[NetBehaviour] "My World Picture"
Alan Sondheim
sondheim at panix.com
Wed Sep 20 12:30:46 CEST 2023
"My World Picture"
http://www.alansondheim.org/Nissan.jpg
Understanding where we are in the world, and what the world is,
becomes increasingly difficult; the greater the range of our
instruments, the greater the appearance of anomalies. It takes
incredible hubris to assume the universe can be understood in
terms of fundamentals and reifications (if one's inclined to
philosophy), given the presumed enormity of everything on both
macro- and micro- levels. We invent chimeras somewhat and
somehow in our likenesses, however defined - what might be
considered local explanations that allow us to function. The
explanations contradict each other; with the advent of tools and
their progressive complexity and 'reach' over the millennia,
they become associated with power, with conquest, with
communication technologies that create the illusion that the
world is growing smaller, that we somehow understand the local
at all scales and species across the planet. It's a planet.
Competition, cosmic events, internal and external parasites (and
the world is full of parasites) define everything.
Atomic annihilation is inevitable, and all our dreams and
momentary bulwarks will inevitably go the way of all species,
all worlds. Hierarchical power, the result of communication
technologies, local survival mechanisms, and the nature of the
very elements that constitute the world, ensure this. If one
plays the lottery of survival, almost all the time winners and
losers will be small-time and local, but sooner or later,
someone or some network or some thing will gamble, and that will
be it. The global rise in temperature (which was predicted
decades ago) ensures desiccation, increasing apocalyptic
religions associated with hierarchical power, increasingly
violent local wars, starvation on a massive scale, fire
economies as more of the world burns, 'bad actors' embedded in
global networks, increasing drug and weapons trade, and so
forth.
It is only a matter of time. What we hold precious is so very
fragile, and we shouldn't forget that whatever saurian culture
existed in the past has disappeared with almost no trace at all.
I look around our rooms here, and my own tendency to create
space, spaces for our lives, our books, our musical instruments
- so much that is fragile, that breathes for a short while in a
dangerous world; I listen to the sounds of pain outside on the
street. I turn on the computer, and again increase - not only of
power/speed, but also of advertisement, control, levels of
access, intrusions, barriers, protocol decays, leaks and what I
think of as 'displacements' online - a site almost randomly
curtailing access unless money or information is exchanged. It's
more and more difficult to _think clearly_ as if one were given
the privilege of monetary isolation (which now exists only among
_the highest tiers_ of capital, however defined).
(n.b. increased speed, no time to think, pervasiveness of the
instantaneous, multiplcities, varieties of intelligences, real
problems with irrealities, 'always already done that.')
One of the tragedies of all of this is that _we have always
already known_ these tendencies; we displace our own knowledge
as a means of local (in time, space, community, economics)
survival - and all survival is fundamentally local, tied into
the global with enormously controlled, hacked, replaced,
decaying protocols that ensure we either buy into their domains
or give up our illusory power that we make a difference.
We do make a difference of course, especially within the local,
and the local might as well be the desk I'm writing on as well
as the global networking that ensures both the transparency of
the desk and its materiality, and the obdurate nature of our
belief in futures against all odds. We arm ourselves, define
ourselves within the local (for I am _here,_ not _there,_ no
matter how connected we are; my arms reach no farther than my
arms, etc. etc. - how 'basic') - connected only in the sense
of abstract flows which comfort and frighten us, and ultimately
become channels of power and accumulation, and most likely not
our own.
Reification obstructs thinking through simplicity; terms are
defined and redefined as thought becomes tied to world-views,
leverages, sememes, institutions, domains of poverty, and
firewalls of economics, communication, travel, employment,
education, health, philosophy, and environment. Touching
everything, we are not there, where touching is everywhere.
Where touching is not there at all, where there is no 'original
face,' where touching, like thought, is an illusion. As an
illusion, it is all there is. We are present for the short time
of our lives, for our increasing knowledge of the long time of
the world and the shorter time for the survival of the planetary
biome as we know it. All of this is self-evident; cultural myths
create the illusion of the long-term, of eternities, of our
thought after our thought. With a whisper, we will be gone; with
a whisper, we may take the going with us.
Do we survive in the small, almost microscopic, domains given to
each of us? The eternal question of course is 'what is to be
done' and the answer or answers are increasingly lost in noise,
ideologies, and power struggles. For who or what, for the most
part does not want to continue? Firewalls are a form of
aggrandizement and economics, and useless in the long run. The
tragedy, the fundamental tragedy, is that there is now the
potential for buttons anywhere on the planet to be pushed, while
action at a distance increasingly becomes action at the local
level, not the other way around. Too many ideologies, too many
illusions of permanent and personal power, pave the way for
disaster. Your disaster is our own, and it is also illusory that
world-wide communications bring us all "closer together." The
reality is we are all brought closer to the effects of power
regimes everywhere, and it's easier, easiest, to be an actor who
creates scarcity than one who benefits the planet through one or
another form of shared abundance. (In the old catastrophe
theory, this used to be called 'the fragility of good things' -
in other words, there's one best solution, and an enormous
number of bad ones, or none at all, or ones that have decayed,
or ones that have been 'taken over' et cetera.)
Where does this leave us? On the whole, when we're born, we
'inherit' the planet locally, and leave it to others when we
die. No one, no thing, ever sees the full effect of their
actions. (Most of these will be lost in noise, most of us will
be lost in noise, long or short after we're gone.) On a personal
level, I wake up in despair, go to sleep in despair, live in
despair, the result of being a witness to old and new millennia.
(I've been reading Zen koans, playing music, reach out to others
as so many of us do, attempting to be kind, where I haven't been
in the past, still try to feel that a state of grace and love is
possible, beyond the 'immediacy' of the local of my existence.
And what of it? What of any of this?)
(And for me, there's no conclusion; the complexity of the world
precludes that. I'm left with the absurdity that my only faith
is in no faith, which of course is no answer at all; it's almost
impossible to live without one or another sense of the
'goodness' of being alive. Such goodness is increasingly a
luxury, the transparency of decay and devolution are too
visible, too prevalent. I leave you with this, now at 6:17 a.m.
in the morning, another sleepless night, one of many, and fewer
and fewer, to come.)
+++
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