) allowed for the mass distribution of previously-exclusive information. People were suddenly able to digest their own sources of information and come up with opinions of their own. The fortress of the unquestionable heard for the first time the sounds of strange new weapons in the distance. [make no mistake, the fortress is still around: presently it's filled with fluorescent lighting and would like you to worry about your lawn. the logos abound and sales are final.] And it is for that reason that the internet is already as important an invention as the printing press.

It is simple to see how the internet is enabling more people more access to more information than they have ever had in their lives. So much so that it has become fashionable to somehow lament this fact. It is simple to recall the iranian elections and see how the internet can impact world events. Wikileaks.org is arguably one of the most important websites of our time, and its story has only just begun. It simple to see that wider distribution of information can only benefit humankind, and it is simple to see that the internet is fostering a whole new era of thought and culture.

panoptics and governance

Imagine for a second that every single time someone rolled a joint, they incurred a municipal fine. No matter what, no matter where they hid, every time someone did something that broke the law, they would be punished in some tangible way. Now consider why this idea is (presumably) offensive to you.

Ostensibly, privacy is an issue here. It certainly seems that the government being able to monitor its citizens' every action would infringe on personal liberty, does it not? But this presents the problem of what precisely the teleology of a system of laws entails. In this country, legally, your 'personal liberty' does not extend to breaking laws. If you can be proved to have broken a law (provided you end up in court), you are legally responsible and become a criminal. The end goal of our law is to enforce conduct that we deem appropriate. There are clearly certain ideas of what is appropriate that neigh universal in this day and age: don't kill humans, don't cheat, don't abuse. Of course, the list might not be as long as might be expected. Regardless, laws exist because humans generally agree that there are things that are wrong to do. The end result being that if you're caught speeding on a highway, a police officer gives you a ticket.

Of course, in our society, illegality and punishment have at best a tangential relationship. Our government has in effect failed in its endeavor to have a system of law. In fact you do not get a speeding ticket every time you push the needle. In fact many people do smoke cannabis as regular as going to the grocery store and live scot-free. What does this indicate? Does it imply poor vigilance on the part of the government? Or does it suggest that many of our laws are, for whatever reason, very ill-equipped to the lives that people lead? Our government, like most others, assumes that it can never catch all criminals all the time. And it probably can't. But the untold consequence of this fact is that our laws are increasingly unenforced. And unenforced laws not only undermine a citizenry's faith in their government, they completely negate the entire notion of having laws in the first place. It is for this reason that so much of our culture involves the image of government as an unwarranted intruder in our private lives. People's entire belief systems are bases around the assumption that government is unjust. And it is difficult to argue with these people, because much of the government we have in place right now does in fact rely on huge volumes of hypocrisy in order to exist. Unfortunately, in the past, this was necessarily the case on account of the physical impossibility of governance. But the time is rapidly approaching that actual just governance might be possible!

So! What if everything were monitored all the time in order to prevent any laws from being broken? What would happen? Well, this being a democracy, we would probably soon have many fewer laws! People do enjoy their freedom, and so a completely vigilant criminal justice system would quickly reveal those regulations that are ungainly or start to smell like totalitarianism. Of course, it would not be an easy process and so the system of litigation would necessarily have to be much more streamlined and easy to fend with. But digitization should help with that, no? We still live in a time prior to the government coming to terms with computers as a replacement for paper. Once that happens, the court system will become much less intimidating and inaccessible and perhaps the judicial wing of the american system will act in its appropriate role of regulating and mediating between the law and the citizenry in a reasonable fashion.

Now, this big brother utopia might still have a few problems to work out. But those are topics for the future!

talkin' bout my generation

A person born in 1990 in this country can reasonably expect to have had potential access to a computer as a learning tool for most of their developing life. It seems as though the potential impacts of this reality have not been fully investigated.

Learning something from a computer is a very different process than learning something from a teacher or from a textbook. Because the lessons are usually structured as an exploration rather than an explanation, learning is presented and digested in a much more personal way than in the classroom. Right now, i am able to type fluently on an ipad because i was able to easily transition from typing on a physical keyboard -- the system i learned on -- to one that requires slightly different muscle memory but broadly similar keystrokes and thereby similar physical knowledge (of finger positioning and activation). One might argue that growing up with such a possibility is fundamentally different from not, and thereby it is easy to see this ability as unique to people roughly 20-25 years old or younger* ("millennials" as opposed to gen. x-ers).

Thus, it is easy to recognize what may well prove to be a massively disruptive social truth: as people born later and later gradually transition into positions of general social power and status, the norm for analytical ability and learning fluidity will gradually shift towards a higher degree of each, and society can (presumably) only benefit in response. These traits are beneficial because they (presumably) increase tolerance of change, dynamism, and responsiveness to environments. In a world increasingly characterized by change and swift realignments in norms, it can only serve us well to be more accustomed to such things, and the future is bright!

*whether or not this perception is demonstrably true is the purview of social scientists, not your humble editor.

Location:Syracuse

yikes!

and i apologize for the delay in content! in was spending my time having an elective surgery and moving many hundreds of miles across the nation to a giant strange house in the town where i attend university! but now your editor is all settled in and ready to spend the next indeterminate amount of time working in the most production manner possible. and so you should expect a rich seam of posts in the near-to-mid-term future! so let's get on with it, then!

"who might've lived one thousand years..."

How long do you expect to live? It is a slightly different question than how old do you expect to become. In fact, if you follow some of the research being done now to its logical conclusion, you might start to think that your answers to those questions might be quite a bit different than your parents'.

If we take for granted that most cultural traits that humans exhibit seem to develop at an exponential rate (with technology being perhaps the most easily recognizable), it seems reasonable to expect that the field of medicine will undergo radical changes in the next several decades. For instance, the recent arrival of the first synthetic self-replicating DNA is already being recognized as a milestone. Research like that coupled with the rapidly-advancing state of stem cell research means that the medical options available to doctors twenty years from now are going to be much, much different than the ones available to our contemporary physicians. And given that there seem to be creatures that basically don't age (forgive the website, just note the article they're posting was originally published in Discover), it seems feasible that we may one day be able to bestow that enviable trait upon ourselves. And why not? Who wouldn't want to live an extra century or two?

Bear in mind that this is merely the research being done right now. In one of the articles, they mention that the whole notion of stem cell research has only been around a decade, an extremely short time in the medical field. And the second decade of research is probably much richer than the first. If they are already replacing large patches of skin, corneas, and some organs, they're already treating leukemia and other blood things, what do the next ten years hold?

So if you're interested in the future, maybe do yourself a favor and try and exercise a little more in the meantime, and hope to live long enough that some day you won't have to. And always remember your Arthur Clarke: "Technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic."

neo-democracy in the Digital Age

Here is a pressing question: why, in a period of time characterized by speed, digitalization, and interconnectedness, do we live in a constitutional republic?

Democracy is defined as government by the people, and democracy as we know it has virtually always been limited in some way. The normative democratic mode as has been practiced throughout most of western culture is republican in nature (in the constitutional republic sense, not the party-of-no sense). In a republic, representatives are elected to serve in a parliamentary body, which is usually charged with the dual task of proposing and refining laws. This is the system through which the American government exists, and we are thusly familiar with the process of electing our senators and representatives. Those representatives go on to serve in our parliament, which we happen to call congress and which happens to be arranged in a bifurcated way.

The idea is that the people express their opinions on what should happen by electing representatives who reflect those opinions, those representatives go on to propose and vote on bills, which, by gaining the support of a majority of other representatives, eventually become law. For our purposes, the checks and balances of the American system are unimportant. The gist is that the opinion of the majority of the population, through proxy of their representatives, becomes expressed in law. To refresh, a democracy is a system in which the majority opinion of the people is the determining factor in what ultimately governs those people. A republic is a form of democracy in which that majority opinion is expressed by proxy through elected representatives, who ultimately govern the people.

Now, reach in your pocket. Or train your eyes on the table next to you. Something. What do you find? If you're like most people, you find sort of tiny digital cellular device that you can use to make phone calls. Indeed, some might go so far as to call it a cell phone. The point here is that most of the conscious population in the year 2010 has one of these. Every individual typically has a unique number that they can be reached at so that they can exchange specific information with specific people with no regard for distance. 


So we have devices that let us send information over long distances at very little cost, we each have a unique one of our own, why not use these things to vote? On, say, everything? Why do we tolerate living in a governmental system designed specifically for a time in which such a thing was simply not possible? Once you recall that the entire purpose of having a parliament is to enact the majority opinion of the people, why do the people even bother with a parliament any more? Gigantic national opinion polls are already conducted on 'the issues' regularly. Why not develop those polls to become more secure, more refined, and finally codified into a system of parliament? The technology to do such a thing already exists, and has existed for at least a few decades now. It is only a matter of time before the first western country adopts such a system, as such a system is the logical conclusion of democracy as we know it. America's people could be the first!

because what else are you going to call it?

hello and welcome.

This is a blog written by me, jeffrey michael geiringer. My editorial direction will be simple. I will post things that interests me, and explain why. Within those parameters (mostly), my hope is that i will begin to articulate a vision characterized by large-scale societal analysis and uncompromising optimism about the future. The things that interest me are the ones that seem to hint at the deeper structures of society, although in some instances you may want to replace the concept of deepness with largeness (or just keep the both). I am interested in those structures because they seem to me to hold some clue as to where our society is headed, generally, and what the future will hold. I hope to play both weatherman and historian; i hope to analyze our society while participating in it.

The world that we live in right now is vastly different from the one you grew up in, whomever you are. Things are evolving quicker than ever. This is an incredibly important thing to keep in mind. If we as a species, as an existential unit, want to keep on existing at all, we must learn to not only live with change, but embrace it. The number of tragic things that simply happen because no one has ever bothered to do them differently is astounding. I believe that when we are actively shaping our societies and our selves, we will achieve a higher degree of freedom and prosperity than has ever been remotely conceived of.

These are my ideas,* these are the things that compel me. I hope that they will serve as commentary and analysis, an alternate opinion. It's hard to define the goal of such an endeavor, other than perhaps joining in the gigantic cultural conversation that exists in this form on the internet.

*in the sense that i am writing them down, not in the sense that they are originally "mine:" a topic for a future post that will probably address copyright law and the strange relationship between "originality" and innovation.

make it gold

make a change,
build it up,
fill it up,
and you can make it gold


make a flag,
sew it up,
raise it up,
and you can wave it high


make a sound,
turn it up,
turn it up,
and you can make it loud


-Nice Nice, "Make it Gold"