Quasimodo of the Multiplex

[alexanderscttb]

It’s faster than a mind can think

Comments

Re: apogee of illusion

[pigshitpoet]

my words are too long for one comment, i'll have to spell it out in three on one thread.. so, here we go!

thanks for explaining your take on debord. capitalism, is also fraught with power hungry fascism, as well as consumerism. i mean everything including you and i become commodified.

yes, in a simple way, we vote with our currency through consumerism, but at the same time we are influenced by media as the massage/message (mcluhan)..

the problem for me with consumerism as a driving mechanism is consumption or finite goods. whereas creativity has the ability to make something from nothing, so to speak.

“[Completing] its colonization of social life,” -- so is culture a product of living or does living necessitate the social structure of colonizing our behaviour? i agree, i was born into a world of television framing my thoughts to mediate my experiences, but i have managed at times to break away from that and have free reign, only the human in me doesn't want to live like a hermit in nature, and gravitates back toward some social order somewhere, that coincides with my sensibilities.

2-Re: apogee of illusion

[pigshitpoet]

for instance, in spite of some global or national or even local social institution, where i become one of many, i rather look from an inward perspective and build out from there. first there is you, then those you live with, family or friends, then the collective, then community, city, province, country, etc. it goes out from a self-centric awareness. in all this, i was drawn to find connection in a local art community, through life drawing for the past 25 years. that allowed me to interact with like minded individuals with similar interests, instead of only talking about the weather, and houses and cars, and jobs and other unchosen relationships..

so the key in all this is that we find our sovereign being, our self-identity and work from there. you are a writer. i also found community in a group of local writers, long before the internet.

all that, was right here in my community. now it is just a sea of faces, and vagaries and generalities, whereas in the past ten years, i've found a more intense virtual community through the internet. there are a handful of people on FB or LJ, or art and music subscriptions that feed my need for creativity and expression.

3-Re: apogee of illusion

[pigshitpoet]

it's funny. when i was a kid i could sing all the ad jingles from tv commercials by heart or learned the words to pop songs from repetitious play on top forty radio, mainstream stuff, and so that is social conditioning. then i rebelled against all that mainstream when i went to art school, looking for eclectic, cult and avant garde, outside the box thinkers. that's when i felt like a man without a country. nobody with whom to easily associate, unless i talked news and politics or carpentry. i also wrote about this back then. that which was familiar. i've been writing journals of sorts for the past 25 years

anyway, what i'm getting at, is that there's the big picture and the expansive thinkers and philosophers, whom i envy and admire, but there are also the self-contained local practitioners of photographers, writers, musicians, artists, who are out there doing it, much like you are on your blog. i think both are relevant, the big picture and the (blues and) abstract truth, as oliver nelson once put it.

orwell seems to be on many minds today with the global narratives under authoritarian globalist collusion, which doesn't give a rat's ass about grassroots living. i see them as the predators, like vultures preying on the misfortunes of we the living. without creators, there is no content. once the commodities are used up, it's back to the wheel to gather more.

the real work is being done by people like you and me and anyone who has the will to create or express truth rather than just to consume and raid the resources of others. there's a big distinction between cut&paste and real original free expression. with all our social conditioning, it's sometimes difficult to see through the cult and find the freedom in living. i have a joke about plagiarizing the world. it's like pinky and the brain. cut&paste everything for repurposing, synthesis and concatenating.

i hope more people can break free of this victim guilt fear agenda we are living and flourish from themselves, to help make the world a brighter place with a positive future for next generations.

i mean, we got this far, it would be a shame to blow it all to hell now, wouldn't it?
some poor mutherfuckers want to do exactly that.

not me. live and let live!
peace out,
; )

even LJ has bloody word restrictions..

that which is not censored will be made manifest..

ha-hah!

Re: 3-Re: apogee of illusion

[alexanderscttb]

I’m very much in agreement with you here. The kind of social conditioning that you speak of is very real. It’s also very controversial to speak of it, for no less than the fact that it’s power comes from it’s very invisibility, the plausible deniability of its existence. It’s again the power of convincing people that “freedom is slavery.” I believe George Monbiot has said, “the most powerful ideologies never announce themselves as ideologies. That is where their power lies.” Once you see through a certain illusion, it’s nearly impossible to go on seeing things in the old way. The genie can’t go back in the bottle. For this reason I’m optimistic that the control society in its presence form will fall, leaving nothing behind but a “sneer of cold command […] Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,” to quote Shelley. But we must also make it fall. And what is the best way to counter the illusions of a control society, the Society of the Spectacle? As you mentioned, through the power of individual artists, writers, photographers, musicians, philosophers, activists, revolutionaries, et al., banding together in collectivities with as many others as they can who dare to envision a brighter future.

RE: social conditioning

[pigshitpoet]

[ it’s power comes from it’s very invisibility, ] - that is very well stated

i call it zietgeist, but i'm not sure that the correct use of it

us old romantics keep wanting to put the genie back and return to the old ways, but i know how that works
if we keep expecting the same things, how will anything ever change?

“sneer of cold command […] - i like that. it says much about little, that's how authoritarians get away with it, bullying

what were your favourite pieces by shelley?

here is something intriguing...

Rousseau relates seeing a form brighter than the sun, “A Shape all light,” a female form reminiscent of intellectual beauty and other ideal manifestations having to do with the poet’s creative powers. In the hopes of quenching his thirst for knowledge, Rousseau accepts a drink from the cup offered by the Shape, but the effect is to eclipse his vision of the Shape with the vision of a “cold bright car,” the same chariot leading the pageant of life, whereby Rousseau loses sight of the ideal.

In one of those ironic twists of fate that seem to bring literature and life together, near the end of the poem the poet Shelley asks Rousseau, “Then what is Life?”

one might see that process as our spectacle, our wonderment of the unseen become seen, the unknown happily discovered.

the pre-raphaelites, the impressionists including music, the romantic writers, all benefited from their exchange of ideals, or at least, ideas..

i think that's what helped make them great.

[ banding together in collectivities with as many others as they can who dare to envision a brighter future ]
you got that right. co-create. we are more together than we are separate. i like discussion groups, like writer's clubs, or art communities, for that very reason..
; )

Re: social conditioning

[alexanderscttb]

I remember not hating but not exactly loving English either in school, but can remember the day specifically that I first read “Ozymandias.” For some reason it was the first time I really connected with literature that was “old.” Later I had to take a class on Romanticism in college where we focused on Keats and Shelley. The professor preferred Keats probably because of how he was apolitical-especially compared to Shelley-and I found myself needing to frequently come to the defense of Shelley in that class. I became very impressed with Shelley at that point, making it my goal to try to read everything he ever wrote. This would be the most in depth I’d ever gotten with an old-timey poet.
I’m still not finished with this goal, but I do have to admit that “Prometheus Unbound” really is a masterpiece. “Queen Mab” is also good. His short one “Mutability” is great. I also like the sonnet “England in 1819,” not to mention “The Mask of Anarchy” and the short one “What men gain fairly.”
I still have much to read by him. And in fact when I went to write that sonnet, “It Sure Gets Around,” I spent the day studying sonnets by Shelley to get some music in my head. . .

The anecdote you bring up about Rousseau is quite interesting. I’m suddenly reminded of Shelley’s philosophical world view, which very much has a Platonic base to it. Shelley’s idealism in this way has much in common with Plato, although one place where they differ starkly is in their political visions.
The more I think about it, the more it seems it might bear some similarity to the way they conceived of a figure called the Demiurge. Plato saw the Demiurge as the architect of the universe, the Forms are said to flow from this Creator God. Plato finds the divine order of the Logos that emanates from the Demiurge to be the highest ideal to which the great one should try to attain. In the end it becomes an elitist view, whereby there’s a preordained hierarchy of individuals at the top who are Philosopher Kings, set apart from the unenlightened masses.
On the contrary Shelley was atheistic in a spiritual way that reminds me of a Buddhist vision. This deeply informs his politics. For example, from what I understand in classical England, a charge of atheism was often comparable to a charge of treason, as it was in a way, a refusal to submit to the divine authority of the monarch. Shelley’s atheism in my view thus represents an individualistic revolt against hierarchical authority, in favor of a more radical democracy that’s something similar to modern anarchism.
This is a very limited speculation though, as I can’t say I’m at all an authority on Plato or Shelley (although I hope someday, I may achieve the kind of understanding of Shelley that’s in keeping with my goal).

Re: social conditioning

[pigshitpoet]

ok
now you just made my other day

i got more out of what you just said than all the shelley and plato i have read..
i thank you handsomely for this insight

about the demiurge, does that qualify plato as a gnostic? are you familiar with the sophia creation myth? it sounds like what you just described with plato. and yes logos.. which makes me think of genesis in the bible the book of john opes with = "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." - john 1:1

shelley and byron seemed like rebellious rock stars in their time, revolting against as you say, authority.. romantic idealists much as the psychedelic movement was back in the 60s and 70s. but with the practical hippie, i fear they may have lost traction for more frugal forms of living, back to the land, on a commune, might as well just surrender to stalin.. or mao. the rebellious movement interested me much in art school. i saw parallels in it to the time in which i grew up

you've prompted me to look into this further, it's as relevant now as it seemed then..
thanks you rebellious spirit!
; )

Re: social conditioning

[alexanderscttb]

Of course! Again I feel very honored.

To answer your question, I feel like this qualifies Plato as a kind of proto-Gnostic. I say that too because I believe the Gnostics proper were also in their way Neo-Platonists.
I’m not super well versed in this topic though, so I’m largely speculating.
In terms of the Sophia creation myth I’d like to know more of it. I know that Sophia means “wisdom,” but that is basically the extent of what I know about that.

Haha, and I fully agree with what you said about Byron and Shelley. In fact I see those figures and Romanticism more broadly as really prefiguring the counterculture movement of the 1960s. I see a kind of unity through time for these perspectives (and I also hope that said unity can carry forward into this present moment, and on into the future).
Also because I agree that I feel like this movement, as it manifested in the hippie movement, did veer off course. A lot of those ideals were lost. Much of it became degraded through a spiritually materialist drug culture, or a new “ethical” form of consumption in capitalism, or the apolitical, Brave New World like qualities of New Age.
This is kind of from my perspective as I look back on it, as since I didn’t live through this, I was very much intrigued by all of it and spent many years (and in fact, I still do) with trying to understand those times and perhaps in some way, to find a way to participate in a kind of revival of them, in a stronger, and more capable form!

Talking with you really brings a lot of this preoccupation out, so I truly value it!
Cheers to you!

Re: 2-Re: apogee of illusion

[alexanderscttb]

And I certainly agree with you here about the importance of community. I would merely add that I also think proximity is an essential part of community. This is of course relative in the sense that everyone on this planet is in proximity of each other, by virtue of living on this same planet, and indeed this is why we so desperately need to evolve a sense of planetary community, else we are all doomed. But this also ties into what I find to be problematic about the internet. Because I do feel everyone has flocked into these digital communities, while the communities that are in direct proximity to us, my relationship to city, state, country, world, etc., to use an example, these communities have been and continue to be undermined by neoliberal governmental power that is also corporate and tied intimately to the control society mechanism. In short, from my point of view, it’s necessary to take back the communities that are in direct proximity to us, otherwise we will become even further psychologically and “spiritually” colonized the deeper and deeper we sink our psychic/cosmic energies into the internet, a tool that was developed by the military-industrial-intelligence-media-control complex after all.
The reason for this, to return to the philosophy of Debord, is because I see the internet as a higher evolution of the Society of Spectacle. What it provides us with is the appearance of a planetary community, when what we really need to do is evolve not merely the appearance but the reality of a planetary community, and what that looks like ironically, is solid community on the microscopic level first-and most importantly agency within that community-then that lays the groundwork for a robust macroscopic community. In other words, political organization from the bottom up and not the top down.
So, rather than political power invested in states over individuals, we need to give power to individuals in their communities, which scales up into a truly global world, not a global tyranny that imposes its control schema downwards onto its population of nearly 8 billion souls.
That would be my third cent.

Re: 2-Re: apogee of illusion

[pigshitpoet]

yes, certainly for the global picture, that universal unity becomes imperative to helping interpret our own experience

i find it sad that so many have abandoned blogging and turned it into twitter talk. word rapier. think of all the content and context we have lost in the process of that fallout. what once was glorious and joyous has become vapid and trite.

ugh. government. authoritaaay!!... bleh! goes back to that bullying, “sneer of cold command […]

i am a practitioner and believer of learning through experience, although i am such a dreamer, i find if i don't ground myself, i end up going in circles..

yes, i too like that the internet affords us a broader perspective. yes, giving ourselves permission to live and think as we are. yes, instead of control, creativity and freedom to explore. that is necessary as human development. making robots is for auto mechanics. you need a pilot to keep it on the road.. that requires not just an engineer or administrator, but the actual operator. you sir, are the pilot of your own ship!

; )

Re: 2-Re: apogee of illusion

[alexanderscttb]

Haha, yes! I see that as in essence the overthrow of authoritarian cybernetic control, for us all to become the captains of our ship, in a harbor of ships in a galaxy of harbors.

I’m very much in agreement with you. I do think there’s been a degrading of community by way of communication in how the internet has developed in the past decade or so, certainly exemplified by Twitter as you mentioned.
I would throw Facebook in there too.

I think we really have to fight to establish alternative collectivities that are not brought under the umbrella of what the modern internet has become.
Do you think it may take the realization of this new generation of folks who grew up with the internet always around, to see through certain totalitarian aspects of the internet, to create more of this thrust which might push back against the dystopia of the internet now?

Re: 2-Re: apogee of illusion

[pigshitpoet]

[ captains of our ship, in a harbor of ships in a galaxy of harbors ] - that's pure poetry!

twitter and FB are in their infancy if you ask me. if they survive, they could revolutionize the way we live..
as long as it isn't under communist control like china. then i would probably jump off a bridge
; )

[ I think we really have to fight to establish alternative collectivities ] - isn't that the way it's always been at some level? we get back what we put into it.. build it and they shall come ))

so for your the internet is probably like tv for me, only when the internet appeared i stopped watching tv ))

maybe something else will come along to replace the web, like virtual reality, the matrix, we will only exist in theory,
like in a video game, no need or want, just processing and consuming. wait, don't we do that now?
ha-hah!

Re: 2-Re: apogee of illusion

[alexanderscttb]

I think you are right to point it out as “the way it’s always been at some level,” I feel like the fight, like the song, remains the same. And this also goes back to that idea of 1984/1948. There’s a mysterious unity to the past/present/future, almost like a chronic trinity, that we may not be fully aware of. (“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past,” Orwell).
I also feel that the way China uses social media is the wet dream of folks like Trump, a guy who not only envies the absolute power wielded by rulers such as Xi Jinping, but whose example-whose to say-will not be followed by more politicians come the future. In other words, I feel like the Chinese model could very well become a model for the entire world. . .
I feel this is the way the internet is going/has already gone, it happens a little more obliquely in the so called Western democracies is all. Think of how masses of people were more than willing to give up their bourgeois liberties after the events of 9/11/2001. Think of how, even in light of the Snowden disclosures, people still choose to put themselves in positions where they are being constantly surveilled and their information collected and stored and analyzed. People know, but on some level they either don’t care-or feel powerless to do anything about it-which I feel is one and the same kind of reaction.
The trade off for the benefits we get from the internet is already extremely high. Not only do we submit to mass surveillance but also behavioral modification by way of cybernetic control algorithms, which are more intense than television ever was. These fragment information and hence consciousness, trapping individuals and collectivities inside of mutually exclusive demographics that can’t come together in the ways that they should/could, if they were to be/become truly functioning political collectivities.

These technologies may indeed still be in their infancy, but according to this idea of the unity of past/present/future, the potential of an idea is in a sense already its culmination in the future. Or the present state of these technologies have their roots in earlier, prototypical technologies that have evolved into culminations of their prototypical forms, that are also prototypes of a further evolution of that technology.
The song remains the same!
This is not to try to suggest there’s some kind of irresistible determinism about all of this but on the contrary, to note the contingent nature of all of it. That is to say, the parts of it that are fixed are fixed only insofar as we believe they are fixed. History is an ever changing backdrop. If we can detect in it the patterns foisted on us as irreversible, I believe we can deconstruct those patterns at their very root, and alter course, thus allowing us to become those ship captains in a harbor of ships in a galaxy of harbors.
I guess it is to note the mutability of even a thing like technology, and that the singular path technology at present seems to pose to us as inevitable, is in fact, only one form of contingency which we don’t have to accept at all, indeed, I believe we can forge an alternative path.

2-Re: apogee of virtuality

[pigshitpoet]

based on this recent thread, i thought this might interest you..

https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/hakim-bey-temporary-autonomous-zone/

from a couple of years ago, latest essay series on Hakim Bey's work, by Andrew Robinson

it speaks of the internet and our artificial intelligences or as hakim bey calls them,

‘islands in the net’ that form our webs

poetic forms of terrorism and autonomous zones

such as that recently set up in seattle

let me know what you think..

Re: 2-Re: apogee of virtuality

[alexanderscttb]

Brilliant!
This article couldn’t be any more relevant to what I’ve been thinking about. Thank you for brining it to my attention. I agree completely, and I also think it’s rad when strategic techniques for confronting the spectacle are theorized, such as in this TAZ technique.

I found this to be particularly important, “Bey, following Baudrillard, argues that the system values simulation, not substance.” It seems to imply there’s something revolutionary about authenticity in these cybernetic capitalist times. A wholly optimistic notion, it implies that merely fighting to live authentically has become a revolutionary act. While scary on the one hand, suggesting how far gone things have become, on the other it seems like a very promising zone to draw our line in the sand. To hell with representation, we’re going to live autonomously, authentically, the system be damned!

Particularly relevant to what we had been discussing was to read of Bey’s criticisms of the Internet, where the article on him stresses that, “an entirely virtual resistance is only a spectacle of resistance.” I think this is a very urgent point to grasp for our youngest generation-who may not harbor any skepticism for a device they literally grew up with-perhaps not unlike the way post-boomer generations also were maybe not skeptical enough of what was then only an emergent technology. Regardless its good to see the Seattle TAZ up and running. I suspect its not a surprise given Seattle’s history for this type of activity. I raise my fist in solidarity.
Moreover, I think whatever this cross-generational blind spot, it gets summed up nicely as the article states: “We need to stop reifying technology, and realise that only imagination creates values.”

This part hammers the point home. “Those who control the means of communication have power over those who communicate. The Internet is not really in heaven, because it can be controlled from outside. As a result, it is a false transcendence of the culture-nature dichotomy.”
Eat your heart out, Silicon Valley!
And I couldn’t agree more with this, “that ‘other nets’ need to be set up alongside ‘the’ Net, otherwise it will simply become another alienating medium.”

In conclusion this article has really illuminated for me a very crucial domain of resistance that I was unaware of before. There’s a truly immediate quality to this illumination and I’m very thankful for your bringing it to my attention!

RE: Re: 2-Re: apogee of virtuality

[pigshitpoet]

yes, isn't it apparent that this is the case.
thanks for your comment
now what?
; '