The truth in international shipping

I.

A brief analysis of international shipping routes through global geospatial positioning maps constructed in the year 2012 shows several interesting facts in real time. The first and most obvious is that bulk cargo shipments, that would include agricultural products, rarely ship into US ports, but are more commonly shipped out. 2012 was the year of physiocracy-lite, or our first experiment into Foucauldian physiocracy, and so it has relevance to the current system; what you can see is that the export-import regime is well in line with the proposed plan from the physiocrats as conveyed through Foucault. The corollary to this is that what seems to matter as a fact of analysis is, - once you can track the positions of ships themselves, that is -, the ships, and not the ports or the port records. Some of those ships certainly have American crews and many are carrying American produce on their manifests. Certainly, also, the classic bottlenecks in the shipping patterns are still relevant: the strait of Hormuz, the Straits of Malacca, and, you can see where cargo ships were still shipping grain through the Black Sea and the Bosporus from Ukrainian ports. But what's important about all this is that you can see what economic regimes are internal, and external, to each region of the world, by the process of elimination. What I mean by this, is pretty much: if you look at dry bulk, which is where grain would often be shipped in/under, and where grain is being predominantly shipped in vs. shipped out, using dry bulk as a proxy to look at grain shipments in 2012, you can see how certain regions have constructed their resource economies, either around agricultural exports or around non-agricultural exports. Agricultural exports pre-dominating over imports would suggest physiocracy, as opposed to mercantilism, per Foucault's analysis; and under predominantly free governments, would suggest freer economies for the lower classes and farmers, and a better State. However, the legacies of imperialism alter the analysis of various ways. For instance, South America's large quantity of exports to Europe would suggest the impact of the legacies of colonialism, and not necessarily strong and free political economy structures there. But there are more quirks of this map that show deep political economy trends. For instance, India imports more dry bulk cargo than it exports; despite the physiocratic element of its liberation struggle, imperialism still has its legacy in that region's political economy. This you can see in the map. Also, the Middle East imports much more dry bulk - this is common sense. Australia, as well, imports much more dry bulk, than it exports, and this points to a deep structural element of its political economy and its extractivist resource regime. The legacy of the British Crown is active there too.

In conclusion, it is impossible to speak conclusively about international shipping without addressing the legacies of imperialism and colonialism; although you can determine the state of political economy as a fact, it is as a fact agnostic to history. There is no political economy without politics. And without knowledge of imperialist histories, or rather history of imperialism told by the subaltern and oppressed, there is no geopolitics. The value of value-neutral artifacts of knowledge is explicit only in context, but the nature of the artifacts themselves, is only clear through a first level of logical discernment. Without discernment and knowledge of the meta-historical narrative, there is no such thing as intellect.

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II. 

The legacies of imperialism and colonialism have also had counterintuitive effects on the agricultural export regime of various formally colonized regions; for instance, Africa, with some of the richest soils in the world, barely exports any dry bulk that might include agricultural commodities, and this can be attributed to the ravages of colonialism on the region. History is an important overlay on top of the ordinary perception of such a map. Unfortunately, history in its truest facts is the most problematic subject in education to the wealthy, conservative, and bad-faith actors that exert control over our political economy. So, in conclusion, it requires a discerning mind and a knowledge of the histories of imperialism to do any good-faith, global economic analysis at all. This is why most economic analysis is a puppet tool of the wealthy elite, and yet economics when properly done is of the utmost importance to a true understanding of society, and global human history, still - even though most of it is bunk. The fieldwork of responsible economics should be history. The methodological innovation of this sort of reasoning, from data to conclusions of fact, and then to history, is to go from an effect to the necessary corollary to its cause. 

Is A causes Y, Y is present, and B is a necessary corollary to A, then is Y is present, B must be true. But the historical layer of analysis consists of a dynamic chronological analysis. If a certain failed policy causes a certain state of being such that it takes time to dig oneself out of it, then, if that time and effort has not elapsed, the state of being caused by the policy is still the best explanation of any affect seen. To continue the logical method above, if E causes a state of F, that requires X amount of time and effort to remove, then, if E has occurred, the state of F must be assumed, and if X amount has not elapsed, then, even if Y is present, then E and not A is the best explanation of it, B can't be assumed to be true, and E is the best causal explanation. 

The reasoning, that A -> Y; A -> B; Y -> B, is always true, but the historical analysis of E -> F; -F -> X; -X -> F -> E, takes primacy over the original syllogism, is always foremost when its conditions are met, and is, therefore, in those cases the best explanation. Global analysis of imperialism, that is, issues of war and peace, always supersede simple economic analysis. To put this to a concrete example, South America exports more dry bulk than it imports-dry bulk (including agricultural commodities) therefore physiocracy could be assumed its guiding philosophy; however, a state of imperialism and colonialism has occurred there, therefore, a state of current global subalternity must be assumed, until enough time and effort, toward decolonization has elapsed; since that amount hasn't elapsed, it must be assumed that imperialism and global subalternity is a better explanation for its resource flows until decolonization has been significantly achieved.

The map can be seen at shipmap.org.

The days of Bridge Man

October 25, 2022

The days of Bridge Man

Shanghai residents were confronted with a challenge leveled at the Chinese leader Xi Jingping just days before the Communist Party Congress began recently. The horrendous state of the Chinese government apparatus is regularly challenged by irate citizens. But for decades, the dominant ideology of the opposition has been Tank Man, no? All of the quasi-underground "protest" social movements have been sort of sedentary, and have gotten their legitimacy out of a sort of lethargic mood of "meh." Tank Man certainly had a giant set of balls, that should be noted, and he should be honored for his bravery. And yet, the ways that the actual state of a democratic Chinese underground has changed, deserve to be observed, and the liberation spirit deserves an updated appraisal. 

Bridge Man happened pretty recently, and consisted of a protest, where one man put up a smoke signal of sorts of black smoke, and hung a banner on a bridge overpass in Shanghai. The banner assailed several practices of Xi Jingping's Communist government, and demanded alternatives. It's again likely that he, like Tank Man, will not be seen again… But his identity is known: he is an author of several liberation, pro-democracy essays. He's not well-known exactly as a writer; but his head is at exactly where the zeitgeist is at in the pro-democracy underground - if that still even exists, that is. 

What does Bridge Man symbolize for where we are going? There's a bifurcation of purposes after a major protest, as in this in China, is identified as such by the state. The first obvious path is that people feel the liberty to demand similar liberties. Although the Chinese authorities have begun to make people register to buy paint and banner cloth now, there have still been solidarity protests, using lipstick as paint, and saying only the structure of the original Bridge Man's banner: "We don't want Y; we want Z", etc. The second obvious bifurcated path is about how the state will begin to act on the global stage as a result of this new idea. Observe that China's main tactical approach on the geopolitical stage has been to obstruct, a la Tank Man, since Tank Man. Any country is the same; observe the U.S. use of sanctions since Occupy Wall Street. And so there's going to be a sea change in the way that China is approaching geopolitical strategy if they can get away with it. The world should be prepared for a more literate, probably propaganda-based approach to Chinese strategy on the grand global stage. 

So, the very skeptical will point out that this is also likely to be a pivot the state apparatus has already made, in response to more large-scale events. But this is not truly an either-or decision about the cause. At the very least, the two problematics are mutually imbricated, for example, that people's protests have the concrete effect of giving a stamp of approval to certain government-level strategies…

So, the days of Bridge Man are upon us, and we should prepare accordingly.

“Spin”

 October 24, 2022

Spin

When I found the book Spin in an airport bookshop, I had no idea at first it would be one of the top 10 books that changed my life. It looked like a relatively mundane sci-fi award winner, so much like another and another I had seen before, that I almost didn't get it. But I did, and I read it over and over again, and my life and my thinking has never been the same.

Some books make ordinary life pale in comparison to them. This book made ordinary ideas pale in comparison to it, such that this book could qualify as a scientific man's Bible to come to grips with the era of science at the end of the space exploration, moon landing, age, and the beginning of the climate science age.

The book contains within it all the tension between science and religion that came along with this age of scientific being. It contains also the whirlwind of intellectual frenzy that accompanies those on the cusp of two ages of human progressive endeavor. And it includes a very enlightening commentary on the nature of our treatment of those that are solutions to our problems, and an intriguing idea about the nature of some of the knowledge about humankind that could emerge from this era of human scientific striving. In short this book is more in content than just another sci-fi novel.

The opening premise of Spin is the one that fascinated theoretical physicists for years: time travel; but time travel, that follows the rules of physics. One day as the protagonists are teenagers, the night sky of stars suddenly disappears. The Earth has been wrapped in a sort of envelope blocking out the night sky. The classic example of the time travel that follows the rules of actual physics is as follows: consider a bubble floating on the surface of your coffee as you stir it; if the bubble is in the middle of your drink, it will not move as fast as the coffee around the edges. And so it could be with time itself in certain cases. And the hypothetical posed at the start of this novel is: what if this happened, to the whole Earth; if time on Earth passed more slowly than outside it in space? This is a type of hypothetical that could please a hard-boiled type of scientific mind: not time travel exactly, but a time discontinuity.

One of the three protagonists, Jason, spends his adult life from that moment on grappling with the scientific implications of no longer being able to use space and space exploration in the same geopolitical and scientific way that it once was able to be used before the time anomaly known as the Spin was erected around Earth. We get to see the tender appraisal of a scientific genius tortured into greatness by the interesting times that he lives in and the harsh idolizing relationship between him and his father. It is an unsparing portrait of a man driven wild by the captive need of the state and the endless possibilities of a new era in science. 

But the hard emotional, psychological, and biological core of the story is the relation between Jason's sister, and their childhood friend Tyler, who idolizes and loves Jason's twin sister Diane. It brings to the foreground several of the book's core themes, which linger on in the mind even longer than Jason's eventual heroic sacrifice. Although never requiting Tyler's love as children, there is a strong emotional pull of history that nothing "the times" can do will keep Tyler and Dianne apart for a long period. Like that feeling that keeps calling you back to some events and people in your past, Tyler and Diane exercise a certain gravitational pull on each other, such that they constantly return into each other's company. Diane, unlike Jason, is drawn to the Millenarian aspect of the new scientific age that has suddenly been forced on people through the Spin, and joins a cult. Those who are paying close attention to the dire needs of the climate right now know that it is still often hard to discern, for example, Native American and indigenous rhetorics from actual avenues of political or ecological action through indigenous knowledge. Millenarianism is part of the fashion cycle lately. But it's the combination of the back-to-the-land millenarianism in the tired old Biblical millenarianism that infects Diane, and she becomes involved in a problem on one of these communes related to mad cow disease. The book properly treats this like it is no joke, because mad cow disease could be like a zero-day attack on the entire American agricultural system, should it actually happen here. But it troublingly notes that an attitude of Millenarianism, whether that is from climate change or another existential threat, could make us lose sight of the importance of forestalling dangers like these. It is not only the actions of another of Tyler's girlfriends, who suicides by pills on the day of a launch of a mission to escape Earth and the Spin by rocket ship, that reasoned policy should prevent, but also the slow surrender away from the rational scientific approaches that govern our daily lives. Millenarianism can take many forms. But its most damaging aspect is this erosion of rational norms.

It is through Jason that Tyler manages to rescue Diane from this dangerous Eco-La-La of a Millenarianist cult, that has many resemblances to contemporary Eco-millenarianism; but Jason, whose health was already fragile, has become worn out above his years trying to solve the problem of the Spin, and he invites Tyler to be his personal physician. While working for Jason, Tyler meets a wonderful man from Mars that may have the key to saving the human race. But these "Martians" are descended from humans themselves, due to another trick of the Spin's time discontinuity: if time passed faster outside the Spin, then in one human lifetime we humans could terraform Mars. And so on. Over time, what returns from Mars is one man with a medicine to extend human life. It unlocks in "adulthood it beyond adulthood", a "Fourth Age" so to speak, and has the potential, only, to produce humans who have the wisdom to see a way out of the predicament they are in. Because the sun, in this Soin paradigm, will eventually expand to destroy the Earth as it dies the death of all other stars. This man descended from human settlers of Mars comes as a diplomat, walking the very fine line between educating people, and not pausing alarm, because in time, Mars, populated by humans, has gotten its own Spin around it. The central aphoristic notion to the story is the one about boiling a frog in water: if you turn the heat up ever so slowly, it will not notice in time to hop out of the pot. And the slow-motion crisis of the Spin has very slowly started to boil this water. The human from Mars knows this, knows the danger, but goes public anyway, and he is yet eventually killed by a person with a random grievance. The deeper human message of this episode in the books narrative is that human beings still would rather kill a presumed Messiah figure for not being a Messiah, even if he explicitly says he is not one. Like the frog escaping away from a wooden spoon put in to rescue it from the slowly boiling pot, you might also say… 

For Jason, human populated Mars now having its own Spin is just more evidence of a larger mystery, because at this point, it has become for Jason almost a one-on-one war between him and the Spin. Hardly acknowledging the death of the man from Mars, he embarks on a further scientific quest that represents what may be the zenith of human space exploration in this contemporary age: populating the known universe with self sufficient, replicating, von Neumann machines in an attempt to find the origin of the Spin "out there". But to do so, he madly betrays all his contractual obligations with the US government and makes his own brain the receptacle for all the information beamed back by this network of colonizing machines, using Martian biotechnology brought over from the humans settled there. In this "glorious betrayal" for the sake of scientific knowledge, he also gives the Martian drug to induce the Fourth Age to Tyler and Diane, and this induces the grace by which they escape, as does humanity its eventual dire fate. He also gives them his record, of the secret he has found: that the von Neumann machines are of the same type as what has caused the Spin, which means, that there must have been an extraterrestrial intelligence out there, either long past or still extant; that the Spin itself was proof of; and thus perhaps it is the fate of any intelligent species in the universe to eventually create such a Network, that could even one day create its own spin. As Tyler rests in the state of misery, pain and graphomania, ruminating on this and reminiscences of his life with Jason and Diane, who is now with him and administering to him the Martian drug, this thought creates quite an impression: a memory of Jason flying downhill on a runaway broken bicycle as a teenager, too large in frame even then for the broken machine…

What are we to make of this novel? Perhaps that our intellect and our ideas are more important in the end than our biological personhood. But also, perhaps that new scientific paradigms scatter the threads of our previous being throughout the known universe before turning us to our new reality. Perhaps more.

What is the sacrosanct?

What is the sacrosanct?

What is sanctity? In a certain sense I have done civil disobedience when the sanctity of my political integrity was at stake. But what is sanctity? In a sense sanctity is that which does not have to be proved, and which, therefore, invites disproof. But the value of the disproof of the sacrosanct is in what else the disproof can accomplish. Voltaire, for example, was known as a critic of the Church, but remembered for his contribution to human freedom and enlightenment. The value of sanctity is that the sacrosanct does not have to inspire offense when attacked; it can defend itself when attacked. And this, is why civil disobedience has to be done, because every man and woman of you is responsible for defending what is sacrosanct to you. No one can defend for you what is sacrosanct to you. And, honest-to-God, this is where the American and Tocquevillian value of "self-interest properly understood", comes to the foreground.

Midnights at 3 AM

Midnights at 3 AM 

Taylor Swift's vaunted surprise album dropped at midnight two days ago.  It's worth a listen as she grapples with thorny issues about the writerly writer's social contract.  But then she dropped the "3 AM" issue of the Midnights album.  It's the first one of hers, I think, that flatout addresses the tone of bleakness that permeates these "new" writerly writers.  It's worth listening to certainly the first half, intensely, to see someone known to be one of the most accomplished diarists or regular writers of the moment grapple with an issue of social contract grounded in a legal dispute.  For someone familiar with social contract theory but not even with Taylor Swift, it's worth breezing through the original album for that.  It's fun to watch someone work that out almost in the real time of the album.  The second half of the album is about nearer to her usual theme, but the tone and motifs are closer to this bleakness that more and more people are beginning to express in public as the mark of the writer.  I want to mention it because it is worth mentioning that the power of writing is its catharsis, and while the tone may seem bleak, it is a bleak good humor that changes such that the bleakness evaporates over time in society's good graces, and not the good humor.  And this is not to change at all the workings of the work of writing on those of another social contract.  We are just seeing the inner workings of the "thing-in-itself" from Agamben's theory.  

Horizons of American foreign policy

Horizons of American foreign policy

Saturday, October 22, 2022

To where should we point the ship of American foreign policy? There are many problematics, here, such that any proposed solution will cause waves: but it can't be steered blindly into the night. In point of fact, there are many ways in which we still live in Ronald Reagan's America, and any discourse on American foreign policy has to be cognizant of that fact, as much as we resist it, up until the point when resistance to that jingoism of Mr. Reagan's overcomes that paradigm. The central problematic that became Reagan's scourge to beat reasoned discourse into submission is the Vietnam War that was, which was America's Peloponnesian War. We know that it was our attempts to do good in the world led to that debacle of fools, but, we still want to do good in the world. That problematic is summed up by this quote, which says: "these problems are reinforced by our propensity to confuse policy with implementation. But often the policy isn't the problem: it's how we're trying to implement it. (Foreign Service Journal, September 2022, page 40.)

In more recent problematics, the global Covid pandemic and its aftermath has revealed other issues which are shifts in global priorities, most especially towards Asia. "The once-great Asia hub of Hong Kong['s]… international capacity recovery was still at just 12% of pre-pandemic levels," says Air Travel World Magazine, "For as long as China's borders are essentially closed, the air travel center of gravity will shift toward southeast Asia and India." (Air Travel World, September 2022; 29, 30.) These problems can only be solved by government-to-government diplomacy, Air Travel World says.

But the real needs of American foreign policy will always move faster than our historical reckoning with the recent modern history of China and Taiwan. Despite misgivings about the orientation and geopolitical goals of the new U.S. Space Force, the fact remains that space should be a frontier of diplomacy. Space should be a frontier of peaceful cooperation between nations, and if that is true, it should therefore be a place of diplomatic engagement. As in many cases, there is no alternative to diplomacy. Every respected voice in science agrees that space exploration can only be accomplished by peaceful inter-government cooperation between nations.

"In time, various positions at our missions around the world should expand their portfolios to include space depending on the contours and needs of the relationships. Environment, science, technology and health (ESTH) and political-military (PolMil) officers seem a natural fit, but so too are public affairs officers. So many of us work in countries where space is or is becoming a part of the relationship with the United States that the variety of participants in such programs appears limitless. In the future, certain posts may require a dedicated space portfolio officer or even a unit or section within the mission. (Foreign Service Journal, May 2022, by D. Epstein.)

The other imperative issue to grapple with as a global community is climate change. There's only one alternative to extinction, and that is global inter-government cooperation to change the fossil fuel extractivist economic paradigm in order to fix the ways we live into a sustainable harmony with nature. "Climate change is personal, but it is also communal." (Foreign Service Journal, October 2021, 50.)

The importance of climate change to the procedure of diplomacy is as a platform to bring diverse and previously unheard voices into the hearing of the foreign policy apparatus too. But the obligation that we must always keep foremost in our hearts is the necessity to solve the core problems and not to get carried away into scientific speculation. This means the focus not only on people, but on future generations and their relationship with nature and the agrarian reality of human civilization too. This quote indicates it:

"More and more people around the globe are experiencing "Solastalgia", defined as the distress caused by environmental change. I would include myself. The distress can come in many ways: depression and anxiety over personally experiencing or lamenting certain changes, strong emotions over observing and working with and for populations directly affected by climate change, or disappointment over policy or programs that seem to take too long to make a real difference." (Foreign Service Journal, October 2021.)

It is embarrassing to hear and read the recent prognostications about the revival of tradition as the only profitable way to see the world. Resentment about taxation and government overreach will not solve our problems on this horizon of American foreign policy but, as in politics, so here, that representation of more capable and diverse viewpoints is the only personnel arrangement that will solve those problems, and it may truly be said that the progenitors of tradition are more apt to prefer this arrangement over its defenders. Diversity without resentment is the ultimate frontier of our current reality.

"We are beginning to see an increase in senior appointments of career officers who reflect the diversity of America, mostly accomplished through the political appointment process. This is a start, but we cannot declare victory yet." (Foreign Service Journal, November 2021, 21.)

What will that victory look like? This is not why we do the right thing. We tend to get better so that we can always get better. The point of making the right progress is like driving a car: the point is not to stall out at any point. We'll never stall out, but at any point, we can look back and see how far we've come.

These new writerly writers

It is near midnight on October 20, 2022.  Taylor Swift's Midnights is dropping soon, at midnight.  And those who have walked though the masses lately, know that the bleakness of writer's trances is starting to haunt our every waking moment.  We should take a moment to romance and explain these new "writerly writers".  First of all, what is this spell but a way of explaining the Architect, in one of the forms that he takes?  And even, she, takes?  This is the form that he takes, at a very young age, to let his work connect him to the world.  He is that kid that played a lot with Legos.  He is darling to empiricists.  Much respect is deserved to Taylor Swift for explaining his story to them.  But he would bring work before them to be judged.  His social contract with society was an has always been, "you may not define me but you may assign and judge my work."  So whence comes this bleakness?  From the work in and of itself.  It's a bleak good humor that animates writers' works, but trust in the eternal truth that the bleakness is what evaporates, not the good humor, when subjected to society's good graces. 

(This is how the other one, the one whose social contract is the one of the empiricist himself who says "you can define me socially but you may not control what I do," who has made this diagnosis, Architect to Architect.)

The value of transgressive stories

What is the value of transgressive stories? Here's one: 

The Woodsman's First Tale, from The Book of Lost Things, by John Connelly, pg. 87.

"Once upon a time there was a girl who lived on the outskirts of the forest. She was lively and bright, and she wore a red cloak, for that way if she ever went astray she could easily be found, since a red cloud would always stand out against the trees and bushes. As the years went by, and she became more woman than girl, she grew more and more beautiful. Many men wanted her for their bride, but she turned them all down. None was good enough for her, for she was cleverer than every man she met and they presented no challenge for her. 

Her grandmother lived in a cottage in the forest, and the girl would visit her often, bringing her baskets of bread and meat and staying with her for a time. While her grandmother slept, the girl in red would wander among the trees, tasting the wild berries and strange fruits of the woods. One day, as she walked in a dark grove, a wolf came. it was wary of her and tried to pass without being seen, but the girl's senses were too acute. She saw the world, and she looked into its eyes and fell in love with the strangeness of it. when it turned away, she followed it, traveling deeper into the forest than she had ever done before. The wolf tried to lose her in places where there were no trail to follow, no paths to be seen, but the girl was too quick for it, and mile after mile the chase continued. At last, the wolf grew weary of the pursuit, and it turned to face her. It bared its fangs and growled a warning, but she was not afraid. 

"Lovely wolf", she whispered. "You have nothing to fear from me."

She reached out her hand and placed it upon the wolf's head. She ran her fingers through its fur and calmed it. And the world saw what beautiful eyes she had (all the better to see him with) and what gentle hands (all the better to stroke him with) and what soft red lips (all the better to taste him with). The girl leaned forward, and she kissed the wolf..."

What is the value of transgressive stories? In short, they make us sure that everything is going to be ok. It's not the contrast between those actions in the story and our own that animate us, but, notwithstanding the shock that we could think these things too, it's the understanding that we are more than the stories that make us up. In this story it is the infusion of natural-ness that makes it assuring to our psyche. It's that we are not trapped into being human beings in social strictures all the time, but are capable of human things; that, and animal things too, that more than doubles our (human) potential.

What was Jesus’s failure?

What was Jesus's failure? Politics: being apolitical. Jesus's failure was being apolitical. The state of national resistance to Roman imperialism over Israel and the constitutive kingdoms that made up greater Israel at the time necessitated a sort of recourse to zealotry in the religious classes at the time, and Jesus was too resolutely focused on the spiritual to do that work, even to save his own people. His only contribution to the resistance effort was rhetorics, and yet, although he may have solved the question and puzzle of Cicero, he did so in an apolitical pacifist mode that made it completely ineffective and nothing but a curiosity that became relevant too late so save Israel. it would not be wrong to say that Jesus was a coward and then a failure.

“I hate Socrates”

I hate Socrates. And to preempt the banal critic, these are the Platonic dialogues I have read: Charmides, Critias, Crito, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Meno, Phaedra, Phaedrus, Republic, Symposium, and perhaps more (Apology too.) When I first read them, I said to myself, "What a neat technique for proving that people are stupid and don't know what they're talking about." And then I realized "oh, this is a sacred figure to you?" And "I bet this doesn't work, though." And in point of fact, asking "Why?" Barely works in all cases. I also implore society not to ask me to do this same close reading to Jesus, because I do fear it will result in the same lambasting I have given for years to Socrates. In point of fact the ideal it's of the Socratic environment was in his placement at the heart and center of the medieval monastery system, as if to say "resist that, Socrates." The overall intent of Socrates and Jesus seems to be to make as many people as possible pull out their hair in frustration, and see who is left. As one refuses to acknowledge knowledge itself, even his own, in an intransigent fit as if desiring to die a real-life heroes' death, the other maintains and intransigent focus on spirituality even as the circumstances of his time make those actions useless, and his ignoring of how people see him make him negligent to his political duty. But I'll spare the tender sensitivities of white people from at least these very legitimate criticisms of (white people's thoughts about) Jesus to focus on the more cogent point at hand. I hate Socrates. He is no ideal for a literate man, and his persistence in Western culture is bad for a society that aspires as ours does, to be literate. There are better ideals, especially for literate societies. At the very best, both these men represent techniques that no longer work. But they overstep a line when they exert an influence on (literature) literate culture. Both now represent a conservative limitation on the best of modernity. It is a fact that times change and no technique known to or possible by man can last forever. The memory of Jesus and the interlocutors of Socrates both represent linchpins for their techniques that no longer work. They are cornerstones that have long since crumbled into dust. An explanation is the complete chauvinism of the Western ignorant tradition where the subject or reader is assumed in all cases to be ignorant of words themselves; of bing, that is, stupid and barely able to understand words; ideas are sublimated to Socratic fantasy. To reconstruct Socratism in prose is a fool's errand; what we need is a "beyond" of that. There are no magic words to a fully literate population, and Socratism is about magic words. It's not we reaffirm Socratism by building atop its ruins, but it is that we have ascended to higher heights than finding magic words, that we have in the very least example, gone from magic words to the magic of words. In fact the peculiarities of a certain clinic for judging writings often so turn on the particularities of a locality that they result in a simple pandering to local power, which itself turns on a pandering to the abilities of its lowest elements toward literacy. This is the essential pandering inherent in local power and it's essential to its functioning. But it's the only one that I will accept. This is my chauvinism: the chauvinism in favor of only the original chauvinism. The pandering to ask if one lout had garnered one mote of dust from the ruined foundations of Socratism or civilization because he happens to be in the room; this is the chauvinism I prefer to the exclusion of all others. In point of fact, this is the Asian "thing": I hate Socrates. In point of fact, if you are only to have one mote of dust you keep or can keep, why not have it be the Taoist one: "道可道，非常道" - "The Way that can be named is not the Eternal Way" - because then you can at least be around people that are talking about what you're into, and not make a fuss when they're talking ahead of you. This is a chauvinism too, but it qualifies to be called a preference. It is my preference. I have been that lout, able to gather naught but dust from the intellectual foundations of the Chinese language, but at least my scrap of information was 道可道，非常道， so I didn't obstruct, the workings, of that which could benefit me. The Socratic fantasy is alive and well in any thinker alive and it is the fantasy of "getting someone real good," in a surprise attack of logic. Beyond just obstructionism, it belies an inability to do the long work of proving yourself. It's a consolation prize. But no one is going to "get got" all at once, except a fool, of which the Socratic method, assumes that the user is. The exponent of Socratism always obstructs also that, which makes him happy - justice, or love, and so forth - and this was Socrates' own floundering mistake in The Republic, possibly The Symposium, and likely any time he opened his mouth. I do appreciate the Meno, as an act of projection, where he demonstrates where he himself can be taught, but his intransigence in all other cases, especially in his overall desire to deny that he knew things, belies that he got that others were trying to do just that. Approach the possibility that someone might share your interests with a child-like peculiarity, that is what I say. I get so angry when someone approaches my interests with an elderly, crank of Socratism and all my logic can't preclude that. Part of the rationality for that is that everyone knows the strategy, and therefore, it has also become a tool of oppression that is not only radically transformative anymore, and for me is not at all that. Part of the reason for that is that Socratism never comes out of absolute ignorance anymore. Literacy has cured society of Socratism, except when it is put on as a bad-faith show. Another way of putting this is that desire to learn is no evidence of knowledge anymore; you have to display evidence of your knowledge. And the reason for that is that we humanity are better off than we were then. Mourn not for the darkness of where we have been, for what's the use of that? Not much, except that we survived and put it behind us by way of progress. Celebrate for a moment the light of where are now in comparison, and get on with the work, that is what I say. Part of the reason I hate Socratism is that what Socrates did is not normative, nor should it be. This is also part of my chauvinism in favor of the original prerogative. At the end of the day, what extensive reading(s) of the Dialogues of Socrates only revealed was "that is a cool technique. Does it work anymore? No." Because? Because we are better.

Plan of the Problematique: Building a new concept for the twenty-first century

Plan of the Problematique: Building a new concept for the twenty-first century

By Ian Hoopingarner

Someone like me doesn't want to be comfortable all the time. What has happened over the last three years is that I have been traveling along roads of the mind. When I travel I don't want to travel in style or luxury. I want that secret edge beneath it all; to be living with my wits; to have some of my stuff but not to have all of it; to travel among the both new and familiar. When you clime a mountain, you don’t want the Way to be smooth and slippery; you want it to be rough and rugged, so that you have something with traction to push against to generate traction...when climbing what Nietzsche alluded to as "the high mountains" of the intellect, it is the same...

Wilderness of the Intellect: If the intellect has a topography, it has mountains and valleys and also wilderness, barely settled regions of thought populated only by the most intrepid spelunkers of the imagination. I saw an old comrade not too long ago, and he took one listen to me and said "you've been in the wilderness, haven't you?"...

Civilization's dawn: It is thought that civilization's first arose in areas that are now desert. Areas where people followed the waters to, and there found other people. Some may say these whole regions were once lands of milk and honey; but notwithstanding, they were lands of milk and honey for the spirit though human effort. Places where the lifeblood of human association was, like that song lyric "Like that river twisting through a dusty land..." Places like Ur in Mesopotamia, China's Loess Plateau, and places analogous to Egypt, in the time of Rome. 

Ur, the garden city, whose wisdom exceeded all of its time. Your gardens and field; you sesame. Worn to ruin by the sands and the flood... so much preserved, evermore; but so much lost that we mourn. The greatest scene of its time was the Ziggurat in bloom against the sun. And then the floods, the tears of the world took you life. We remember...

The first: The first remarkable man to be attracted to civilization was probably attracted by someone already there whose naive and trusting eyes assured him that "we can do that" to all his, to-him, outrageous requests...but then also turned scheming, and, to him, malicious when contemplating his requests' fulfillment. This man was probably stubborn about his memories and courageous when it came to what he remembered. Many, including me, would probably say of this man, that I know him, but I do not know of him...

"What is civilization?": It may truly be said, of civilization, that, we don't know what civilization truly is, but, that we don't not know that, in human and personal history, that is both in the ancient past and the lives we ourselves lead, both in man and state, that it captured our curiosity, our attention, a Leviathan, and then our hearts. 

And truly it may also be said of a man, that once he captures a Leviathan, that he become the Leviathan too, and that civilization only captureth, it does not kill anything in spirit that already lives. But also it may be said that once a man become the a Leviathan by capturing one, he must then capture our hearts. And the old truth about the capture of another's heart, is that it is the capture of the self. 

What is the self? (Techniques of the Way of Lao-tzu): "Use it and you will never wear it out." The Way of Lao-tzu, 6. 

"Ho-Shang Kung says: "The valley is what nourishes. Someone who is able to nourish his spirit does not die. "Spirit" means the spirits of the five organs: the gall bladder, the lungs, the heart, the kidneys and the spleen. When these five organs are injured, the five spirits leave. "Dark" refers to Heaven. In Man, this means the nose, which links us to Heaven. "Womb" refers to Earth. In Man this means the mouth, which links us to Earth. The breath that passes through our nose and mouth should be finer than gossamer silk and barely noticeable, as if it weren't actually present. It should be relaxed and never strained or exhausted." Collected in the Red Pine translation of the Way of Lao-tzu. Red Pine was an American who moved to Taiwan to study at a Taoist monastery. 

Petition is a huge cultural adjustement for me: The concept of petition is interesting for someone with my Taiwanese associations, because of the way that the concept differs to the extent that it doesn't really exist in the same way or level of importance in my mind, but I didn't know why. In fact, I didn't know what the Chinese-language concept of petition was until I looked it up, because the concept is far from the minds of Chinese speakers I know, and where it exists, it is more of a negative concept with connotations of "Someone is going to be punished." This is not culturally relative, but rather monarchy-related. The longer Western concept of neutral petition is more democratic. In imperial China, petitions were more likely to be read by the emperor's court if they would result in punishment or removal of ministers or other personnel; that is, punishment for not properly administrating, whereas, in Western democratic tradition and physiocratic government, a petition was a request for disbursement of resources and/or materials from the stores; structured properly, it emphasized its neutrality with respect to the current operations of the store and the quartermaster's records. (Taiwan, by the way, tho' has caught up to the extent so far possible.) (Some traditionalists would say they rewound the clock on human organization to adapt to new technology. Possibly false. Probably technology helps.)

The Self and the Way: What else could be said about the self? For me, perhaps nothing, to be said here and now. Here's what the self can teach; only this: the whole can be described in triangles. Everything is triangulated. Remember your geometry. God is a geometry. That is all. When they well-meaningless interject that "3 is the most unstable number" that is only because in human relationships, three is a dynamic set of relationships. But when the rapper Nas raps, saying: "My main statement is this whole game is triangulated," that is the unvarnished truth. The self can not teach you much, although you could also consider that it could, as above, teach you everything all at once. That is the self and what the self is like. 

The introduction to technique was the most pivotal to me. Technique is a superstructure over top of memory. Technique they also the The Way, as in the Tao. The Tao can't properly be explained. As the opening of the Tao Te Ching says: 

"道可道，非常道"
"The Way that can be named is not the eternal Way."

Only what the Way, the technique that is, causes and effects, can be explained. 

Talking to me: What is the Way to talk to me? First get beyond books. Get to technique. Then empty your cup. Put everything you can do at the drop of a hat into some tangible form, then I'll talk to you. But when you've had enough, just leave for a while. Because "drinking from the fire hose" is a skill too. And what you do is not passively consume the information I give, because I like to overflow your cup, but to pick and choose actively, consciously, the materials and structures you want to use to build your self. And when you are satisfied that you have what you need, then speak up about your self and start to work together; to relate. Because it's not about reliance on externals, not even mine, when I talk to you in this way. It's about you and how ou relate to me. 

"Saying that": There's a great line at the beginning of Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie's book Half A Yellow Sun that goes: 

"Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas; talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair." (1)

Some might take a look at that and say, "how could you say that to me?" It's not that this is a problem or even that he should be pitied for who he is, but the question deserves to be suspected: what's his usefulness?

The guys in Taiwan told me that, as everyone a man, of post secondary school age, had to go into the army after school, they used to sit in underground bunkers in the outer islands during the tumultuous sixties of war, in the dark, and just talk. Because that's the stage you have to go through after reading "too many books" sometimes; sit in the dark with some guys and be interesting. Because, how else could we trust you? And, also, what else is there to do? 

The books that "haunt me": I am haunted by the spirits of three books. One of them I regret reading. The other two I would give (nearly) anything to safely experience my experience while reading them again. The first was just this trashy lurid fantasy novel. The second two, though, were fantastic. There was a red-covered, cloth-bound, large Robin Hood anthology with full-color oil paintings throughout and every possible one of the Robin Hood legends in it. I checked it out at the library thee or four times as a child and I loved it so much. But the very time I decided to get the information on it to buy it, the librarian had taken it off the shelf. The other was a blue-cover, paperback, cheap, book of Greek myths by a woman author, that was unlike anything I'd ever read before. It had every possible myth I'd ever heard of, and more. It was dark, twisted; as dark and scary as those times would have actually been; it actually made my stomach clench up while reading it, viscerally; and I loved it too. My brother and i would take it back and forth from each other's rooms while growing up, until one day it was gone, mysteriously. The Robin Hood by Howard Pyle was pale and unsatisfying in comparison to "mine", and "my" Myths were not by Edith Wharton; all, other, mythic retelling are stultifying in comparison to "mine". 

What was this other one entirely, the one I regret? Just the etymology of an Oedipal crime. Do I want to read these books again that were positive? Of course, I desire to have the experience again, but, logically, I know that as time has passed, the experience may be different; in fact it may absolutely be. I don't want to read them again; I want to have the feeling of reading them and thinking intensely about them again, but I don't want to have the books again, and I don't want to go back to how it was when I read them in order to have the same experience - I don't even want to learn the hard granular lesson that you can't go back to "the way that it was." But I want to miss them, and their feelings, and I don't want to forget what I still remember. 

Of course I want to forget the regretful book, the Oedipal one. But I know that I can't have it both ways. I do think that society should concentrate more effort on anti-Oedipal affirmations. 

What is anti-Oedipus?: Anti-Oedipus is not only personal. As Deleuze and Guattari write in a book of the same name,

"The truth is, sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, (and) a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the way the bourgeoisie fucks the proletariat; and so on. And there is no need to resort to metaphors, any more than for the libido to go the way of metamorphoses. Hitler got the fascists aroused. A revolutionary machine is nothing if it does not acquire at leas as much force as these coercive machines have fore producing breaks and mobilizing flows. It is not through a desexualizing extension that the libido invests the large aggregates. On the contrary, it is through a restriction, a blockage, and a reduction that the libido is made to repress it flows in order to contain them in the narrow cells of the type "couple", "family", "person", "objects". Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 293.

"The wheel turning": It is said that before Robin Hood died a bittersweet hero's death, he fitted a last shaft to his bow and determined to be buried at a spot where it landed. It is also said that in the gray and muddled, confused ancient past, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and it gave the people clarity as the fire game them the ability to see during the pitch-blackness of night; but his brother Epimetheus was content only to slowly learn from the gods and slowly pass small things on to the people. Every man has a conscious chance to steal some kind of fire from the gods at a crucial moment in his life, and yet, once done, man has a responsibility to share not only the fire he has stolen, but, also, to make the conditions again, tho' the world moves on materially, such that another can steal the fire again. This simile is something my own brother and I agree on. In this way, books are not only explicit, but a trigger to consciously do a higher sort of Way. And yet the book is not all a book is, in itself, but more. Some secret fire in its heart can be shared and multipled among the peopled, and such is better than to lock it up inside. "Does the epicure of words display his talents or does he keep them secret, in his secret, in his secret pages of the soul and the fire within it?" - "That's the problem with the way radical innovations work: they are not handled properly on ther way to the mainstream." 

Mountains in the intellect and point of fact: I climbed a high mountain before. In the Nietzschean intellect, I found myself strongly opposed to the actions of Oedipus from the eponymous play. In point of fact, I climbed a mountain once, in Taiwan. In both instances, I ascertained for myself that the problem in both cases was momentum and lack of care. Oedipus was so concentrated on fulfilling his political desires that all his desires, even the improper ones, became subsumed to his task, to the infamous end of killing his father and marrying his mother. Obsessed with momentum, he assumed a lack of care about what was really going on. And the problem with mountains in actuality is momentum and lack of care too, which you must avoid, both in the going up, and in a totally different way, the going down of them. 

Working-class politics: I've never been a rich man. I've had rich experiences through my own wits, and prioritization too, but those only. The older I get the more I find myself identifying to a greater and greater extent with working-class politics. The best explanation for this is that the older I get, and also the poorer my material circumstances in money become, the less unreasonable fear I have. What is fear? Fear is a lack, and when it is caused, it is by the unattainable thing that you lack, being right in front of you and unattainable. It is ironic, albeit casually, that the more material wealth I have found lacking, the less fear I have had. But the reason, really, is that the more I have relied on technique and the Way, the less fear I have had. Why, is because I have found that there are reasons that I lack the things I previously desire, and I desire them less now. I still have desire, but I've found that I desire more to do actions, and less to have things. 

The post-WWII labor movement problematique: Being a man of industriousness and historicity I have read history on the labor movement, in America, and been astonished and frustrated that the confusion of post-WWII politics and culture have seemed to flummox historians. Reagan killed the air traffic controllers - so what? From the long view of history, one man cannot kill a movement. So, what is really going on? I have found only one satisfying answer, but not from a historian; rather from a philosopher. 

Film and post-WWII working-class politics: The only cogent analysis of post-WWII working-class politics I have ever read is an interview with Michel Foucault called "Film and Popular Memory". Foucault had actually seen the films discussed, but the conversation went above and beyond the content of the films. The conversation turned on the topic of what movie mean and what they have been used for, encompassing three parts. class of people was rather large. The fundamental questions that this undeniable fact brings into the problematic is that orthodox Marxism, even left is and liberalism, fall down when having to address questions about a.) desire and b.) power; also Foucault asks: doesn't anybody simply desire power anymore? Doesn't the working class stand up? 

The political problematique: There is a slate of seismic political choice that we must make in order to stand a fighting chance in the twenty-first century. In my view, we need to make them in one way, and not the other. The way I see it, this is the political problematique of the twenty-first century. 

1.) Don't we organize our natural economic order around low food prices and we should organize them instead around farmers getting properly paid for producing our food? As I see it, we must keep grain prices as high as possible and allow agricultural commodities to circulate freely in the nation, allow export, but not import of food stocks; this means choosing physiocracy over mercantilism. This avoids scarcity and promotes good living. 

2.) When it comes to distribution of goods, do we choose the notion that "everyone should have enough" or the notion that "everyone should have something"? As I see it, we must see the problem as that people have needs that must be met and not tha governments have guilt that needs to be assuaged. This means must choose a system of social credit and the explanation that "everyone must have enough" instead of a system of distributism that says "everyone must have at least something." This is the only way to make sure we take everyone's needs into account.

3.) Do we allow association of people to be free in form so long as they have to meet certain criteria, or do we strictly define the acceptable forms of "free" association? As I see it, association, even if peaceful, is not free unless the forms are free. How is a new form of association peaceable if not traditional? The criteria are that someone must read "for" the group and that someone must listen "to all" in the group, and there are no further rubrics. This means that in this knowledge we must choose associationist over either of the two forms of traditionalism,; neither corporations not feudalism. 

4.) Do we allow all relationships to be governed by the state? - and mastered by the State? As I see it, this can only lead to the State's chaos and confusion, and the lack of sovereignty over people's own persons. The ideal must be different, such that people are and relationships are capable of self-government and self-mastery. This means we must choose to be clinical in lieu of anarchist in our relationships, and apparatical in associations rather than contemporaneous. To aspire to prescription, rather than description, of social causes, is the proper ideal. 

The cultural problematique: A corresponding cultural attribute can be affixed to each of the above, in order to aid understanding. In the same order, they are: 

1.) Solastalgia. This word comes from Australia. (Writer Glenn Albrecht coined this term while describing the devastation left in the wake of strip mining near his home.) It describes a yearning for a lost quality in a natural and mental landscape altered beyond repair. It describes also a loss of solace within the nostalgia associated with the above. I saw a monstrous gas pipeline being constructed within feet of a wetland once. When I went back there again, the wetland and its water lilies were gone. That is the emotional trigger of solastalgia. 

2.) The Politics of Desire. We desire more than desire itself. Even desire itself is not all about desire, but about our relationships to the social and material world. Hence it is a "politics" of desire, an old term in modern philosophy. To take our power back from those laconically holding us in apathy, we must confront the word desire in its actual meaning, which is sociopolitical and not merely personal in scope. 

3.) Dirty Computer. This is the title of a project by Ms. Janelle Monae, and the title is a thing of beauty in itself. Not only aesthetic, it denotes the reality of our times, wherein the most powerful tool and process is the most profound and also the most common. What are we to do when the most powerful tool in human history is a computer that can be wielded by a five-year old? We must do this: refocus on the human and on multipotentiality. We must not focus on things money can buy, because only a little money can buy the key to near-omniscience. But a shifted focus to human potency and capacity can redeem the value of our attention. 

4.) The Ethics of Elsewhere. I do not know if anyone else though of this one: unlike a stone dropped in water, which may not perceive the ripples spreading outward on the water's surface, human beings may have the ethical capacity to understand things outside the scope of their perception but not outside the scope of their actions. There is an important component of ourselves that is defined by others. What is the effect of people acting and working in a separate room on those outside that room? What is the power of absence? How does being associated give honor except by comparison to those outside and, how should that effect the association that is given? These all fall within the scope of the Ethics of Elsewhere. 

Politics as the healing of wounds: I'm getting the feeling that there are still some things that have not been written that need to be. No record is complete, of course. But also, no record is complete without something else that I can not name. Something exists at the ragged edge "beyond" what has been mentioned. For instance, the example, glossed before by many, that politics is the choice between two things. To expand on the notion of "we chose genocide over slavery, as we always will", this is, in a fundamental and ineffable, as well as primal, sense, what human politics comes down to, both in the performative and the real sense. The meta history of human affairs has always been that of wars and enslavement. However, the true stance has always been "give me liberty or give me death," and the portico of the temple of the State has always been a place of performative death. Enslavement has always been the path to avoid working with the State. But since the advent of modern religion, that has been the straight path to the Church. Politics has always been death, and mass politics has always been performative genocide. I am no fool. I came to this realization through full and complete understanding of the genocide of Amerindians and enslavement, the American faults. As problematic as this may sound, it happened, and therefore the only way to understand American politics is to understand how genocide and enslavement affected our history. Politics is the healing of wounds on the body politics that represent the legacy of the faults of genocide and slavery. Healing the wounds of slavery brings the disenfranchised into politics. Healing the wounds of genocide heals something deeper than mental illness; healing the wounds of genocide inures the people to fear. And furthermore, only when the people are inured to fear can there be law and a society ruled by law. It takes "men and newspapers" to inure people to fear. And this is why old Wendell Phillips says that we live in a society under a government of men and newspapers: there can be no trust from the people in law, and there-fore no government truly, at all, in the minds of the people, if the people live in fear. 

The "Responsibility of Intellectuals" problematic: We need the real concept of what means the phrase "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" now. The way it's properly understood is not how it's popularly understood, is not how it's glossed by Chomsky himself, not is it how it is more widely glossed by others of the New Left for consumption by a popular audience. The "responsibility of intellectuals" is not to critique the systems of power and repression (although this may be Chomsky's own responsibility which is why he called it that), not is it "not to be value-neutral" as others of the new Left describe it, with the same caveat. But, rather, I think, the responsibility of intellectuals is to know wher they stand on issues of national and political importance and adjust their conduct accordingly. This is something conservative academics will never do, practically speaking, but they have a responsibility that they are abegnating, rather than that they have a responsibility to be liberals. But sadly enough, the responsibility of intellectuals as properly understood still leads to the consequence that those of extreme position relative to the body politics remove themselves from the education of the young, regardless of the worth of their opinions. The only hopeful answer is adult working-class education.

IH

All previous writings in the last project found here:

Map Of The Problematique: Map-of-the-problematique.blogspot.com