LARPing in a Toyota Corolla

 

Washed at the lake.

 

The truth

The truth is the outcome of two lies competing for the most. 

Computer time

Computer time is a resonating palindrome perturbed ever so slightly by suggestion algorithms.

The loss of religious moderates

"While one group of Americans has tended to withdraw from active involvement in faith-based communities, another group is as fully involved as ever. While the fraction of the population that is entirely disconnected from organized religion has increased, the fraction that is intensely involved has been relatively stable. In other words, religious dropouts have come at the expense of those whose religious involvement was modest but conventional. The result is that the country is becoming ever more clearly divided into two groups--the devoutly observant and the entirely unchurched. (Some might see here a certain parallel to trends in politics--more true believers, more dropouts, and fewer moderates.) This is the sociological substratum that underlies the much discussed "culture wars" of recent years."

(p. 75)

from Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" 

Ability and illness

I think my abilities with language come from a sensitivity that consequently disables me where it's mapped onto a social landscape in the third person. 

The changing conduct of political discourse as a reflection of the type of political participation

"The changing pattern of civic participation in American communities over the last two decades has shifted the balance in the larger society between the articulation of grievances and the aggregation of coalitions to address those grievances. In this sense, this disjunctive pattern of decline--cooperation falling more rapidly than self-expression--may well have encouraged the single-issue blare and declining civility of contemporary political discourse" (pp. 45 -46)

From Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone"

Sleep

"I'm not going to bed after all. Somebody around here hath murdered sleep. Good for him" (p. 170). 

from J. D. Salinger's "Seymour: An Introduction"

Civilization

Civilization is an effort to modify the startle response to serve a world built on the precipice of disaster.   

loyalty

That woman has a loyalty not unlike herpes. 

autism

 I rock back and forth in my chair to avoid being hypnotized by the television signals. 

polygones

You were a proud people slaughtered for ignoring the white man's imaginary lines. 

You started the argument about these polygons until many were gone. 

Fat is riches and wealth

 Fat is riches and wealth. When I am fat and comfortable I become protective over what I have and thus insulated from others. When I grow skinny, I share the want of those around me. I wonder if the basic division of a society began upon such a fault line?

life is full of

 Life is full of transient, self-abuse rituals. 

My job is one of them. 

Life is a genetic hologram

" Life is a genetic hologram." 

Those were my words posted October 28, 2018. I had thought of them on the way to work on a warehouse. I am working on one now. It is summer. It's hot and sticky. I hurt. My skin is burned. 

Life emerged in the oceans from rafts of biofilm, churned by wave action, bathed in the sun's radiation, and free-associating with the countless molecules first forming in this aqueous medium. Biofilm is a loaded word, perhaps. What I have in mind are chains of persistent bonds between molecules that can form under the heat, wet, and sun of earth's ocean several billion years ago. There, amidst these persistent chains various haphazard 'colonies' of molecules with mutually supporting relationships became a continuous, existing tapestry of molecular 'soup,' for lack of better words, a biofilm. This biofilm, surrounded by ocean and the countless new and varied molecular structures it carried, offered the conditions for countless trillions of molecular combinations until novel and persistent ones occurred. Some of these disappeared, never to happen again. Others, did not. The proteins that make us 'life' are one such fruit the grew from these conditions. And there, in that ancient sea, amidst those 'rafts of life' self-replicating proteins--an unseemly feat of uncountable, random chemistry experiments--emerged. Life at it's most basic is just that, chemical interactions, atoms arranged and re-arranged by floating in an aqueous matrix and bonding with other atoms. Their bonds are determined in part by a knack of the geometry of an atom's shape or the fit of it's molecules to others by shapes that mimic locks, keys, simple snag points, and static charge. Therefore, we can say that life is ultimately about fitness. A lot of molecular 'fit ups' had to have occurred and found to be successful for a duration of time for this model of life that we witness to emerge and remain. 

Since life is, at its base, chemicals then life is OF the world on which it exists. Life becomes a 'chemical condition' shaping the chemical foundations of the world itself. Where it once required the passive effects of floating in an ocean being bathed in novel molecules, as life it persist as a coherent 'place' in the world, as a cell, by seeking out those specific molecules that allow it to exist and to replicate through time. Given the persistence of this form of life and its very close interfacing with its world, as changes took place, a diversity of life emerged. 

To cut to the chase, all life on earth is a 'projection' of this basic chemical impetus for molecules to 'fit' with other molecules. And in all the varied and interesting ways that life exists on earth it is simply a projection of that basic condition of the universe, for atoms to join other atoms, as if the total contents of all atoms in the universe were once a whole. That 'spiritual atom' aside, life is a condition of temporal persistence by way of replication through time of a more complex arrangement of molecules in search of those molecules that will sustain its existence in time. 

Observation

"We bring to the simplest observation a complex apparatus of habits, of accepted meanings and techniques. Otherwise observation is the blanket of stares, and the natural object is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury" (p. 219).

From 'Experience and Nature' by John Dewey

The stochastic and the stable

"We live in a world which is an impressive mixture of sufficiencies, tight completenesses, order, recurrences which make possible prediction and control, and singularities, ambiguities, uncertain possibilities, processes going on to consequences as yet indeterminate." (p. 47) 

from John Dewey's "Experience and Nature."

A trip to the orthopedic surgeon

 "You handing in there, err I mean hanging in there? Hey help me write a script I'm working on. It's called LEAVE KEY ON DESK. More on that some other time." Jeff writes in a text.

"That's what I did Tuesday--left key on desk." I write, thinking about it being my last day and leaving behind the gangbox key so that the gang could access their tools the following day.

I share the following picture. 

"Doc gives me a 50/50 chance for a nonsurgical recovery." I write back.

"Is the problem where the bones are not very close together on the right side?" Jeff asks. 

"Left side thumb. Aligned fracture that can be yanked out of place by tendons. Lovely shit. Doc is some high-powered multisyllabic German last name jock lacrosse player from Notre Dame who has jerseys posted all over his female-run office. Sent me in for urinalysis with some med tech. Three attempts later I squeeze out the required amount. She does all her best mommy accolades, and a partially buried trauma surfaces of my own mother and the fear she used against me during sphincter training. Freud bursts through the wall like Kool-Aid man, screaming "Oh no."

Oh fucking no." I finish.

A day later Jeff writes, "Sorry. I can't formulate anything of equal value as a reply to your previous text."

I write, "Yeah that was a supernova of raw experience. Just look away."

The thread tapers off into silence. 

What's your reaction?

I have emotional meltdowns from time to time. Most are related to my attempt to reach out to a woman only to receive a chilling or even terrifying response. One meltdown in particular, although it wasn't that bad, was related to a woman I briefly fell for. She was friends with my neighbors and a mutual friend. As we were all hanging out one night, she and two guys went into a room and began to fuck. Fuck. 

I couldn't believe it. It was beyond belief for me. My world was utterly, utterly, shattered. I can't explain it. It hurt bad. It was beyond anything I could imagine doing. The part of me that reaches out for acceptance is an emotional infant, a naked piss-soaked baby, an irrational cry for what? For simply reciprocation. If not, it's over, I'm done, meltdown begun, clear the area, China Syndrome imminent. 

Two days later I reached out to a group of friends with whom I played an online game three days a week on a website we maintained about the game. Childish? Yeah, to some. To others, it's a life like any other. That was mine then. In the miscellaneous section I spilled my guts as poetically as I could about the situation. The one response that remains with me was from a young but wise man, who told me simply, "I've learned that you can't change the world around you, but you can control how you react to it."

Looking back on that situation with my lady of interest entering a room with a couple of friends I could have reacted differently. I could have shrugged it off. I could have joined them. Hell, I could have remained outside with my neighbor's girlfriend and we could have had our own 'party' and not the pity party I threw haphazardly as the moans spilled out from under the closed door. 

You may not be able to change the world around you, but you sure as hell can change your reaction to it. 

Computer power conserves power

Writing on the introduction of computing to organizational decision making in the late 1940s as WWII was still active, Joseph Weizenbaum addresses the tautology that computers insinuate themselves into, that they become the indispensable tools that keep highly complex activities running. He writes: 

"The computer was not a prerequisite to the survival of modern society in the postwar period and beyond; its enthusiastic, uncritical embrace by the most 'progressive' elements of American government, business, and industry quickly made it a resource essential to society's survival in the form that the computer itself had been instrumental in shaping." (pp. 28-29)

Weizenbaum speaks of the speed and complexity with which organizations were using information and the decisions they made based upon it. He cites a memorandum by J. W. Forrester to the U.S. Navy, explaining that "'regardless of the assumed advantages of human judgment decision, the internal communication speed of the human organization simply was not able to cope with the pace of modern air warfare'" (as cited by Wiesenbaum, 1976, p. 29). In reflection, Weizenbaum denotes how the necessity of computers avoided a different decision: to either do away with the kinds of decisions being carried out or to restructure organizations to better meet the needs to make them. Computer adoption offered an incentive to, instead, preserve the kinds of centralized collection, planning, and decision making occurring within the military in the 1950s. The computer essentially preserved the power of centralized social and political organizations by allowing them not to delegate decisions to smaller organizational units better located and more attuned to local decision making. He writes:

"Yes, the computer did arrive 'just in time.' But in time for what? In time to save--and save very nearly intact, indeed, to entrench, and stabilize--social and political structures that otherwise might have been either radically renovated or allowed to totter under the demands that were sure to be made on them. The computer, then, was used to conserve America's social and political institutions. It buttressed them and immunized them, at least temporarily, against enormous pressures for change." (p. 31)

 The spread of computerization to other organizations would follow in the coming years and decades. Weizenbaum notes that it was during these initial business systems analyses the decision to adopt computers could have been avoided. 

"During the first decade of the computer's serious invasion of business, when managers often decided their businesses needed computers even though they had only the flimsiest bases for such decisions, they also often undertook fairly penetrating systems analyses of their operations in order to determine what their new computers were to do. In a great many cases such studies revealed opportunities to improve operations, sometimes radically, without introducing computers at all. Nor were computers used in the studies themselves. Often, of course, computers were installed anyway for reasons of, say, fashion or prestige." (p. 34)

This characterization of computer introduction into organizations suggests that the act of computer adoption, as part and parcel of 'the computer revolution' was not revolutionary at all. On the contrary, it conserved power by at the very least offering the illusion of speedy and effective decisions based upon feeding more and varied data points into programs centrally controlled instead of spreading decision making out into specialized groups and even inventing whole new organizations to meet new demands. Instead, the pyramid-structure organization was breathed new life by placing the computer at its apex. 

From Joseph Weizenbaum's "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation" 

Being a Blurry Noun

I'm writing this as the weather hovers in the single digits. I'm certain you're freezing your keister off where you are. 

It appears that we're living in the era of a real-time symbolic covergence, as we reflect upon the events of the 6th, the presence of these Crocket-like phantasms of Americana self-named as Q Shamans, and an absolutely rabid group already primed from powerchurch teachings to fantasy narratives in general to seek out and battle an insidious evil in our midst. That event will go down as one of the stranger moments in my life. 

I had a troubling realization that the kid who'd rock back and forth for hours alone, who'd bang his head against his pillow until he'd fall asleep, is still there. No headbanging, but clearly, yes, rocking and with the sound off, alone. 

I'm a blurry noun. 

I have a punchable face

 When I see me smile I see that I have a punchable face. 

When I hear me speak I see that I have a punchable mouth. 

To have come this far only to see that I need to be buried under the universe, my truth is in zero. 

My imagination traps me. With it I see a bartender discretely turning tricks during 10-minute disappearances. I see her friends conspiring to hound me out, her knowing that I am watching, her hating me for being so interested in what she's doing, in finding her out. But it's my imagination, and it is my space helmet when I'm out and about. 

I imagine that I am of no use, not now, not ever. Everything I begin crumbles before me. I will that, all my relationships sunk in the harbor. I intentionally occupy an inhospitable place holed up in my mind for the safety of my infantile emotions. That is the be-all, end-all of my preoccupation, this entity holed up in time like a sniper.

Free will in a networking age

 "We're setting up barriers between cases where we choose to give over some judgment to cloud software, as if we were predictable machines, and those where we elevate our judgments to pious, absolute standards.

"Making choices of where to place the barrier between ego and algorithm is unavoidable in the age of cloud software. Drawing the line between what we forfeit to calculation and what we reserve for the heroics of free will is the story of our time." (p. 168)

from Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future?"

A grainer response/explanation of automation and its obsoleting effects

 "'People are and will always be needed. The question is whether we'll engage in complete enough accounting so that people are honestly valued. If there's ever an illusion that humans are becoming obsolete, it will in reality be a case of massive accounting fraud. What we're doing now is initiating that fraud. Let's stop.'" (p. 135)

from Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future?"

Networking and its effects

"Cheap networking facilitates exaggerated and rapid network effects. These engender failures of the classical economic models, which had been based on competitions between multitudes of players with distinct and limited information positions." (p. 153)

from Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future?"

Computation

"Siren Servers do what comes naturally due to the very idea of computation. Computation is the demarcation of a little part of the universe, called a computer, which is engineered to be very well understood and controllable, so that it closely approximates a deterministic, non-entropic process. But in order for a computer to run, the surrounding parts of the universe must take on the waste heat, the randomness. You can create a local shield against entropy, but your neighbors will always pay for it." (p. 143)

from Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future?"

Some days

Some days you feel like you're buried under the universe, buried somewhere beyond recognition, understanding, merit, mutual feeling. 

These are transient feelings, most likely the result of some neurotransmitter saturation point and a cascading loop of neurons firing in a well-worn network giving expression to the thoughts and feelings that provide some kind of meaning for that neurochemical slurry. 

And I do this a lot. I feel the need to get didactic, teachy, preachy, a bore. Any time I face an adverse event I do what I armed myself to provide--an explanation. 

I've done a lot of boring explanation. More than anything it steps out of a conversation in ways that puts off others who just want me to react to an address, not give some encyclopedia entry for some tangential point in their current concern. My cross to bear is a specific kind of table or a matrix with 2 categories matched according to their axis to create different pairs. I know there's a word for that and for the life of me I cannot find a satisfactory one. And here I am, bearing that cross, futzing with vocab, in every pregnant moment, dying for significance. 

Evolution from violence and misfortune

 "At the same time, it's important to remember that nostalgia for lower-tech times is based on fake memories. This is as true in the small scale of centuries as it is in the vast scale of life. Every little genetic feature of you, from the crook of the corner of your eye to much of the way your body moves when you listen to music, was framed and formed by the negative spaces carved out by the pre-reproductive deaths of your would-be ancestors over hundreds of millions of years. You are the reverse image of inconceivable epochs of heartbreak and cruelty. Your would-be ancestors in their many species, reaching back into the phylogenetic tree, were eaten, often by disease, or sexually rejected before they could contribute genes to your legacy. The genetic, natural part of you is the sum of the leftovers of billions of years of extreme violence and poverty. Modernity is precisely the way individuals arose out of the ravages of evolutionary selection." (p. 131)

from Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future?"

Creative Auctioning