(no subject)
Work's been slow. Even when work isn't slow, it's dull and so am I, but my mind is fighting it all the time. It's maybe been since high school ended or maybe been since I first questioned God that the part of my psyche that may have been permanently numbed by television and school at such a young age has fought to use itself.
There's a half-finished bookshelf laying on my kitchen floor, and I think of leaving it there, as art, because art is as useless as an unfinished thought. I squish things around (mostly stolen) looking for the satisfaction of a solid thought. It seems timely to be reading Artaud, who talks about the implied hypothesis behind a stated 'fact.'
I grasp for coherence; coherence! Not even correct! I have a sudden impulse to blurt outloud to the nearest person any reasonable thought that enters my head, for the satisfaction of having a thought but even as I start to speak it's gone. And this! this is all Artaud speaking! Timely!
It has come to writing it down not as art or expression, but to hold it in my hand to prove it was there.
And this is what I have to say.
In Portland, the bulk of my thinking has, like Daniela, gone toward analyzing the fabric of society. I think she's conquering the more elemental side of things, the mosaic behind the single puzzle piece, using a microscope I don't have the patience nor focus to look through. I'm not yet capable of seeing the fine dots; I can only see fractures of the pieces themselves, and I'm desperately clinging to this single completed part that I think I may have found.
I don't claim originality. I claim only that I thought it, and that it needs to be written down to prove that I thought it at some point. It's not much, but it is this: I have managed to think of society in terms of the slavery that some people say it is.
That's it! That's all I have! To me, it amounts to a victory, because it's now no longer a conspiratorial theory to laugh at, nor is there a real bad guy to fear. Worse! It's embedded into every one of us!
It's not television and elementary school that numbed me. Rather, it's the system that created those things, the system that makes it necessary to dull us all. It's an infection, a prion of a subversion, that has been passed down to us for the past thousand years or so.
This is how it works.
1. Break their spirit. Show them that unless you are rich, you are nothing. This is pumped into us by our school counselors, through our poor, sad parents (or else our rich, sad parents), and through trillions of dollars in ad campaigns. If there's a single person among you who doesn't believe that the world's marketing companies are spending money SPECIFICALLY to systematically meld with your brain, then you're already too far gone.
2. Dangle the carrot. "Live the American dream" is no more useful than telling niggers that they can pay their way out someday. The same goes for giving us a weekend off.
3. "You've earned this." What's worse, we all at the bottom willfully acknowledge that we DESERVE to be at the bottom. "I'm just lazy" or "I'm not smart enough" or "You've got to earn your way to the top." What's the need for propaganda? We all subscribe to our own caste even as the victims of it!
4. Destroy all free time. This is the final and most damaging cause of what has essentially become The Slavery of the West (though if you think it's unique to the West, or America, or any other term that has only been relevant the past 750 years or so, it's not). Anyone who's read Fredrick Douglas should have this riddle solved. Remember in Bill Cosby Himself when he talks about how his employees work SO HARD to get to the weekend, the only two days they get to themselves, "and those are the two days they completely destroy themselves." In the oh-so-familiar scenario of America, slaves were given Sunday afternoons off. They were also given alcohol. Why? For one, the slaveholders got to pat their own backs for being so generous to their possessions. It was always a Sunday, because, surprise surprise, the downtrodden were religious, and there's nothing like the hope of a vengeful God and a pleasant afterlife to keep one in line. The alcohol? So they didn't think. The alcohol destroyed any trace of remaining free time, because free time was dangerous, to the slaveholders, to the institution, and ultimately, the economy and the State.
In retrospect, it's easy to understand why the slaves would be drinking and going to church. In retrospect, we wouldn't dare blame the slaves for their own undoing. In a similar way, I refuse to take blame for my own chains. However, I also refuse to willingly be binded.
I really don't know what can be done about it all.
This is what I am hoping.
I am going to dedicate to myself a minimum of one hour per week of free time, where I require nothing more of myself than to be awake and unintoxicated. Maybe I'll read. Maybe I'll have a conversation. This, of course, is nothing more than a symbol and an open protest; I'm quite certain I already have more than one hour of free time per week. This one hour, however, will be from now on sacred and untouchable.
I know I can't force you all to believe this, and, remember, my stated fact is also hypothesis. My hope, though, is that I can convince everyone to participate, to set aside a single hour at any point in the week of free time, as active protest against whatever oppressor you believe in.
There's a half-finished bookshelf laying on my kitchen floor, and I think of leaving it there, as art, because art is as useless as an unfinished thought. I squish things around (mostly stolen) looking for the satisfaction of a solid thought. It seems timely to be reading Artaud, who talks about the implied hypothesis behind a stated 'fact.'
I grasp for coherence; coherence! Not even correct! I have a sudden impulse to blurt outloud to the nearest person any reasonable thought that enters my head, for the satisfaction of having a thought but even as I start to speak it's gone. And this! this is all Artaud speaking! Timely!
It has come to writing it down not as art or expression, but to hold it in my hand to prove it was there.
And this is what I have to say.
In Portland, the bulk of my thinking has, like Daniela, gone toward analyzing the fabric of society. I think she's conquering the more elemental side of things, the mosaic behind the single puzzle piece, using a microscope I don't have the patience nor focus to look through. I'm not yet capable of seeing the fine dots; I can only see fractures of the pieces themselves, and I'm desperately clinging to this single completed part that I think I may have found.
I don't claim originality. I claim only that I thought it, and that it needs to be written down to prove that I thought it at some point. It's not much, but it is this: I have managed to think of society in terms of the slavery that some people say it is.
That's it! That's all I have! To me, it amounts to a victory, because it's now no longer a conspiratorial theory to laugh at, nor is there a real bad guy to fear. Worse! It's embedded into every one of us!
It's not television and elementary school that numbed me. Rather, it's the system that created those things, the system that makes it necessary to dull us all. It's an infection, a prion of a subversion, that has been passed down to us for the past thousand years or so.
This is how it works.
1. Break their spirit. Show them that unless you are rich, you are nothing. This is pumped into us by our school counselors, through our poor, sad parents (or else our rich, sad parents), and through trillions of dollars in ad campaigns. If there's a single person among you who doesn't believe that the world's marketing companies are spending money SPECIFICALLY to systematically meld with your brain, then you're already too far gone.
2. Dangle the carrot. "Live the American dream" is no more useful than telling niggers that they can pay their way out someday. The same goes for giving us a weekend off.
3. "You've earned this." What's worse, we all at the bottom willfully acknowledge that we DESERVE to be at the bottom. "I'm just lazy" or "I'm not smart enough" or "You've got to earn your way to the top." What's the need for propaganda? We all subscribe to our own caste even as the victims of it!
4. Destroy all free time. This is the final and most damaging cause of what has essentially become The Slavery of the West (though if you think it's unique to the West, or America, or any other term that has only been relevant the past 750 years or so, it's not). Anyone who's read Fredrick Douglas should have this riddle solved. Remember in Bill Cosby Himself when he talks about how his employees work SO HARD to get to the weekend, the only two days they get to themselves, "and those are the two days they completely destroy themselves." In the oh-so-familiar scenario of America, slaves were given Sunday afternoons off. They were also given alcohol. Why? For one, the slaveholders got to pat their own backs for being so generous to their possessions. It was always a Sunday, because, surprise surprise, the downtrodden were religious, and there's nothing like the hope of a vengeful God and a pleasant afterlife to keep one in line. The alcohol? So they didn't think. The alcohol destroyed any trace of remaining free time, because free time was dangerous, to the slaveholders, to the institution, and ultimately, the economy and the State.
In retrospect, it's easy to understand why the slaves would be drinking and going to church. In retrospect, we wouldn't dare blame the slaves for their own undoing. In a similar way, I refuse to take blame for my own chains. However, I also refuse to willingly be binded.
I really don't know what can be done about it all.
This is what I am hoping.
I am going to dedicate to myself a minimum of one hour per week of free time, where I require nothing more of myself than to be awake and unintoxicated. Maybe I'll read. Maybe I'll have a conversation. This, of course, is nothing more than a symbol and an open protest; I'm quite certain I already have more than one hour of free time per week. This one hour, however, will be from now on sacred and untouchable.
I know I can't force you all to believe this, and, remember, my stated fact is also hypothesis. My hope, though, is that I can convince everyone to participate, to set aside a single hour at any point in the week of free time, as active protest against whatever oppressor you believe in.