Black Lives Matter

Faith

Illness

Zerzan's Running on Emptiness has an interesting few pages on Rothko, abstract Expressionism. They've pointed me back to Dore Ashton's book on Rothko. The idea that a world of images (corporate or otherwise) was an indication of a "spiritual lack"; that what was required was a clean break from reification and representation. Materialism, measurement, the reign of quantity are all a congealing of what is essentially fluid, formless, and uncontained. That the absence of images might in fact be liberating is not something the modern west can countenance. 

In addition there was a small chapter on illness (anxiety, stress, suicide, depression) and how this might-and here one has to be cautious- be partly a result of the lack of meaning or purpose in a society that is hooked to fleeting, trivial, and banal representations/images. The need for an alternative digital or virtual reality because the one that you actually inhabit doesn't open onto anything greater or different from the acquisitive and shallow self. Whence the great proliferation of pornography, drug-induced fantasies and escapism. Or, more plainly: medication to just get through the day. This does strike you (a point obliquely made by Avner Offer in The Challenges of Affluence, namely: as societies become richer and richer there's a corresponding growth in addictions (porn, food, gambling, consumption, drink etc.) which really begs the question: what of the much vaunted freedoms of the market?).

Related to this, perhaps: Is fundamentalism and extremism a response to and/or a symptom of the nihilism of late modernity?  

The Society of the Spectacle

"The US, with Britain in tepid accord, has been bombing unstable Muslim states for 16 years and has delivered nothing but death and anarchy."

--Simon Jenkins, The Guardian.

One might call this "gesture bombing" if it wasn't so obscene. If this is what civilisation really amounts to then I think Zerzan's point is only reinforced.

“There is no doubt that Isis are brutal and that they have committed atrocities against our people. But I don’t see why the bomb was dropped,” said the mayor of Achin, Naweed Shinwari.

~~

“If there was any honor in fighting, a dog should lead us, because who fights better than a dog,” said the father of Mashal Khan (who was lynched by a mob of 400 people for alleged blasphemous remarks). 

Mountain View

Met an old student who now lives in a place called Mountain View (with a name like that I'd expect a lot from the place). Works for some Chinese billionaire, managing his funds (rich people always have "funds" I've noticed). 

Even the sun has its time. 

Not to be televised (II)

Illich, Zerzan:

One becomes a thing in order to master things.

The televisual order, objectification, reification, abstraction and alienation are all related to commodification, the concentration of lived value into frozen forms (images, money, commodity-and at the end of the day are not all three interchangeable?). 

But what if this predates capitalism and if the latter is only highlighting and accentuating tendencies that have already existed for ten thousand years (since the beginning of agriculture, to be precise)? Or maybe even further back: weren't the first cave paintings, after all, a sign that what was once present could only now be re-presented? Culture, art, language are not simply compensations for a lost presence, a necessary illusion; they in some sense preclude our recovery of a direct, unmediated and whole experience of reality. The letter killeth, but the spirit...

Inherent in reification is a sense of loss, then. But also violence and separation. Is it the case, then, that religion, as a system of thought, sets up all kinds of distinctions, introducing the possibility of violence (this is an old theme, going back to Hume? Polytheism is more peaceable).

But what of the God of the desert? Or, as the orthodox tradition has it: God is not a concept.

Never trust a god who doesn't dance.

The primacy of vision and its complicity with abstraction. Do you see what I'm saying? Is it any wonder (is there any wonder?) that the sensual is devalued in favour of the intellectual? Intelligence is really just seeing things correctly, in the right light or order. Taste, once associated with judgement, has become the dumbest and most undifferentiating of our senses (in theory and in practice).

But taste, smell and touch are the senses most associated with love. (Is that true? Don't we fall in love when we see the face of the loved one?).

These wonderful lines from Running on Emptiness really struck me:

It has been said that the Mbuti of southern Africa believe that "by correct fulfillment of the present, the past and the future will take care of themselves."

Zerzan's writing is direct, simple and sometimes startling. His critique of technology and a technology-infatuated society will resonate with some; for most, though, you suspect he'll be accused of "primitivism". 

Illich, the most perceptive of thinkers, has always been a model of what an intellectual might be: committed, engaged, generous, and humane. A far cry from the gamers and schemers in academia. 

He clearly saw how a technological society was crippling people's abilities to organize their own lives. The freedom of the market actually ushered in an ever-growing dependency on commodities and the state. Real autonomy, Illich would argue, depended on first understanding how technology was leading to internalities- technology's failure to deliver the goods (worse: to block and hamper organically developed ways of human flourishing and dwelling). And these commodities had to have their own missionaries, the experts and bureaucrats, to flog them off to the "poor". Everyone has to buy into the dream (so much for freedom, so much for the much vaunted pluralism!).   

Not be televised

'The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people'. 

The Arab Spring is brought to you by Coca-Cola and in collaboration with.. 

"There are too many immigrants in this country," said the Australian woman, pretending not to be a fascist. "I'm not a racist but..."

"The problem with Islam is that it hasn't had a Reformation," said the bigot (not really knowing very much about Islam or the Reformation). "I'm all for liberalism but..."

~~~

   

'An incremental tyranny'

News from a strange planet:

"Israel sunk in incremental tyranny," says former Shin Bet chiefs.

Kendall Jenner is 'very upset'. "Anything offensive is just not her. She means well, always." Pepsi can, incrementally, alter the world of tyranny.

Aung San Suu Kyi claims the violence was partly down to "Muslims killing Muslims." Slowly, incrementally, of course.

Awakenings

One day we’ll look back on it ... the time of the sun
when light fell on the smallest twig
on the old woman the astonished girl
when it washed with colour everything it touched
Followed the galloping horse and eased when he did

that unforgettable time on earth
when if we dropped something it made a noise
and like connoisseurs we took in the world
our ears caught every nuance of air
and we knew our friends by their footsteps

time we walked out to gather flowers or stones
that time we could never catch hold of a cloud

and it’s all our hands can master now.

(“Le regret de la terre”, version by Peter Sirr)

~~~

The rain falls and collects in pools and makes
Our grave old planet shine. 

I love that line by Supervielle.

And this by Anselm Hollo (not read):

Carried by silver and star and reflection.

Sway

I have a friend, I've never seen her,
a vision beheld, the purest dream.
She never pleased me, nor ever
let me down.

Hard to know if I'm asleep or awake

I don't know where she is,
in the mountains or in the plains.

Well, that was it. I don't know 
who I was singing for.

I am the fool on the bridge.
she can have no mercy:
there's nothing left but exile.

I'll go away, somewhere under the sun.

(Lines mangled from Peter Sirr's Sway)

~~~

I stand and watch the rain
Falling in pools which make
Our grave old planet shine;
The clear rain falling, just the same
As that which fell in Homer’s time
And that which dropped in Villon’s day
Falling on mother and on child
As on the passive backs of sheep;
Rain saying all it has to say
Again and yet again, and yet..

Supervielle.