The Earth swings through its orbit, falling toward the sun at about 100,000 kph....
The 8 primary planets of Sol, along with its cadre of dwarf planets, and possible brown dwarf companion, continue their orbits as they have for the past 4 billions years.
The inhabitants of the third planet have robotic probes orbiting the first, fourth, and sixth planets, while another probe is en route for one of the larger dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. Robotic rovers are driving on the fourth planet, while plans are in the works for robotic explorers for the moons of the fifth and sixth planets.
These inhabitants have also constructed the largest machine their species has ever built. It lies underground in a northern landmass, just north itself of a partially enclosed sea. They have just verified the existence of a field that pervades all matter--they named it the Higgs boson.
Despite these and other impressive technological accomplishments, many members of the dominant primate species continue to engage in picayune disagreements over issues of ethnicity, territory, and faith.
With this mind, and this being the five thousandth, three hundred and thirty-second review by the InterGalactic Welcoming Committee of this particular, we have decided to waive the right of annual reviews and return this planet to century reviews.
Good job people. They were ready to welcome us to the Intergalactic Federation and this whole nonsense in the Middle East screwed us over.
I am planning an appeal. As soon as I can figure out who to appeal to.
Tuesday, September 03, 2013
Monday, December 03, 2012
Heinlein's Crazy Years
The Crazy Years. Robert Heinlein has a series of novels exploring the inevitable unraveling of Western Civilization. My favorite is Friday, for I think what are obvious reasons. Heinlein predicted that because of a combination of various factors, Western societies would face disintegration from within. His primary reasons are the educational system, the inefficacy of the warm-bodied franchise, and the inherent impulse among many people to use the powers of the state coercively against others.
I have tried to avoid talking about personal experience on this blog. I always try to speak within a more general framework and not to involve myself in my writing. I have however had a great deal of experience in working with children of all ages as a private instructor for the past ten years or so. I have witnessed in the span of one generation the rapid evisceration of true teaching.
This problem is not immediately evident. Schools assign a plethora of homework during children's early years of education. Many of my clients report an overwhelming avalanche of homework during their children's early years of education, only to find that somehow, homework disappears from the radar when children reach middle school. This is where I come in. I am a highly specialized tutor who focuses on teaching my students how to improve their metacognition and ability to process information deeply.
The abyss of work that accompanies a students entry into middle school is as illusory as the torrent of useless busywork assigned by teachers in elementary school. It is not that middle school students have no homework, it's instead that teachers assume that students are aware that they must read, problem-solve, and explore the world on their own. Teachers assume that students know how to take notes. Teachers assume that students know how to pull critical information from a textbook. But it is not purely the fault of students.
Most of the students that I work with are high school age. I rarely get to associate with middle school students because the workload is frighteningly easy that most students are able to slide through with good grades without doing any work at all.
A few weeks ago however, I had the opportunity to work with a middle school student. She was having problems with her physical sciences class. She was in the eighth grade. As I thumbed through her textbook, I was appalled at the level at which it was written. I found it to be both banal and vacuous. It felt like it had been written for a six year old. The girl was like many children her age: unaware in the extreme. Her knowledge of the classics was scant. Her cognizance of the outside world severely limited. She had not been taught how to seek out and be thrilled by new knowledge.
Needless to say our session was challenged by her limitations. A student can only accept what they are capable of digesting--if she has not developed the correct palate, the ability to differentiate and discern subtle concepts and ideas, then she will not be able to learn more complex and difficult ideas.
This deficit is not entirely her fault. It is a cultural, social, and political failure as well. Children are naturally inquisitive. How does a naturally inquisitive mind become finely attuned to the demands of conformity within the absurd social hierarchy of a classroom? The answer: easily. The classroom is the antithesis of learning. Learning is interactive, it is physical, it is multidimensional, and it is interdisciplinary.
Our entire educational pedagogy is founded on the notion that learning happens sequentially, in an ordered and organized fashion, and that it must be directed. Children have a globular intellect that is not focused on information in an encyclopedic sense, but in an evolutionary sense. In other words, children seek information as it pertains to their particular level of development and how it is applicable to their world. Children naturally work within the realm of abstractions--how else do you explain their capacity for pretending and putting the "real" world aside in the blink of an eye and then returning with as much ease? Yet teachers seek to condition students to all behave exactly the same, and teachers expect all students to progress at the same rate and to be capable of the same skills. We are all endowed with abilities, we all have gifts, and education should be about helping each person discover what it is not only that they are interested in, but what they are going to do with their life. Education must also be about culturally informing students as to who they are, and while we do not have worship our way of life, we should at least acknowledge how good we have it compared to the plight of most people throughout history.
This post has explicitly ignored the progressive pedagogy promulgated throughout the academy and textbooks because it would require multiple posts to even begin to address the blatant bigotry toward conservative ideas and policy positions, to say nothing of teaching the history of the evolution of philosophical thought from Plato until today. I think it ought to be assumed by everyone that the progressive push toward uniformity of thought has so thoroughly permeated the institutions of education that we needn't directly address it. Education should not be a means to an end, it should be an end unto itself. Learning, like science, is never settled. To say that you have learned something is to deny the possibility that what we know is most likely wrong, that in the future we will make new discoveries that improve our understanding of the natural world. We have been using the Platonic model of education for the past twenty-three hundred years. It is time we tried something else.
The consequences of poor education have been evident for generations. Those who are highly educated in the sciences are paid more money. Those who are not, are not paid well. The more technically and technologically proficient a person is, the greater their earning potential is. The economic stratification of society will intensity as all manual labor will very soon be done robotically. What will we face then, when every hourly employee in the country become wards of the state as they have no marketable skills?
Heinlein warned us about the world we are living in. I feel more and more indebted to my father for having introduced me to Robert Heinlein at an early age. It is becoming more and more apparent that events, are simply beyond anyone's control. We should feel edified that evolution is still at work in our species, that we have not become separated from the pressures of the evolutionary invisible hand, functioning much in the same that interactions in the market generate prices; indeed we are still part of the great game. To make the best possible world for our children, we must allow a flowering of educational experimentation. After all, somebody is going to have to rebuild the world after whatever conflagration awaits us this century.
I have tried to avoid talking about personal experience on this blog. I always try to speak within a more general framework and not to involve myself in my writing. I have however had a great deal of experience in working with children of all ages as a private instructor for the past ten years or so. I have witnessed in the span of one generation the rapid evisceration of true teaching.
This problem is not immediately evident. Schools assign a plethora of homework during children's early years of education. Many of my clients report an overwhelming avalanche of homework during their children's early years of education, only to find that somehow, homework disappears from the radar when children reach middle school. This is where I come in. I am a highly specialized tutor who focuses on teaching my students how to improve their metacognition and ability to process information deeply.
The abyss of work that accompanies a students entry into middle school is as illusory as the torrent of useless busywork assigned by teachers in elementary school. It is not that middle school students have no homework, it's instead that teachers assume that students are aware that they must read, problem-solve, and explore the world on their own. Teachers assume that students know how to take notes. Teachers assume that students know how to pull critical information from a textbook. But it is not purely the fault of students.
Most of the students that I work with are high school age. I rarely get to associate with middle school students because the workload is frighteningly easy that most students are able to slide through with good grades without doing any work at all.
A few weeks ago however, I had the opportunity to work with a middle school student. She was having problems with her physical sciences class. She was in the eighth grade. As I thumbed through her textbook, I was appalled at the level at which it was written. I found it to be both banal and vacuous. It felt like it had been written for a six year old. The girl was like many children her age: unaware in the extreme. Her knowledge of the classics was scant. Her cognizance of the outside world severely limited. She had not been taught how to seek out and be thrilled by new knowledge.
Needless to say our session was challenged by her limitations. A student can only accept what they are capable of digesting--if she has not developed the correct palate, the ability to differentiate and discern subtle concepts and ideas, then she will not be able to learn more complex and difficult ideas.
This deficit is not entirely her fault. It is a cultural, social, and political failure as well. Children are naturally inquisitive. How does a naturally inquisitive mind become finely attuned to the demands of conformity within the absurd social hierarchy of a classroom? The answer: easily. The classroom is the antithesis of learning. Learning is interactive, it is physical, it is multidimensional, and it is interdisciplinary.
Our entire educational pedagogy is founded on the notion that learning happens sequentially, in an ordered and organized fashion, and that it must be directed. Children have a globular intellect that is not focused on information in an encyclopedic sense, but in an evolutionary sense. In other words, children seek information as it pertains to their particular level of development and how it is applicable to their world. Children naturally work within the realm of abstractions--how else do you explain their capacity for pretending and putting the "real" world aside in the blink of an eye and then returning with as much ease? Yet teachers seek to condition students to all behave exactly the same, and teachers expect all students to progress at the same rate and to be capable of the same skills. We are all endowed with abilities, we all have gifts, and education should be about helping each person discover what it is not only that they are interested in, but what they are going to do with their life. Education must also be about culturally informing students as to who they are, and while we do not have worship our way of life, we should at least acknowledge how good we have it compared to the plight of most people throughout history.
This post has explicitly ignored the progressive pedagogy promulgated throughout the academy and textbooks because it would require multiple posts to even begin to address the blatant bigotry toward conservative ideas and policy positions, to say nothing of teaching the history of the evolution of philosophical thought from Plato until today. I think it ought to be assumed by everyone that the progressive push toward uniformity of thought has so thoroughly permeated the institutions of education that we needn't directly address it. Education should not be a means to an end, it should be an end unto itself. Learning, like science, is never settled. To say that you have learned something is to deny the possibility that what we know is most likely wrong, that in the future we will make new discoveries that improve our understanding of the natural world. We have been using the Platonic model of education for the past twenty-three hundred years. It is time we tried something else.
The consequences of poor education have been evident for generations. Those who are highly educated in the sciences are paid more money. Those who are not, are not paid well. The more technically and technologically proficient a person is, the greater their earning potential is. The economic stratification of society will intensity as all manual labor will very soon be done robotically. What will we face then, when every hourly employee in the country become wards of the state as they have no marketable skills?
Heinlein warned us about the world we are living in. I feel more and more indebted to my father for having introduced me to Robert Heinlein at an early age. It is becoming more and more apparent that events, are simply beyond anyone's control. We should feel edified that evolution is still at work in our species, that we have not become separated from the pressures of the evolutionary invisible hand, functioning much in the same that interactions in the market generate prices; indeed we are still part of the great game. To make the best possible world for our children, we must allow a flowering of educational experimentation. After all, somebody is going to have to rebuild the world after whatever conflagration awaits us this century.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
The Image Reaches a New Zenith
Across the web, individuals are remarking on the astonishing and frankly terrifying manner with which the White House lied concerning the terrorist attack that took place in Benghazi on 9/11/12.
As I said, it is astonishing watching (or rather reading) the string of lies that has spewed forth from the administration since those brave Americans died. To blame a video...wait, let me start again. If you are a Moslem (Muslim? Moslim? What is the proper spelling? Shia? Shiite? Shi'ite? Sheesh.) and you believe that Mahomet (we are going to stick with the 19th century spelling of this bloke) is Allah's final Prophet (wait, God, Vishnu, Yahweh...hmmm...I see a pattern here) and you are upset about this person being displayed in any format....well...I have some bad news for you.
There remain a substantial number of people in the West who believe not only in the ideas of natural rights but the explicit right of freedom of expression.
Moreover, we who believe in natural rights also refuse to lie down in the face of provocative and dangerous lies by the Obama administration. And most importantly, we must hold the legacy media's feet to the fire over their refusal to do the same to the administration.
Every conservative, libertarian, and independent American must face facts: the legacy media is nothing but the communications department of the Democrat Party. They are beyond being in the tank. They are the tank.
The media tank has created an alternative universe. An alternative universe where Barack Obama is not facing certain defeat. An alternative universe where Iran is not engaged in a region wide attempt to attain hegemony. A universe in which it is perfectly fine for people to propound the benefits of ObamaPhone. What's next? ObamaCare? Oh wait. We already have that. Yay!
Why don't we just go whole sweaty lipstick covered hog and have ObamaFood, ObamaHaircuts, ObamaCondoms, ObamaSmokes, ObamaPainkillers, ObamaToeNail clippers. Whatever you want Obamicans. Ask and Obama shall provide.
And what is the media focusing on? Romney being a kind gentleman who asks a crowd that they also chant Ryan. What else is the media focusing on? Why the hell does it matter WHAT the media is focusing on?
The hermetically sealed progressive cocoon is coming undone. Watch it unravel. Watch as the real world collides with the construct that they have built around the One.
The Middle East is unraveling.
The sovereign debt crises is unraveling.
China's economy has most likely already unraveled and we won't hear about it until 2284 when the vaults are finally opened.
Iran is waging region wide war agains forces opposed to its hegemony.
Al-Qaeda runs rampant throughout Africa and we do nothing.
Robert Heinlein predicted the "Crazy Years." They are upon us. What we do now matters more than ever. We must defeat Barack Obama. We must undo ALL of the damage that he has done to the Constitution, the US military, and our global alliances. We must reverse course fiscally, and avoid the otherwise unavoidable and catastrophic collapse.
It begins with conservatives and libertarians and independents rejecting the status quo. We must not accede to their most basic demand: submit. Modern progressivism and radical Islam share this notion of total submission--Islam means submission--and we, the free and sovereign people of the United States, reject submission. We embrace freedom.
Our freedom begins with disempowering the Left. We must begin the most publicly charged effort to undermine everything the Left does via the "media". We must turn Alinksy on his head and apply it ten times stronger than they apply it to us. It is not enough to boycott--we must compete! We must bring the news better and we must do so by ending this quaint notion of the "story." The death of the US Ambassador to Libya is not a story, it is really happening right now to the family of that poor man; it really happened to him.
The conservative movement has not been very good at agitprop. We reject the notion. We want to appeal to people's minds, not their emotions. We don't want to be like the Left.
Just like your average angry Middle Eastern Muslim who doesn't want that bloke Mahomet shown riding a unicorn with rainbows streaming out of its ass has to accept that's just modernity, so too do conservatives need to accept that if you want to beat your enemy, you have to acknowledge that as unfortunate as it is, the United States is engaged in a cold civil war.
I am not the first to suggest that this the case, but it is the case. There is a battle being waged for the heart and soul of the United States. The progressive Left wants to transform America into a socialist utopia. Conservatives want to shepherd the Republic through the coming technological revolution while remaining true to our Founding principles. The progressive Left will not tell you that in a socialist utopia, everyone is equally miserable. They will not tell you that in their socialist utopia, there will still be two tiers--those who are in power and can dispense it at will--and the miserable rest of us, trapped somewhere in between Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World."
The Left will not come out and say that this is what they want: an all powerful, imperial government capable of enacting whatever statutes it choose, without any consideration for constitutional limitations. This is what ObamaCare heralds. And ObamaLunch. And soon, ObamaCar.
If Obama wins the election, we will see ObamaCars driven by people with ObamaPhones getting an ObamaCheck and receiving ObamaCare. They will believe that it is Obama who has made their life livable. They will owe him their perpetual allegiance.
They will be slaves...
Slavery is a human institution grounded not necessarily in the physical chains we usually mentally associate with such oppression, but rather in the totalitarian impulse of the passive aggressive bully to control. Progressives, liberals, socialists, communists, watermelons, and postmodern feminist gender studies folks all tend toward that very passive aggressive to aggressive personality type. This impulse to manipulate and control people's mind is the very essence of slavery. You can have all the trappings of slavery you want, but at the end of the day, the slaves must know that they are slaves.
We are all slaves to the imperial federal government. Any free citizen who must work almost half the year to pay all of the taxes they owe for that year is not a free citizen. They are at best, indentured servants; at worst, they are outright slaves. And some among us are already bought, paid, and owned by the Democrat Party.
Reach out to your fellow citizens. Lead by example. Show what a citizen of a community does. Show how you do not lead from behind the way this President does. Show that you do not need a government official to sanction every action you take. Show that you believe in a country where the rule of law is paramount, free market principles are valued, and respect for the Founders brings us to a deeper understanding of the notion of freedom.
Otherwise, Forward to socialism.
As I said, it is astonishing watching (or rather reading) the string of lies that has spewed forth from the administration since those brave Americans died. To blame a video...wait, let me start again. If you are a Moslem (Muslim? Moslim? What is the proper spelling? Shia? Shiite? Shi'ite? Sheesh.) and you believe that Mahomet (we are going to stick with the 19th century spelling of this bloke) is Allah's final Prophet (wait, God, Vishnu, Yahweh...hmmm...I see a pattern here) and you are upset about this person being displayed in any format....well...I have some bad news for you.
There remain a substantial number of people in the West who believe not only in the ideas of natural rights but the explicit right of freedom of expression.
Moreover, we who believe in natural rights also refuse to lie down in the face of provocative and dangerous lies by the Obama administration. And most importantly, we must hold the legacy media's feet to the fire over their refusal to do the same to the administration.
Every conservative, libertarian, and independent American must face facts: the legacy media is nothing but the communications department of the Democrat Party. They are beyond being in the tank. They are the tank.
The media tank has created an alternative universe. An alternative universe where Barack Obama is not facing certain defeat. An alternative universe where Iran is not engaged in a region wide attempt to attain hegemony. A universe in which it is perfectly fine for people to propound the benefits of ObamaPhone. What's next? ObamaCare? Oh wait. We already have that. Yay!
Why don't we just go whole sweaty lipstick covered hog and have ObamaFood, ObamaHaircuts, ObamaCondoms, ObamaSmokes, ObamaPainkillers, ObamaToeNail clippers. Whatever you want Obamicans. Ask and Obama shall provide.
And what is the media focusing on? Romney being a kind gentleman who asks a crowd that they also chant Ryan. What else is the media focusing on? Why the hell does it matter WHAT the media is focusing on?
The hermetically sealed progressive cocoon is coming undone. Watch it unravel. Watch as the real world collides with the construct that they have built around the One.
The Middle East is unraveling.
The sovereign debt crises is unraveling.
China's economy has most likely already unraveled and we won't hear about it until 2284 when the vaults are finally opened.
Iran is waging region wide war agains forces opposed to its hegemony.
Al-Qaeda runs rampant throughout Africa and we do nothing.
Robert Heinlein predicted the "Crazy Years." They are upon us. What we do now matters more than ever. We must defeat Barack Obama. We must undo ALL of the damage that he has done to the Constitution, the US military, and our global alliances. We must reverse course fiscally, and avoid the otherwise unavoidable and catastrophic collapse.
It begins with conservatives and libertarians and independents rejecting the status quo. We must not accede to their most basic demand: submit. Modern progressivism and radical Islam share this notion of total submission--Islam means submission--and we, the free and sovereign people of the United States, reject submission. We embrace freedom.
Our freedom begins with disempowering the Left. We must begin the most publicly charged effort to undermine everything the Left does via the "media". We must turn Alinksy on his head and apply it ten times stronger than they apply it to us. It is not enough to boycott--we must compete! We must bring the news better and we must do so by ending this quaint notion of the "story." The death of the US Ambassador to Libya is not a story, it is really happening right now to the family of that poor man; it really happened to him.
The conservative movement has not been very good at agitprop. We reject the notion. We want to appeal to people's minds, not their emotions. We don't want to be like the Left.
Just like your average angry Middle Eastern Muslim who doesn't want that bloke Mahomet shown riding a unicorn with rainbows streaming out of its ass has to accept that's just modernity, so too do conservatives need to accept that if you want to beat your enemy, you have to acknowledge that as unfortunate as it is, the United States is engaged in a cold civil war.
I am not the first to suggest that this the case, but it is the case. There is a battle being waged for the heart and soul of the United States. The progressive Left wants to transform America into a socialist utopia. Conservatives want to shepherd the Republic through the coming technological revolution while remaining true to our Founding principles. The progressive Left will not tell you that in a socialist utopia, everyone is equally miserable. They will not tell you that in their socialist utopia, there will still be two tiers--those who are in power and can dispense it at will--and the miserable rest of us, trapped somewhere in between Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World."
The Left will not come out and say that this is what they want: an all powerful, imperial government capable of enacting whatever statutes it choose, without any consideration for constitutional limitations. This is what ObamaCare heralds. And ObamaLunch. And soon, ObamaCar.
If Obama wins the election, we will see ObamaCars driven by people with ObamaPhones getting an ObamaCheck and receiving ObamaCare. They will believe that it is Obama who has made their life livable. They will owe him their perpetual allegiance.
They will be slaves...
Slavery is a human institution grounded not necessarily in the physical chains we usually mentally associate with such oppression, but rather in the totalitarian impulse of the passive aggressive bully to control. Progressives, liberals, socialists, communists, watermelons, and postmodern feminist gender studies folks all tend toward that very passive aggressive to aggressive personality type. This impulse to manipulate and control people's mind is the very essence of slavery. You can have all the trappings of slavery you want, but at the end of the day, the slaves must know that they are slaves.
We are all slaves to the imperial federal government. Any free citizen who must work almost half the year to pay all of the taxes they owe for that year is not a free citizen. They are at best, indentured servants; at worst, they are outright slaves. And some among us are already bought, paid, and owned by the Democrat Party.
Reach out to your fellow citizens. Lead by example. Show what a citizen of a community does. Show how you do not lead from behind the way this President does. Show that you do not need a government official to sanction every action you take. Show that you believe in a country where the rule of law is paramount, free market principles are valued, and respect for the Founders brings us to a deeper understanding of the notion of freedom.
Otherwise, Forward to socialism.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Never too late...
To start over.
On this day, this day of days.
There have been enough remembrances, enough memorials. We have prayed. We have cried. We have tried to understand.
And we have waged war. The comparisons to 1984 and the condition of total, unending war against East Asia or Eurasia or at this point, does it really matter, are replete enough not to need mentioning. The jihadis wanted war. Well, war was what they got.
And the apoplectic Left continues to stay stuck in their Marxian-infused echo chamber. Over-sampling of Democrats in almost every poll? Pah, who cares about party identification, everyone knows that Democrats are the largest party.
The Marxian Echo Chamber is a dangerous place to be. For people who are trapped there, well, I have no pity for their intellectual dishonesty. They lie to themselves every single day. And they lie to everyone they encounter.
The strike in Chicago is a perfect example of the disfunction of the Left. How can teachers strike? How can employees of the public be allowed to strike? When will the supporters of the teachers realize that the children are what matters? When will we realize that life is too precious to be entrusted to ideological, illiterate fools who think that the public is their personal piggy bank?
On this day, this day of days, it is time that we stop memorializing. It is time that we stopped living in the past. It is time that we found a way to a new future. It is time to end the Image Age. It is time to fire the embodiment of the Image Age, President TelePrompter.
It is time not to move forward, but to change course. It is time not to move forward toward some vague dystopian nightmare, but into the light that is liberty. It is bright, and it is overwhelming, but liberty is not for the weak-willed. It is for the valiant.
On this day, this day of days.
There have been enough remembrances, enough memorials. We have prayed. We have cried. We have tried to understand.
And we have waged war. The comparisons to 1984 and the condition of total, unending war against East Asia or Eurasia or at this point, does it really matter, are replete enough not to need mentioning. The jihadis wanted war. Well, war was what they got.
And the apoplectic Left continues to stay stuck in their Marxian-infused echo chamber. Over-sampling of Democrats in almost every poll? Pah, who cares about party identification, everyone knows that Democrats are the largest party.
The Marxian Echo Chamber is a dangerous place to be. For people who are trapped there, well, I have no pity for their intellectual dishonesty. They lie to themselves every single day. And they lie to everyone they encounter.
The strike in Chicago is a perfect example of the disfunction of the Left. How can teachers strike? How can employees of the public be allowed to strike? When will the supporters of the teachers realize that the children are what matters? When will we realize that life is too precious to be entrusted to ideological, illiterate fools who think that the public is their personal piggy bank?
On this day, this day of days, it is time that we stop memorializing. It is time that we stopped living in the past. It is time that we found a way to a new future. It is time to end the Image Age. It is time to fire the embodiment of the Image Age, President TelePrompter.
It is time not to move forward, but to change course. It is time not to move forward toward some vague dystopian nightmare, but into the light that is liberty. It is bright, and it is overwhelming, but liberty is not for the weak-willed. It is for the valiant.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
The Accidental Age
For years I have been searching in vain for a phrase for our period in time. It has stymied me, confounded and enthralled me because surely in naming our period of time, some clarity can come to what is happening in the world. The Accidental Age may not be the most perfect name, but it certainly describes the situation that we find ourselves. Quite by accident (and I mean that in the evolutionary sense) humanity finds itself in the position where a few individuals can perpetrate destruction on a scale never before imagined.
This truly is quite accidental. In my search for some way to frame this current age I began to examine some of my own preconceptions concerning not only the human race, but human civilization itself. I began to realize that civilization is not a guarantee. I have witnessed over the past several years an appalling disregard for the rules that make civilization work. Basic rules. Rules that were supposed to be taught to us in kindergarten. Rules like standing in line.
Who would have thought that people would have stampeded into a Wal-mart simply to get the best deal on a flat screen TV or a new digital camera or cheap toilet paper.
Not just stampeded mind you, but killed a man in the process.
Terrorists run into a hotel in Bombay (oops, Mumbai) and suddenly 200 people are dead.
Greek youths riot and run crazy and attack the cradle of Western civilization.
Tens of thousands of factories close in China.
The prices for heavy metals decline at precipitous levels, as does the price of oil.
And somewhere out there, enterprising individuals who are not interested in the accumulation of wealth, or the progress of human knowledge, or the creation of art...oh no, they are interested only in destruction. They do not think of the aftermath, for the aftermath for them is already guaranteed and they have no concerns other than they are doing God's work.
It really is an accident that humanity survived a population bottleneck, that we survived the last glacial period and that we managed to not kill everyone in the last ten thousand years.
In short, the very appearance of humanity itself might be viewed as a grand cosmic accident.
Life has continued for billions of years without the presence of sentience. Yet here humanity arrives, sentient and ready to act.
Or is our sentience merely an illusion?
No matter, I dub this the Age of Accidents. For the bigger and more complex we grow, the more likely that what would have constituted as a small accident a few thousand years ago (the appearance of a deadly virus for instance) could now become a human accident.
This truly is quite accidental. In my search for some way to frame this current age I began to examine some of my own preconceptions concerning not only the human race, but human civilization itself. I began to realize that civilization is not a guarantee. I have witnessed over the past several years an appalling disregard for the rules that make civilization work. Basic rules. Rules that were supposed to be taught to us in kindergarten. Rules like standing in line.
Who would have thought that people would have stampeded into a Wal-mart simply to get the best deal on a flat screen TV or a new digital camera or cheap toilet paper.
Not just stampeded mind you, but killed a man in the process.
Terrorists run into a hotel in Bombay (oops, Mumbai) and suddenly 200 people are dead.
Greek youths riot and run crazy and attack the cradle of Western civilization.
Tens of thousands of factories close in China.
The prices for heavy metals decline at precipitous levels, as does the price of oil.
And somewhere out there, enterprising individuals who are not interested in the accumulation of wealth, or the progress of human knowledge, or the creation of art...oh no, they are interested only in destruction. They do not think of the aftermath, for the aftermath for them is already guaranteed and they have no concerns other than they are doing God's work.
It really is an accident that humanity survived a population bottleneck, that we survived the last glacial period and that we managed to not kill everyone in the last ten thousand years.
In short, the very appearance of humanity itself might be viewed as a grand cosmic accident.
Life has continued for billions of years without the presence of sentience. Yet here humanity arrives, sentient and ready to act.
Or is our sentience merely an illusion?
No matter, I dub this the Age of Accidents. For the bigger and more complex we grow, the more likely that what would have constituted as a small accident a few thousand years ago (the appearance of a deadly virus for instance) could now become a human accident.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
the image age
I have spent the better part of the past several months doing exactly what I said that I was going to do: I listened. I listened and sought out across the entire spectrum of the internet all of the opinions, idea, concepts, complaints, conundrums, mysteries, allusions, problems, quandaries, oddities, eccentricities, coincidences...you get the point. I watched as much of the web as I could and just observed. The patterns. The what is here and what is there and who is saying what and how loud and how long and where and to whom and who published this and that...again, you get the point.
The problem is that there is so much to read. There is so much to absorb and if you do how to catalog it and organize it and find a starting point, a place where we can at least identify the key log.
Individual human endeavor continues relatively unabated in this strange new age we are in. The Image Age. What matters is what we see, how often we see it, what context we see in it and what we appear to be is more important than what we actually are. There are many who revolt against this ingrained belief but they do so without realizing it. It's part of the key log: we are in a jam and no one even knows that the river is blocked--the logs continue to build, not having reached the mill no one realizes it. As far as the eye can see all anyone can see is essentially clear horizons; even though we acknowledge the few storm clouds, we see them, we, as a society, accept them. Part of life. Pat Buchanan writing today the essential realist/paleocon argument against intervention in the Middle East in the name of the war on terror: the fear that an uninformed electorate there will quickly place Islamist parties in power and expand the jihad, rather than diminish it. This is a legitimate argument and ought to be considered but it ignores the reality that we are there. When the Romans wrote England off, how long was it before Hadrian's wall was completely abandoned (despite an abortive attempt to actually build a wall further north)? I ask the question that has continued to haunt me: do Americans want to remain a Great Power? Or are we satisfied to just be another state among states, neither superior or better, that the freedom we enjoin to every adult man and woman, the privileges we bestow upon our children, the security of old age, that these things are not good things and that we should not be proud of them?
It seems nonsensical to have to suggest that we should not be afraid of what we have achieved in America. But we are. And we are ashamed of it, we are ashamed that we have it so much better than the rest of the world, we are ashamed the way that it seems to me many wealthy people are ashamed of their wealth, despite maintaining a lifestyle that seems at odds with every moral sentiment they express--again, the Image Age, where the pronouncements you make are far more valuable than what you actually do. And nothing is more important in the Image Age than maintaining the illusion of perpetual youth. Have you seen Dick Clark or Bob Barker--they both appear as if they haven't aged a day in the past thirty years. It's terrifying, to think that perhaps Futurama had it right when civilization would face the perpetually animated head of all the major celebrities of the 20th and 21st century. But this desire for perpetual physical youth is only a symptom of the larger desire for the permanence of the status quo. No change. The United Nations is the most corrupt institution ever created, where two thirds of the declaration approved by the General Assembly concern Israel and its' aggression against the Palestinians or other peoples of the Middle East, UN peacekeepers engage in all manner of unspeakable actions, the Oil for food scandal has been buried by the MSM but all told it encompassed more than ten years and billions upon billions of bribes and illicit trade--all this, but no, the UN must stay. Or perhaps NATO, a defense organization that is essentially incapable of independent action because the council structure gives each nation a vote and all nations must agree. Thus, in Afghanistan the bulk of the actual fighting force is really only America, the British, the Canadians, the Aussies, and the Dutch. The other 20 some odd members won't allow their troops to be placed in situations that might actually require them to fire their weapons. But should NATO be dissolved and a new organization built around action, not deterrence, nope. The list goes on and on: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, a hole host of corrupt NGO's, the illusion of the nation-state in the Islamist world--we want the way we remembered the world to stay exactly the way that it is, and we are unwilling to face facts: images change.
But the Image Age won't end when everyone stops buying anti-wrinkle creams and hair transplants and soon total organectomy (a future surgery whereby all your internal organs are replaced with new ones, you're vascular and lymphatic systems are thoroughly cleaned and your brain is upgraded with both the latest software and hardware and you are then placed in hibernation for six months to allow your body to heal and you wake up 22 again). The Image Age will come to an end when the American people accept the mantle that history has thrust upon them, time and time again, whether it be to liberate ourselves from British tyranny, to the forging of a nation through Manifest Destiny, abolitionism, suffrage for all adult citizens, regardless of gender or ethnicity...we may not have achieved it all at once, we may have taken longer than necessary, but we're here right now and I like what we've done. I hate what we're doing to it. I hate that everything has become political. I hate that unfortunately for America, historically it has taken a great big wallop for the country to unify and act. And that's where the key log comes in.
I, as many people have, mistook the acquisition of information as the equivalent of the creation of information. Absorption is only part of it--the part that I didn't get was interaction. I still have a hard time with it, going to someone else's blog and posting a comment, emailing my favorite bloggers or writers in general and asking them to take a look...I haven't posted here for months, what would they see when they got here? Thoughtful commentary? Or the same old tired hawkish position on the war on terror...aren't we all so tired of it. Six years now. Can't it just end?
All I can hear are children screaming in the car, "Are we there yet?" They probably don't do that anymore, now that they're hypnotized with DVD players and ritalin. Part of the key log is finding a way to show the Left that they have the most to lose by unconsciously allying (and perhaps some consciously allying with the Islamists. But to the Left this is anathema--the enemy is clearly George Bush and the Republicans--perhaps someone was right over at the Corner that the only way to get the Left onboard is to make sure that they win it all in 2008 and they can see the seriousness of what we face--although that may be as bad as electing Jimmy Carter to office again--if Hillary could be as vicious to the jihadis as she is to her political enemies then this war would be over before you could say, the First, snicker, Gentleman. I doubt that she can though, and that's part of the problem of the Image Age, too. There's no sense of proportion, no sorting, no marginalism, no trade offs.
If I had an olive branch to offer one third of the country I would gladly do so, if only to find a way out of this mess together so that we can argue about all those bicycle paths you all want to build later and whether or not we should build hundreds of bird killing wind power stations and so on and so forth. But just put it aside for a moment, a brief flicker in not just the span of human affairs, but in our own lives. Come together on the one issue that matters the most, our survival. And do it so that we can have those arguments, so that we can enjoy the rush of the political atmosphere, the electricity on election night, so we can continue to practice this great experiment in representative democracy that we ought to proudly call our Republic. Put down the Image Age, and join me in the Age of....
The problem is that there is so much to read. There is so much to absorb and if you do how to catalog it and organize it and find a starting point, a place where we can at least identify the key log.
Individual human endeavor continues relatively unabated in this strange new age we are in. The Image Age. What matters is what we see, how often we see it, what context we see in it and what we appear to be is more important than what we actually are. There are many who revolt against this ingrained belief but they do so without realizing it. It's part of the key log: we are in a jam and no one even knows that the river is blocked--the logs continue to build, not having reached the mill no one realizes it. As far as the eye can see all anyone can see is essentially clear horizons; even though we acknowledge the few storm clouds, we see them, we, as a society, accept them. Part of life. Pat Buchanan writing today the essential realist/paleocon argument against intervention in the Middle East in the name of the war on terror: the fear that an uninformed electorate there will quickly place Islamist parties in power and expand the jihad, rather than diminish it. This is a legitimate argument and ought to be considered but it ignores the reality that we are there. When the Romans wrote England off, how long was it before Hadrian's wall was completely abandoned (despite an abortive attempt to actually build a wall further north)? I ask the question that has continued to haunt me: do Americans want to remain a Great Power? Or are we satisfied to just be another state among states, neither superior or better, that the freedom we enjoin to every adult man and woman, the privileges we bestow upon our children, the security of old age, that these things are not good things and that we should not be proud of them?
It seems nonsensical to have to suggest that we should not be afraid of what we have achieved in America. But we are. And we are ashamed of it, we are ashamed that we have it so much better than the rest of the world, we are ashamed the way that it seems to me many wealthy people are ashamed of their wealth, despite maintaining a lifestyle that seems at odds with every moral sentiment they express--again, the Image Age, where the pronouncements you make are far more valuable than what you actually do. And nothing is more important in the Image Age than maintaining the illusion of perpetual youth. Have you seen Dick Clark or Bob Barker--they both appear as if they haven't aged a day in the past thirty years. It's terrifying, to think that perhaps Futurama had it right when civilization would face the perpetually animated head of all the major celebrities of the 20th and 21st century. But this desire for perpetual physical youth is only a symptom of the larger desire for the permanence of the status quo. No change. The United Nations is the most corrupt institution ever created, where two thirds of the declaration approved by the General Assembly concern Israel and its' aggression against the Palestinians or other peoples of the Middle East, UN peacekeepers engage in all manner of unspeakable actions, the Oil for food scandal has been buried by the MSM but all told it encompassed more than ten years and billions upon billions of bribes and illicit trade--all this, but no, the UN must stay. Or perhaps NATO, a defense organization that is essentially incapable of independent action because the council structure gives each nation a vote and all nations must agree. Thus, in Afghanistan the bulk of the actual fighting force is really only America, the British, the Canadians, the Aussies, and the Dutch. The other 20 some odd members won't allow their troops to be placed in situations that might actually require them to fire their weapons. But should NATO be dissolved and a new organization built around action, not deterrence, nope. The list goes on and on: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, a hole host of corrupt NGO's, the illusion of the nation-state in the Islamist world--we want the way we remembered the world to stay exactly the way that it is, and we are unwilling to face facts: images change.
But the Image Age won't end when everyone stops buying anti-wrinkle creams and hair transplants and soon total organectomy (a future surgery whereby all your internal organs are replaced with new ones, you're vascular and lymphatic systems are thoroughly cleaned and your brain is upgraded with both the latest software and hardware and you are then placed in hibernation for six months to allow your body to heal and you wake up 22 again). The Image Age will come to an end when the American people accept the mantle that history has thrust upon them, time and time again, whether it be to liberate ourselves from British tyranny, to the forging of a nation through Manifest Destiny, abolitionism, suffrage for all adult citizens, regardless of gender or ethnicity...we may not have achieved it all at once, we may have taken longer than necessary, but we're here right now and I like what we've done. I hate what we're doing to it. I hate that everything has become political. I hate that unfortunately for America, historically it has taken a great big wallop for the country to unify and act. And that's where the key log comes in.
I, as many people have, mistook the acquisition of information as the equivalent of the creation of information. Absorption is only part of it--the part that I didn't get was interaction. I still have a hard time with it, going to someone else's blog and posting a comment, emailing my favorite bloggers or writers in general and asking them to take a look...I haven't posted here for months, what would they see when they got here? Thoughtful commentary? Or the same old tired hawkish position on the war on terror...aren't we all so tired of it. Six years now. Can't it just end?
All I can hear are children screaming in the car, "Are we there yet?" They probably don't do that anymore, now that they're hypnotized with DVD players and ritalin. Part of the key log is finding a way to show the Left that they have the most to lose by unconsciously allying (and perhaps some consciously allying with the Islamists. But to the Left this is anathema--the enemy is clearly George Bush and the Republicans--perhaps someone was right over at the Corner that the only way to get the Left onboard is to make sure that they win it all in 2008 and they can see the seriousness of what we face--although that may be as bad as electing Jimmy Carter to office again--if Hillary could be as vicious to the jihadis as she is to her political enemies then this war would be over before you could say, the First, snicker, Gentleman. I doubt that she can though, and that's part of the problem of the Image Age, too. There's no sense of proportion, no sorting, no marginalism, no trade offs.
If I had an olive branch to offer one third of the country I would gladly do so, if only to find a way out of this mess together so that we can argue about all those bicycle paths you all want to build later and whether or not we should build hundreds of bird killing wind power stations and so on and so forth. But just put it aside for a moment, a brief flicker in not just the span of human affairs, but in our own lives. Come together on the one issue that matters the most, our survival. And do it so that we can have those arguments, so that we can enjoy the rush of the political atmosphere, the electricity on election night, so we can continue to practice this great experiment in representative democracy that we ought to proudly call our Republic. Put down the Image Age, and join me in the Age of....
Monday, September 04, 2006
what matters is what we see, not what is
The image. The video clip. The soundbite. We have reduced our world to a digital shadow of its' formal self, and what's worse, we have elevated the meaningless to the paramount--were but Nero alive he would laugh and find our little circus to be but the democratization of Rome--we are all free to be little Nero's in our own little world, masters of our moment and fixated on its' maintenance. Nothing matters nearly as much as the equilibrium, the status quo, the illusion that nothing changes. We plant lawn grass for houses on the beach for crying out loud! We build communities right on the water and wonder why hurricanes and tropical storms cause so much damage. We manufacture items to last a few years, cell phones for example, and while I understand that we're undergoing a rapid increase in the rate of technological development, items should be huilt to last. My sister's 1990 Volvo 240 has for instance 250,000 miles on it and it will keep running as long as someone maintains it. But, to look at it, it isn't anything to look at--the reality is though that car is fantastically well built.
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