Wrote the following in my journal on June 24, 2015:
“Last night, one of
the dinner guests said something to the effect of, The biggest scourge of this
time is the New York Times-reading liberal, who is smug and conceited and
does not act on all the bad news they fill their head with.” I resembled that remark, to my shame.
Maybe still do, to a lesser extent, four-and-a-half years later. Less so now with the “smug and conceited” but still got the latter half going on. It is true that I, as a “New York Times-reading liberal,” do not “act on all the bad news” with which I fill my head, but how can anyone do that? You can only change what you know you can change, a proposition vanishingly thin when faraway events come into the picture.
Even so, I do not accept what I cannot change, as the so-called serenity prayer bids people to do. How can anyone accept the fact that there will be no social justice on a dead planet, or that entire generations endure a lower standard of living than their parents, or that we have a barely functioning democratic system? These are not etched into stone, but serenity in the face of an ecological/economic abyss is not an option.
Last week, I dreamt that a colossally tall tidal wave gathered force in the distance, and people did not seem to notice, worry, or care about it. Only until the tsunami began to crest and tower over us all did people begin to freak out, as soon as it was too late for action. There was no longer anything to do but get annihilated, and then I woke up. People talk a lot about being “woke,” after all, and maybe it is a good thing to not sleep-walk through impending catastrophe.
No one can do everything but everyone can do something. That seems to be the folk wisdom, and it feels right. Burnout is a serious problem, as critical as inaction itself. The revolution, in whatever form it may take, is coming. The tidal wave approaches. Everyone has to do what they can so that collectively we can brace for what we know is on its way. Not sure if massive street demonstrations are what is needed, but they would not hurt.
Happy New Year.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Sunday, November 03, 2019
Yesterday Is Gone, Tomorrow Never Comes
The past is a ghost and the future is a phantom. All that is here and will ever be is the present. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow never knows, since the day never arrives. As soon as it is tomorrow it is today again. Even if one could somehow go back to yesterday—which is impossible, for the time being—it also would be today. These terms are abstractions, figments of the mind.
All we have, have had, and will ever have is the present moment, right now. Now. Now. Further, no matter where one is located, one is always here. Sure, one can “go over there,” but as soon as that happens there is no “there” there anymore. Saying to someone “see you there then” makes no sense. No matter what, one is always going to see someone here now.
Most people seem to think that time is linear, but according to quantum physicists, once we get down to the level of subatomic particles and elemental forces, there is no meaningful distinction between past, present, and future. Time is, perhaps, simply a measure of change, which is the only thing that never does. Indigenous conceptions of temporality likewise do not see time as an arrow moving from past to future, unlike the dominant Western construct.
This does not imply that one is wrong and the other right, but that there is no one way to perceive an eternal present usually divided into yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is interesting that Wikipedia defines time as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, to the future.” Here we see a linear progression portrayed, with the qualifier “apparently irreversible” thrown in.
One may think it a shame that we can move through space and not through what is often called the fourth dimension, hence the continuing fascination with the idea of time travel. Traveling into the future is what we have always been doing, at the rate of one second per second, one minute per minute, one hour per hour, one day per day, etc. Of course, that implies a linear direction, but is it really possible to travel into the past? If so, what would that mean?
The past is a memory, an artifact, a photograph, a document, a recording. We cannot, apparently, return to it; all we can do is see the traces we have left now. It seems reasonable to assume that all we can do is move in one temporal direction, in the same sense that it seems reasonable to assume we can only move in three spatial directions. Imagine that everyone could only move in one spatial direction, or thought so. Space only going one way! It sounds absurd, but perhaps our experience of temporality seems as nonsensical to hypothetical higher-dimensional beings.
We live, then, in a “flatland” of time. The only reason we think of things such as days, months, or years at all is the planet spinning around, our satellite revolving around us, and our flying around the nearest star. The week, meanwhile, is wholly arbitrary, having no natural analog. “That was weeks ago”: what does that really mean? The cyclical nature of time is most noticeable around the change of the seasons, the solstices and equinoxes that mark out the regular intervals of endless solar revolutions.
A statement attributed to the Buddha went thus: “You shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly see right there, right there.” Here and now, the only place and time anyone can be.
All we have, have had, and will ever have is the present moment, right now. Now. Now. Further, no matter where one is located, one is always here. Sure, one can “go over there,” but as soon as that happens there is no “there” there anymore. Saying to someone “see you there then” makes no sense. No matter what, one is always going to see someone here now.
Most people seem to think that time is linear, but according to quantum physicists, once we get down to the level of subatomic particles and elemental forces, there is no meaningful distinction between past, present, and future. Time is, perhaps, simply a measure of change, which is the only thing that never does. Indigenous conceptions of temporality likewise do not see time as an arrow moving from past to future, unlike the dominant Western construct.
This does not imply that one is wrong and the other right, but that there is no one way to perceive an eternal present usually divided into yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is interesting that Wikipedia defines time as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, to the future.” Here we see a linear progression portrayed, with the qualifier “apparently irreversible” thrown in.
One may think it a shame that we can move through space and not through what is often called the fourth dimension, hence the continuing fascination with the idea of time travel. Traveling into the future is what we have always been doing, at the rate of one second per second, one minute per minute, one hour per hour, one day per day, etc. Of course, that implies a linear direction, but is it really possible to travel into the past? If so, what would that mean?
The past is a memory, an artifact, a photograph, a document, a recording. We cannot, apparently, return to it; all we can do is see the traces we have left now. It seems reasonable to assume that all we can do is move in one temporal direction, in the same sense that it seems reasonable to assume we can only move in three spatial directions. Imagine that everyone could only move in one spatial direction, or thought so. Space only going one way! It sounds absurd, but perhaps our experience of temporality seems as nonsensical to hypothetical higher-dimensional beings.
We live, then, in a “flatland” of time. The only reason we think of things such as days, months, or years at all is the planet spinning around, our satellite revolving around us, and our flying around the nearest star. The week, meanwhile, is wholly arbitrary, having no natural analog. “That was weeks ago”: what does that really mean? The cyclical nature of time is most noticeable around the change of the seasons, the solstices and equinoxes that mark out the regular intervals of endless solar revolutions.
A statement attributed to the Buddha went thus: “You shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly see right there, right there.” Here and now, the only place and time anyone can be.
Thursday, October 17, 2019
Psyche Myself Out
I overthink everything
Who’s the I in that statement
Who’s the who in that question
Thoughts keep me in subjection
What did what when, why, to whom
Down rabbit holes circling doom
Get out of your head and go into your body
I overthink everything
Too much analysis leads to paralysis
Clues to decipher, the mind is a cipher
Always wanting to know what is this
Psyche yourself out of somatic experience
Astral projections just left them delirious
I overthink everything
I & I so say the Rastafari
Link together all our POV but cannot see
Outside the membrane of consciousness
Awaiting acknowledgements
I overthink everything
Greed destroys the heart of man
Mammon demands to know his plan
Some say you are not your thoughts
Battle lines that cannot be crossed
Who is anyone to say
as Spaceship Earth spins the day
All my thoughts are forever lost
They say we go dust to dust
Like metal oxidizing to rust
I overthink everything
Who’s the I in that statement
Who’s the who in that question
Thoughts keep me in subjection
What did what when, why, to whom
Down rabbit holes circling doom
Get out of your head and go into your body
I overthink everything
Too much analysis leads to paralysis
Clues to decipher, the mind is a cipher
Always wanting to know what is this
Psyche yourself out of somatic experience
Astral projections just left them delirious
I overthink everything
I & I so say the Rastafari
Link together all our POV but cannot see
Outside the membrane of consciousness
Awaiting acknowledgements
I overthink everything
Greed destroys the heart of man
Mammon demands to know his plan
Some say you are not your thoughts
Battle lines that cannot be crossed
Who is anyone to say
as Spaceship Earth spins the day
All my thoughts are forever lost
They say we go dust to dust
Like metal oxidizing to rust
I overthink everything
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Dastardly Iran Vows to Defend Itself If Attacked
The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps announced that “Iran will pursue and seek to destroy any
aggressor, even one carrying out a limited attack, ... after attacks on Saudi oil sites” on Sept. 14, “which both Riyadh and American officials blamed on Iran,” Reuters reported, quoting Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami as saying that “a limited aggression will not remain limited” and that Tehran “will pursue any aggressor.”
He added that they “will continue until the full destruction of any aggressor.”
Put aside for the moment whether the Iranian military has the capability to destroy either Saudi Arabia or the United States, which seems at best doubtful. The enemy nation has the nerve to publicly assert that it will defend itself against military assault from the US, the Saudis, and allied emirates, showing their impertinence in describing hypothetical airstrikes against IRGC sites as acts of “aggression,” when the proper terms are “defensive” and “limited.”
The report cited Brig. Gen. Ghadir Nezami, identified as the “head of international affairs and defense diplomacy at Iran’s General Staff of the Armed Forces,” declared that Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow “would begin joint naval exercises in the Arabian Sea and the North Indian Ocean in the near future, according to Iran’s semiofficial news agency.”
It is obviously outrageous that a country under crippling economic sanctions would seek to conduct war games with other regional powers, or declare that it would defend itself from enemy attack. If the tables were turned, there is no doubt the United States, by now seen by most of the global population as the greatest threat to world peace, would do exactly the same thing.
He added that they “will continue until the full destruction of any aggressor.”
Put aside for the moment whether the Iranian military has the capability to destroy either Saudi Arabia or the United States, which seems at best doubtful. The enemy nation has the nerve to publicly assert that it will defend itself against military assault from the US, the Saudis, and allied emirates, showing their impertinence in describing hypothetical airstrikes against IRGC sites as acts of “aggression,” when the proper terms are “defensive” and “limited.”
The report cited Brig. Gen. Ghadir Nezami, identified as the “head of international affairs and defense diplomacy at Iran’s General Staff of the Armed Forces,” declared that Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow “would begin joint naval exercises in the Arabian Sea and the North Indian Ocean in the near future, according to Iran’s semiofficial news agency.”
It is obviously outrageous that a country under crippling economic sanctions would seek to conduct war games with other regional powers, or declare that it would defend itself from enemy attack. If the tables were turned, there is no doubt the United States, by now seen by most of the global population as the greatest threat to world peace, would do exactly the same thing.
Thursday, August 22, 2019
All Our Days Are Numbered
Turned thirty-two almost three weeks ago, which is an age that is still considered quite young, but is no longer thought of as that young. It is a strange liminal stage that is past young adulthood and more fully into being, as the kids say, “grown-ass.” Expecting to live to my expected lifespan, I have at least another fifty years, including at least 30 more years of being not old.
It is really interesting to look at it in different units of time, like months, weeks, days, hours. It is a real shock to learn that all of 500,000 hours may remain of my natural lifetime, or in other words 3,000 weeks or so, the equivalent of 690 months.
Yet if I account for how much time until I am north of “retirement age” — while knowing that for most of my cohort we may never actually retire — that leaves only 2,000 weeks, or 460 months, or (roughly) 330,000 hours.
Three hundred thousand hours, give or take, is what I have until society will consider me among the ranks of the elderly. Time really is precious, so there is no point in wasting of any of it worrying over its passage. The truth is, all of our days are numbered; we just don’t know the number.
It is really interesting to look at it in different units of time, like months, weeks, days, hours. It is a real shock to learn that all of 500,000 hours may remain of my natural lifetime, or in other words 3,000 weeks or so, the equivalent of 690 months.
Yet if I account for how much time until I am north of “retirement age” — while knowing that for most of my cohort we may never actually retire — that leaves only 2,000 weeks, or 460 months, or (roughly) 330,000 hours.
Three hundred thousand hours, give or take, is what I have until society will consider me among the ranks of the elderly. Time really is precious, so there is no point in wasting of any of it worrying over its passage. The truth is, all of our days are numbered; we just don’t know the number.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
My White Problem — And Yours
Recently, I
made the mistake of conflating ethnicity and race, and so someone lent me a
copy of an essay by one Robin DiAngelo titled “White
Fragility.” It is essential reading for a number of reasons. Published in 2011,
it explores all the ways white folks feel threatened when their privilege is
called into question.
Whereas “mainstream definitions ... are typically some variation of individual ‘race prejudice,’ which anyone of any race can have,” racism comprises “economic, political, social, and cultural structures, actions, and beliefs that systematize and perpetuate an unequal distribution of privileges, resources and power between white people and people of color.”
This is virtually always unidirectional and not fluid, as if it is “one day benefiting whites and another day (or even era) benefiting people of color.” There is no such thing as reverse racism, in other words. Any person of any race can be bigoted or prejudiced, but racism is a problem white people have because white people invented it — and, further, whiteness itself was invented.
My error was confusing my Jewish- and Italian-American identity with my discomfort with being put into the racial category of being white. I’m not “white,” I’d thought, I’m “Jewtalian.” That attempt to distance myself from race is, as I now recognize, a privilege only white people have, the privilege of being seen as an individual.
This may be hard for white people, who want to think they “are just people,” to understand. As DiAngelo puts it, “Whites are taught to see their perspectives as objective and representative of reality,” so we can position ourselves “outside of culture” and see ourselves “as universal humans who can represent all of human experience.”
On the other side of the dichotomy, people of color “are never just people but always most particularly black people, Asian people, etc., can only represent their own racialized experiences.” There is, though, this important caveat: “Of course we are all humans, and I do not critique universalism in general, but when applied to racism,
Whereas “mainstream definitions ... are typically some variation of individual ‘race prejudice,’ which anyone of any race can have,” racism comprises “economic, political, social, and cultural structures, actions, and beliefs that systematize and perpetuate an unequal distribution of privileges, resources and power between white people and people of color.”
This is virtually always unidirectional and not fluid, as if it is “one day benefiting whites and another day (or even era) benefiting people of color.” There is no such thing as reverse racism, in other words. Any person of any race can be bigoted or prejudiced, but racism is a problem white people have because white people invented it — and, further, whiteness itself was invented.
My error was confusing my Jewish- and Italian-American identity with my discomfort with being put into the racial category of being white. I’m not “white,” I’d thought, I’m “Jewtalian.” That attempt to distance myself from race is, as I now recognize, a privilege only white people have, the privilege of being seen as an individual.
This may be hard for white people, who want to think they “are just people,” to understand. As DiAngelo puts it, “Whites are taught to see their perspectives as objective and representative of reality,” so we can position ourselves “outside of culture” and see ourselves “as universal humans who can represent all of human experience.”
On the other side of the dichotomy, people of color “are never just people but always most particularly black people, Asian people, etc., can only represent their own racialized experiences.” There is, though, this important caveat: “Of course we are all humans, and I do not critique universalism in general, but when applied to racism,
universalism functions to deny the significance of race and the advantages of being white. Further, universalism assumes that whites and people of color have the same realities, the same experiences in the same contexts..., the same responses from others, and assumes that the same doors are open to all.”
White people,
DiAngelo writes, are “taught to value the individual and to see themselves as
individuals rather than as part of a racially socialized group.” In other words, we’re all just people, except in the many ways in which society does not see that for everyone.
“Individualism erases history and hides the ways in which wealth has been distributed and accumulated over generations to benefit whites today,” adds DiAngelo, which “allows whites to distance themselves from the actions of their racial group and demand to be granted the benefit of the doubt, as individuals, in all cases.”
It is revelatory to learn that simultaneously thinking we are all the same and unique individual people is actually a white privilege. In an ideal world, we would all be recognized for our humanity and our differences, but so far we do not live in such a world. Race may be a construct, but the compounded legacy of oppression is not.
“Individualism erases history and hides the ways in which wealth has been distributed and accumulated over generations to benefit whites today,” adds DiAngelo, which “allows whites to distance themselves from the actions of their racial group and demand to be granted the benefit of the doubt, as individuals, in all cases.”
It is revelatory to learn that simultaneously thinking we are all the same and unique individual people is actually a white privilege. In an ideal world, we would all be recognized for our humanity and our differences, but so far we do not live in such a world. Race may be a construct, but the compounded legacy of oppression is not.
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Intentional Impact
Recently learned that it appears to be axiomatic to say that what people intend is less important, or less meaningful, than the impact of what they say or do. It seems to be an a priori assumption taken to be the truth, under whose logical apparatus any critique is a defense of the right to call someone “overly sensitive.”
No one seriously suggests that intent is more important than impact — that would be patently ridiculous. But to aver the opposite, and brook no dissent on the question, would be equally absurd, no? I’m honestly wrestling with the idea that the outcome matters more than the plan that led to it. Why does it? Just assume it is the case. Okay.
Maybe the harsh reality is some people are too sensitive, or maybe that observation is taboo now. (As a thin-skinned person at times, I resemble that remark.) It has been in vogue to be “intentional” and have good “intention,” making this phenomenon even stranger. Not going to universalize this, but that is how it looks to me.
As always, with most nearly anything, I could be wrong, so if you want, please let me know why the foregoing is misguided, clueless, or deficient so I can grow and be a better person. Honestly, that is my intent with this post. Used to think that we have no control over how our words and actions affect others, but now I’m confused.
Likewise, it has been fashionable to believe that we cannot actually make anyone feel anything, or that we are not responsible for how we make others feel, but perhaps that is all incorrect. It is really interesting to witness social mores changing so rapidly in real-time, not knowing where they’re going next. Is this the road to heaven?
No one seriously suggests that intent is more important than impact — that would be patently ridiculous. But to aver the opposite, and brook no dissent on the question, would be equally absurd, no? I’m honestly wrestling with the idea that the outcome matters more than the plan that led to it. Why does it? Just assume it is the case. Okay.
Maybe the harsh reality is some people are too sensitive, or maybe that observation is taboo now. (As a thin-skinned person at times, I resemble that remark.) It has been in vogue to be “intentional” and have good “intention,” making this phenomenon even stranger. Not going to universalize this, but that is how it looks to me.
As always, with most nearly anything, I could be wrong, so if you want, please let me know why the foregoing is misguided, clueless, or deficient so I can grow and be a better person. Honestly, that is my intent with this post. Used to think that we have no control over how our words and actions affect others, but now I’m confused.
Likewise, it has been fashionable to believe that we cannot actually make anyone feel anything, or that we are not responsible for how we make others feel, but perhaps that is all incorrect. It is really interesting to witness social mores changing so rapidly in real-time, not knowing where they’re going next. Is this the road to heaven?
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
On Independence and Interdependence
This country has been surprised with the way the world looks now. They don’t know if they want…to be diplomats or continue the same policy of nuclear nightmare diplomacy…This country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can, even if it’s only as far as last week—not to face now or tomorrow, but to look backwards.” (Gil Scott-Heron, 1981)
The Godfather of Rap was dead-on. Americans celebrated their 243rd year of being an independent country on Thursday, watching the glare of bombs bursting in air to mark nearly a quarter-millennium since the founders declared that “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
History hath shewn that, to remind us in the early 21st century how indebted we remain to the words of a late-eighteenth century document written by slaveowners who were also brilliant men part of their own time, faced against tall odds of taking on what was then the greatest empire in world history. They laid the foundation for what is now the greatest empire in world history, but Americans seem to like to think they live inside a democratic republic.
History hath shewn that, to remind us in the early 21st century how indebted we remain to the words of a late-eighteenth century document written by slaveowners who were also brilliant men part of their own time, faced against tall odds of taking on what was then the greatest empire in world history. They laid the foundation for what is now the greatest empire in world history, but Americans seem to like to think they live inside a democratic republic.
I feel that one of the reasons why we are struggling inadequately today is that we reckon our costs on too shortsighted a basis and are later overwhelmed with the unexpected costs brought about by our shortsightedness.” (Buckminster Fuller, 1968)
Bucky was right, too, and our shortsightedness has kept apace over the last half-century, as well as the damage wrought by our lack of foresight—or, if not wanting for it, maybe enough indifference or hostility to new ideas to quash dread progress. Having said that, it is undeniable that social change has been won by grassroots struggle from below, and very rarely if never from the wealthy and powerful who have always run these United States.
It may sound cynical to put it that way, but it is a little difficult to deny when you dig into things like the historical and documentary record of what actually happened around here. None of this is to say that we are condemned to the same fate as Sisyphus, forced to roll a boulder up a hill for all time, knowing it will roll down again. Maybe there are not so much repetitions in history but rhythms.
It may sound cynical to put it that way, but it is a little difficult to deny when you dig into things like the historical and documentary record of what actually happened around here. None of this is to say that we are condemned to the same fate as Sisyphus, forced to roll a boulder up a hill for all time, knowing it will roll down again. Maybe there are not so much repetitions in history but rhythms.
Monday, July 01, 2019
Already, Always Campaigning
It is now July of 2019 and so only sixteen months remain until the 2020 presidential election. To give an idea of just how far that is into the future, 16 months in the past puts us in March of 2018, which was incidentally when I moved across our great country, from Kings County to Alameda County. Things have changed.
Since today is the 1st of July, sixteen months ago this day was the 8th of March, 2018, according to the helpful folks at Research Maniacs, and per my journals the previous week I’d woken up in an airstream trailer in San Antonio, en route. (For the record, I have been keeping a daily journal since 2014, if anyone cares.) Whew!
So it seems to me that a lot can happen between now and the day when whomever is the Democratic nominee faces off against the most odious incumbent president my country has ever had. Yes, he is my president: My racist, sexist, disgusting asshole president. At this point my null hypothesis is he will be re-elected, 60/40 odds.
I have never hoped to be more wrong about anything, but that is how it looks at this point. Again, there remains quite a long time until the Day of Judgment, but it is worth recalling how what was assumed by all responsible pundits to be unthinkable became real. Nothing is inevitable, which suggests he could go down in defeat.
At the risk of cliché, anything could happen, but it does not look very good when you have no sense of consensus about who that nominee should be and it sometimes seems that only another major economic collapse would threaten the president’s chances. Well, Happy Fourth, my fellow citizens. It is still a republic, if we keep it.
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
“Hear It Now, See It Tonight, Read It Tomorrow”
That used to be a common adage in the media world, reflecting the means of news production: radio (now), television (tonight), and of course, newspapers (tomorrow). Reading all about it the following day used to be totally fine, until not too long ago when information became instantaneous, rendering the newspaper an anachronism.
After all, when you read “today’s paper” — and yes, I have been reading the print edition since late childhood, basically — what you’re looking at is yesterday’s news. As I wrote in the last post, there is only today, but let’s put that aside for now. In the last few months, I got rid of my twitter account and turned off news alerts.
So far this has been a boon to my mental health, although I do miss at times the ability to dip into a real-time feed of what’s going on everywhere in the world, even though the human mind probably did not evolve to be able to handle that informational vortex. It is like drinking from a firehose, and you come away from it empty.
As someone who has had some experience with breaking news, I can assert that the news is broken, fundamentally, at a time when it is more needed than ever. The underlying business model no longer can sustain the journalistic enterprise, for the most part; even the so-called New Media appear to be failing, by some accounts.
With newspapers specifically, the last ones standing will probably be the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post (at least as long as Bond supervillain Jeff Bezos owns it). And meanwhile, local papers across the board are being gutted, to the shame and detriment of the Republic. We are in apocalyptic times.
After all, when you read “today’s paper” — and yes, I have been reading the print edition since late childhood, basically — what you’re looking at is yesterday’s news. As I wrote in the last post, there is only today, but let’s put that aside for now. In the last few months, I got rid of my twitter account and turned off news alerts.
So far this has been a boon to my mental health, although I do miss at times the ability to dip into a real-time feed of what’s going on everywhere in the world, even though the human mind probably did not evolve to be able to handle that informational vortex. It is like drinking from a firehose, and you come away from it empty.
As someone who has had some experience with breaking news, I can assert that the news is broken, fundamentally, at a time when it is more needed than ever. The underlying business model no longer can sustain the journalistic enterprise, for the most part; even the so-called New Media appear to be failing, by some accounts.
With newspapers specifically, the last ones standing will probably be the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post (at least as long as Bond supervillain Jeff Bezos owns it). And meanwhile, local papers across the board are being gutted, to the shame and detriment of the Republic. We are in apocalyptic times.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
When We Are In Spacetime
Janis Joplin accurately stated once in a haze that “tomorrow never happens, man. It’s all the same day, man.” Well, for the most part, yes, that’s true. The planet’s daily spinning around that axis creates a metronome by which we measure the days, as we feel the need to quantify and categorize everything, but are not real.
Tomorrow—tomorrow—will be “today.” Likewise, yesterday—yesterday—was “today.” In short, it is always today. As of this entry, that happens to be the 20th day of the 6th month of the 19th year of the 21st century, in the third millennium of the Common Era, but what does that mean? Just another spin.
By the same token, every passing year is just one solar revolution, one full pass around a thermonuclear fireball some 90 million miles away that is, in the scheme of things, on the far-smaller side of stars out there, hence its appellation “yellow dwarf.” It is a common belief that time somehow speeds up as you age. Does it?
The philosopher Duncan Trussell observed that “when we think about the future, obviously that doesn’t exist—there’s no future, nothing is outside of this point in time… Your whole past, the thing you’ve been using to define yourself as a person, you barely remember!
Or, as the Flaming Lips knew, “All we have is now.” Ram Dass had the same message, rendered much more simply: Be Here Now. That seems to be the only way you can be. “Earlier” and “later” appear to be illusions of the mind, like “yesterday” and “tomorrow.” Since time and space are one and the same, there is only now and only here.
Tomorrow—tomorrow—will be “today.” Likewise, yesterday—yesterday—was “today.” In short, it is always today. As of this entry, that happens to be the 20th day of the 6th month of the 19th year of the 21st century, in the third millennium of the Common Era, but what does that mean? Just another spin.
By the same token, every passing year is just one solar revolution, one full pass around a thermonuclear fireball some 90 million miles away that is, in the scheme of things, on the far-smaller side of stars out there, hence its appellation “yellow dwarf.” It is a common belief that time somehow speeds up as you age. Does it?
The philosopher Duncan Trussell observed that “when we think about the future, obviously that doesn’t exist—there’s no future, nothing is outside of this point in time… Your whole past, the thing you’ve been using to define yourself as a person, you barely remember!
And the parts you do remember, they’re not really clear, so that’s gone… Anything that happened before this moment, that’s… gone, it’s just this, for real. There might be some neurological encoding but there’s no past, forget it.
Or, as the Flaming Lips knew, “All we have is now.” Ram Dass had the same message, rendered much more simply: Be Here Now. That seems to be the only way you can be. “Earlier” and “later” appear to be illusions of the mind, like “yesterday” and “tomorrow.” Since time and space are one and the same, there is only now and only here.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
That’s Infotainment!
“The mass media in the United States are a blend of journalism and showmanship, information and entertainment, and professional altruism and marketplace opportunism,” declared a report sent to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence 50 years ago this month.
The report concluded that “the news media can play a significant role in lessening the potential for violence by functioning as a faithful conduit for intergroup communication, providing a true marketplace of ideas, providing full access to the day’s intelligence, and reducing the incentive to confrontation that sometimes erupts in violence,” which it identifies as “a subtle and uncertain mission.” Indeed it was, and so remains.
“These are obviously qualities which, if not entirely antithetical, at least cannot be relied upon to coexist in perfect harmony. When they clash, the discord is important, for, if one thing is clear about the American media, it is that they touch our lives in ways far too intimate and complex to ignore.”
The report contended that Americans had
become a nation of the entertained, and it is the media, for the most part, who provide our entertainment. Indeed, our appetites for entertainment, far more than our quest for knowledge, have brought the media from the economic position represented by the individual printer of two centuries ago to the status of a major business industry.
The report concluded that “the news media can play a significant role in lessening the potential for violence by functioning as a faithful conduit for intergroup communication, providing a true marketplace of ideas, providing full access to the day’s intelligence, and reducing the incentive to confrontation that sometimes erupts in violence,” which it identifies as “a subtle and uncertain mission.” Indeed it was, and so remains.
Tuesday, June 04, 2019
Regularly Scheduled Neuro-Linguistic Programming
It turns out that I still hate Tuesdays, even though the day of the week does not mean anything—nor does time, because it is an illusory social construct, but I digress. Was trying to come up with something to write about yesterday, yet my brain drew a blank. I find that I typically condemn myself for being “lazy” in this way.
Rebooting this old blog after several years absence is a strange experience, which has involved deleting early posts that didn’t “age well” or were simply embarrassing. There are probably extant posts that could be mortifying but I haven’t gotten to them yet, or maybe they are still defensible. Who knows? I blogged hundreds of things.
A lot of the “content”—using that word extremely advisedly since I generally loathe the word, to be honest—that I posted was, more or less, real-time commentary on current events or random musings about whatever came to mind. Trying to be more focused this time, more disciplined. My method has been too sporadic, scattershot.
We are who we are, of course, but everyone can change. Maybe. One thing I have learned since I last regularly kept up this blog, among other things, is that we are all meaning-making machines embedded in an existence that is meaningless—and, furthermore, its meaninglessness is itself meaningless. Hard to grok that, eh?
When we hear a word like “meaningless” and react by saying or thinking, “That sounds depressing,” we are giving meaning to it. Since the meaninglessness of life is meaningless, we are freed up to do whatever we want and we can realize more possibilities, even if they seem impossible. Anyway, enough with all that. For now.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Tune In, Like, Subscribe, Drop Out
For too long, I have been obsessed with the passage of time, day by day, one week to the next, one month to the next, year on year. This temporal fixation has encompassed seemingly endless ruminations on the days of the week, which can be quite debilitating. Reluctant to talk about this, since this is in public as it were, but so what?
Allow me to elaborate here: On any given day, I have given thought to what day of the week it is, whether the week starts on Sunday or on Monday, what day of week it was x days ago, etc. This looks as insane as it has felt to me, now that I see it written out. In any case, lately I concluded that the day of the week doesn’t really matter.
Now that I have outed myself as bona fide crazy, we can proceed to things that are actually important—such as current events, which of course are keyed to the days, and that is why dates were invented. I often read the newspaper, in fact, and every time I do I have to tell myself I am looking at yesterday’s news. And so much for all that.
Looking back at 2011, the year in which I last blogged here, it does seem clear that it was a more optimistic time, a simpler time. That was the year of the “Arab Spring” and Occupy Wall Street, and in those relatively halcyon days... Well, people believed they had the power to change societies for the better. Now we’re in a wasteland.
Maybe that’s hyperbole, but in a lot of ways things did not exactly get better over the last several years in terms of the world situation, as it were. The annals of foreign affairs were increasingly filled with chaos and barbarity, but perhaps those are one and the same. The rise of “social media” amplified and propagated all of it.
People seem to have a tendency toward overcomplicating matters and oversimplifying them, which I base on nothing but my own sense of intuition and the little I know about our shared reality, a world that is less and less something held in common and more an atomized simulacrum that passes through filters and distortion.
Over the past eight years we have witnessed enormous changes that have happened at a pace that has whipsawed mass consciousness. The underlying foundations of social control remain much the same: for the most part we remain servants of capital, resource extraction is firmly entrenched, and the body count keeps going up.
Yet it is, as the song goes, getting better all the time, which is not so apparent since the news media have a pronounced bias toward conflict, disturbance, or aberration that shocks the conscience, and then people interpret that picture as a mirror of the real world. That is one reason I left twitter after starting to use it back in 2011.
Although I sometimes miss seeing a real-time flow of events from everywhere in the world, as someone said on that medium infinite scroll is a public health crisis. The human brain did not evolve to be able to process all of this, in your correspondent’s opinion at least. Perhaps it’s not true, but who knows? You won’t get certainty here.
Allow me to elaborate here: On any given day, I have given thought to what day of the week it is, whether the week starts on Sunday or on Monday, what day of week it was x days ago, etc. This looks as insane as it has felt to me, now that I see it written out. In any case, lately I concluded that the day of the week doesn’t really matter.
Now that I have outed myself as bona fide crazy, we can proceed to things that are actually important—such as current events, which of course are keyed to the days, and that is why dates were invented. I often read the newspaper, in fact, and every time I do I have to tell myself I am looking at yesterday’s news. And so much for all that.
Looking back at 2011, the year in which I last blogged here, it does seem clear that it was a more optimistic time, a simpler time. That was the year of the “Arab Spring” and Occupy Wall Street, and in those relatively halcyon days... Well, people believed they had the power to change societies for the better. Now we’re in a wasteland.
Maybe that’s hyperbole, but in a lot of ways things did not exactly get better over the last several years in terms of the world situation, as it were. The annals of foreign affairs were increasingly filled with chaos and barbarity, but perhaps those are one and the same. The rise of “social media” amplified and propagated all of it.
People seem to have a tendency toward overcomplicating matters and oversimplifying them, which I base on nothing but my own sense of intuition and the little I know about our shared reality, a world that is less and less something held in common and more an atomized simulacrum that passes through filters and distortion.
Over the past eight years we have witnessed enormous changes that have happened at a pace that has whipsawed mass consciousness. The underlying foundations of social control remain much the same: for the most part we remain servants of capital, resource extraction is firmly entrenched, and the body count keeps going up.
Yet it is, as the song goes, getting better all the time, which is not so apparent since the news media have a pronounced bias toward conflict, disturbance, or aberration that shocks the conscience, and then people interpret that picture as a mirror of the real world. That is one reason I left twitter after starting to use it back in 2011.
Although I sometimes miss seeing a real-time flow of events from everywhere in the world, as someone said on that medium infinite scroll is a public health crisis. The human brain did not evolve to be able to process all of this, in your correspondent’s opinion at least. Perhaps it’s not true, but who knows? You won’t get certainty here.
Monday, May 27, 2019
Getting Back Into This
Hello again, everyone. It has been a minute, as the kids say, since I last wrote anything on this blog since July of twenty-eleven and now it’s still May of twenty-nineteen, so that is more or less eight years ago; a lot has changed, but on the other hand nothing much has changed. In any case, welcoming myself back here.
Until last month or so I have been micro-blogging (spending time on the twitter) until I came to the conclusion that the medium had become an informational black hole that was sucking away my time, attention, and energy. I’d been drinking from a firehose for several years and was simultaneously parched with thirst.
Well, blogging also petered out for the most part over that time, too, but through this strange journey of life during the last several years I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. When people ask me what I do, almost invariably my answer usually was, remains, and will be—regardless of my actual profession—“I’m a writer.”
Impostor syndrome has afflicted me for a long time, suggesting that no matter what I do in the professional realm I’ll feel like a fraud. A few months after I last blogged here I was a “60 Minutes” intern and felt I didn’t belong. Got booted out of journalism school the next year with eight credits short of a master’s degree.
Anyway, this blog goes back all the way to 2003, when I was 16 years old. Now I’m 31 years old, which marks ’03 as just about the halfway point of my life (so far). Suffice to say that I’m returning to a record that goes back half my current lifetime, which is weird. Incidentally, today is Memorial Day. Remember the fallen.
Until last month or so I have been micro-blogging (spending time on the twitter) until I came to the conclusion that the medium had become an informational black hole that was sucking away my time, attention, and energy. I’d been drinking from a firehose for several years and was simultaneously parched with thirst.
Well, blogging also petered out for the most part over that time, too, but through this strange journey of life during the last several years I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. When people ask me what I do, almost invariably my answer usually was, remains, and will be—regardless of my actual profession—“I’m a writer.”
Impostor syndrome has afflicted me for a long time, suggesting that no matter what I do in the professional realm I’ll feel like a fraud. A few months after I last blogged here I was a “60 Minutes” intern and felt I didn’t belong. Got booted out of journalism school the next year with eight credits short of a master’s degree.
Anyway, this blog goes back all the way to 2003, when I was 16 years old. Now I’m 31 years old, which marks ’03 as just about the halfway point of my life (so far). Suffice to say that I’m returning to a record that goes back half my current lifetime, which is weird. Incidentally, today is Memorial Day. Remember the fallen.