place: Cedaredge, Colorado

The Disappearance of Liberal Education

[ED: Almost 75 years ago, this essay was published in a collection accompanying the 1954 set of The Great Books of the Western World, published by Britannica Press. While that collection of more than fifty authors—philosophers, playrights, scientists, authors, economists—is mostly all ‘Western and white,’ and definitely men, there is some relevant substance to the contemporary issues facing the US education system contained (t)herein. Primarily, the background question of shared understandings about reality: when these are no longer shared, democracy cannot proceed. At this juncture, I have little hope that the wider social system in the US is capable of pulling itself back from the devolution that appears to be accelerating. Many personal worries surround that. I predict that forms of ‘martial law’ will be declared in the US before four years are up, and I will not be surprised if it begins to appear widely in the next year. By then, soft critique from the ‘liberal’ side of the country will be moot and … wholly inadequate, as has happened before in the bowels of history. Privilege continues to insulate the 1% and [social] media [oligarchs] continue to siphon off the last drops of societal life-blood: community engagement. Shilling instead a form of attention-harvesting that, as with other forms of capital, concentrates ever more power in the hands of ever fewer individuals. What could possibly go wrong?

I can barely continue reading Klemperer‘s “Language of the Third Reich” as it resonates so powerfully across almost a century to this very moment.

The countries of the West are committed to universal, free, compulsory education. The United States first made this commitment and has extended it further than any other. In this country, 92.5% of the children who are fourteen years old and 71.3% of those between fourteen and seventeen are in school. It will not be suggested that they are receiving the education that the democratic ideal requires. The West has not accepted the proposition that the democratic ideal demands liberal education for all. In the United States, at least, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the demands of that ideal are met by universal schooling, rather than by universal liberal education. What goes on in school is regarded as of relatively minor importance. The object appears to be to keep the child off the labor market and to detain him in comparatively sanitary surroundings until we are ready to have him go to work.

The results of universal, free, compulsory education in America can be acceptable only on the theory that the object of the schools is something other than education—for example, to keep the young from cluttering up homes and factories during a difficult period of their lives, or to bring them together for social or recreational purposes.

These last purposes—those which are social and recreational—the American educational system, on a very low level, achieves. It throws young people together. Since this does not take any greater effort than is required to pass compulsory school laws and build buildings, the accomplishment of this purpose would not, at first blush, seem to be a matter for boasting. Yet we often hear of it as something we should be proud of, and even as something that should suggest to us the main line of a sound educational policy. We often hear that bringing young people together, having them work and play together, and having them organize themselves “democratically” are the great contributions to democracy that the educational system can make. This is an expansion of the doctrine that was popular in my youth about the moral benefits conferred on everybody through intercollegiate athletics, which was, in turn, an adaptation of the remark dubiously imputed to the Duke of Wellington about the relationship between the Battle of Waterloo and the playing fields of Eton.
more “The Disappearance of Liberal Education”

1 : October : 20241 : October : 2024

place: Cedaredge, Colorado

Stamped from the Beginning – Kendi

Continuing to pry my eyes open to the wide ignorance of growing up a privileged white male: a darkness that perhaps could have been dispelled by the obvious evidence appearing, bright, over the years. The tar-paper huts where the elementary school bus stopped, picking up many of the Black students at our rural Maryland school 35 miles outside of Washington, D.C.—south of the Mason-Dixon Line; at ten y.o., riding past “Resurrection City” on the Mall in D.C. during the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968; completely unaware of the geography of roads not taken in that long-ago rural countryside as they passed through the African-American settlements outside of the “regular” towns; blindness mixed with a slowly maturing wonder at and deep respect for African-American creativity, intelligence, and sensitivity. I surely didn’t understand the full import of the lyrics in Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” from his Innervisions album even after doing a report on it in 11th grade English class; nor the complexities involved in a course I took, “The Economics of Poverty,” while taking a year away from engineering school back in 1979. Maybe it was Lightnin’ Hopkins who really cracked open my soul. So many points where knowledge and feeling would have fired a deeper awareness of the ongoing and severely compromised conditions of social justice in the United States. There was not enough curiosity available within privilege.

Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Second trade paperback edition. New York, NY: Bold Type Books, LLC, 2023.

Tracing the historical roots of ‘racist thought’ in Amurika up to contemporary times, this is a challenging read. The extraordinary level of detail and huge number of players across 400 years makes it sometimes difficult to hold onto all the facts. But the main ‘plot,’ racism, is the important point to be dissembled.

Thanks, George, for recommending this one, and thanks, Rick for earlier recommending:

Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Trade paperback edition. New York, NY: Random House, 2023.

and I would also include

Hannah-Jones, Nikole and New York Times Company, eds. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. First edition. New York, NY: One World, 2021.

and

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston, MA: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845..

There are (many) Others whose histories I need yet to understand.

To Phyliss Wheatley
(First African Poetess)

No! Not like the lark, didst thou circle and sing,
High in the heavens on morn’s merry wing,
But hid in the depths of the forest’s dense shade,
There where the homes of the lowly were made,
Thou nested! Though fettered, thou frail child of night,
Thy melody trilled forth with naive delight;
And all through the throes of the night dark and long,
Earth’s favored ones harkened thy ravishing song,
So plaintive and wild, touched with Africa’s lilt;
Of wrong small complaint, sweet forgiveness of guilt-
Oh, a lyric of love and a paean of praise,
Didst thou at thy vespers, Dark Nightingale, raise;
So sweet was the hymn rippling out of the dark,
It rivalled the clear morning song of the lark.

Clifford, Carrie Williams. The Widening Light. Boston, MA: Walter Reid Company, 1922.

26 : January : 202421 : April : 2024

place: Cedaredge, Colorado

All things

I had this lined up as part of a draft for Rocktalk, but with only a week left at the j-o-b, I’ll use it here:

Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of his fellows and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent …. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.

The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative Men [Vol. 4] Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882., Emerson, Edward Waldo, 1844-1930.

29 : November : 201429 : December : 2023

place: Prescott, Arizona

Posthuman Prospects

The desire to find short cuts and to invent technical solutions is indicative of the impatience of the present age. The utilization of fossil fuels that led to the creation of industrialized societies benefited from the fact that such fuels had accrued their energy potential over millions of years:

All the fossil fuels, in energy terms, are stored sunlight heaped up over geologic time. . . No human being had to put a single day’s work or a single gallon of diesel fuel into growing the tree ferns of the Carboniferous period that turned into Pennsylvanian coal beds, nor did they have to raise the Jurassic sea life that became the oil fields of Texas. The second half of Nature’s energy subsidy took the form of extreme temperatures and pressures deep within the Earth. Over millions of years more, these transformed the remains of prehistoric living things into coal, oil, and natural gas and, in the process, concentrated the energy they originally contained into a tiny fraction of their original size.

These resources, if they had been developed in more sustainable ways, and used to serve more balanced societies, could have benefited us for many years to come, but we have squandered them with our impatience and greed. In an analogous way, we are highly impatient with the technologies that we wish to invent. We are unsatisfied with the intelligence that has been bequeathed to us through millions of years of evolution and we wish to create a copy of it, as soon as possible.

What has been lost is a certain sense of balance, and a knowledge of natural limitations. Ambitious innovation is certainly a virtue but when it relies upon the false premise of unlimited natural resources, or the belief that we can short cut evolution by recreating intelligence at will, it becomes the vice of hubris. Undoubtedly, we will face challenges in the future provoked by advanced technologies. And, equally certain, as we run out of natural resources, governments will increasingly ring fence such resources for themselves to continue with unsustainable military research programs. In this sense, Faye’s two tier system will come to pass although it is unlikely to operate in the interests of European man. Instead, there will be a return to more sustainable, more rural, societies that will have to learn once again what it means to live in accord with natural limitations, and that will be forced to become reacquainted with the slow passing of the seasons.

Pankhurst, C, 2014. Posthuman Prospects: Artificial Intelligence, Fifth Generation Warfare, & Archeofuturism, Counter-Currents Publishing blog, 23 May 23 2014, accessed 29.11.2014.

28 : April : 201123 : November : 2015

place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Boston, and South Acton, Massachusetts

Friday, 28 April, 1961

Virginia Punch of MITRE got RAND P1555 & P1808; she will return them to the library.

Started to work on the draft of the document entitled “CCIS Development Program” at JFN’s request.

Told Col. Bavaro that I would like to be in on a Central Agency for CCIS control, although I’m confronted with the problem of DCH in school. I suppose this would take me back to Washington.

Set up an appointment with Col. Paul Guthrie, Pres. US Army Intelligence Board, Fort Holabird, Baltimore (MEdford3-9000) for 2 May 1-1:30 PM. Also an appointment with Owen Ridgeway, IBM Bethesda, for 11:30, 3 May. Couldn’t reach Patton at SDS-Paramus, NJ; he called back from MITRE after I left to say that he would be in his office Monday & Tuesday.

Left early to go home so we could go to church, which we did. The church was filled, and several good missionary speakers told of their work and needs. The TWR in Korea has been given authority to increase their broadcasting power from 25 to 100 KW and they need $90,000. The hospital in Northern Rhodesia — Dr. Robert Watson — rec’d a 20 KW diesel from the Detroit Diesel Co. (a GM subsidiary) for $750; it sells for $5500; the $750 must be the freight!

16 : September : 201029 : December : 2023

place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

birth of the DMA

History: National Military Establishment (NME), headed by Secretary of Defense, created by the National Security Act of 1947 (61 Stat. 495), July 26, 1947, which divided the War Department into separate Department of the Air Force and Department of the Army and reduced the status of the three military departments (Army, Navy, Air Force) to that of constituent units. NME redesignated DOD by the National Security Act Amendments of 1949 (63 Stat. 578), August 10, 1949.

Navy Predecessors
more “birth of the DMA”

2 : May : 201023 : June : 2014

CLUI: Day Thirty — raven’s revenge

I chance to spot the raven squeezing through a small gap where the square-ended galvanized panel meets the arching roof. Bully fer ‘im! Then, later, I see them resume their shuttle flights to and from the hangar, going through that one gap and possibly another at the other end somewhere. Smart birds.

26 : August : 20095 : May : 2024

place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

structural organization

Structural organization. Weaving this space of inquiry, exposé, or a web of deceit. A fabric of cloaking, or a dust cover for an old arm chair.

Van Leeuwen’s overview (in Multimodal Discourse) of an expressive situation that he labels semiotic production frames first a (situated) discourse which is then subject to design (to shape the delivery mechanism) which is materially formed in the production process followed by distribution (one-to-many propagation). These conceptual and actual stages are closely bound to a semiotics-based view which is rooted in the abstracted space of language and representation. This, despite the fact that the expressive action is indeed a real, tangible movement of energies from the producer to the receiver/consumer — it is not abstract. It is in this space between the models built in the abstracted semiotic space and the real executions that Dialogue, in the extended definition that I propose, occurs. It does not preclude any (most) semiotic models, but is sets the limits of their applicability that arise from the abstraction process that is inherent in language. The Dialogue model looks at these processes, steps in semiotic production as a continua of socially applied protocols which guide (provide a pathway for) energized expression from the Self to the Other — so that semiotic production is clearly not the thing itself, but an abstraction of it. (Van Leeuwen notes this when reflecting on the separation from embodiment that written language imposed on this abstraction process).
more “structural organization”

30 : November : 200829 : December : 2023

thesis proposal :: Background

Background for Research

While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.

Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”

16 : November : 200830 : November : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

nettime reflections

nettime November threads

sotto voce: another short point (belch) I would risk making — I think there is a real danger in this stage of Empire to focus on personalities rather than structural relations of power. That is, the “Office of the Presidency” has changed greatly during the Bush regime, mostly not as a result of Bush himself but because a convergence of forces (okay, Cheney, Rove, embody the forces perhaps.. etc etc) — a convergence of forces that are structurally evolving at this moment in the Empire. Of course, those concentrations of power may simply wane during the Obama regime, or, more likely in my mind, is that they will increase, given the intense desires and energies and attentions projected at (the) Presidency. Given Obama’s awareness of media, this will be a ‘natural.’ But this evolution, whatever happens, will not be THAT closely tied to Obama, IMHO, but simply the trajectory of Empire… I am hopeful for a kinder and more intelligent Empire, but what else is a kinder Empire than one which is on the way down, unable to brutally control the sources of it’s power; add intelligence to kindness, and is that akin to beautifully playing the fiddle while Rome burns? Or simply more intricate and obscured warfare on less suspecting victims? Watch for some interesting machinations of power in the next 4 years… I have decided, personally, that I will have lived during the (first) peak and subsequent decline of the (first) American Empire. All’s to do is to document that life and find some humor among humans.

doh…!

1 : November : 20082 : January : 2020

place: Prescott, Arizona

Studs Turkel 1912 – 2008

A consummate sonic artist and Chicagoan, Studs Turkel moved on to other narratives yesterday. if you have the time, delve into some of the audio archives of his interviews with everyday folks as well as famous people as he illuminated the stories that together weave the history of the US.

a small observation with an important caveat:

I’ve always felt, in all my books, that there’s a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence — providing they have the facts, providing they have the information. — Studs Turkel

13 : August : 200823 : June : 2014

place: Bedford, New York

storms

what to add? observations about the country, the local social scene, the election, the Olympics in the media, the weather, mostly the weather and night sounds. so I make a simple remix of the several days of heavy thunder storms that grumble through the area over-loading gutters and ears and eyes. along with the crickets.

small bits popping into mind: It will be obvious to even the meanest of intelligences that the following holds true … a phrase that an old professor of mine would use when (sardonically) introducing an exceptionally difficult concept.

2 : March : 200811 : October : 2024

place: Berlin, Germany

ultraintelligence?

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. — Irving Good

aside from inventing a pretty damn smart off switch.

urban renewal is happening in Berlin. on another circuit walk, this time further to the East, I can stand in one spot and see a dozen construction cranes. they are all working on domestic housing units — mostly low, three story maximum, like row houses, condos. filling up vacant lots which were once filled with warehouses. most of the red brick warehouses are gone, and the lots are scraped clear, down to the golden beige sand that underlies the whole city. the top few feet are always full of detritus — porcelain, shattered bricks, glass, and mortar. somewhere I read that in the process of doing random construction in Germany, they also frequently discover WWII munitions accompanied by an occasional detonation and casualties. yikes! I am amazed by the intensity with which the city is still transforming itself.

5 : February : 200829 : December : 2023

place: Lübeck, Germany

seminar

back in a classroom. talking about data – information – knowledge – intelligence – wisdom. signal-to-noise ratios. adaptability, chain-of-command, defined functions, trend analysis, long tail, lexis-nexus, The WELL, protocols and standards, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, social infrastructures, complexity, hierarchy, networks, order and disorder, economy of attention, business models, power, money, socially-defined exchange, globalization of culture, and so on. I am a teacher, I am only human.

28 : September : 200625 : March : 2023

place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

model reflections

Fleabane (Erigeron glabellus) fills Lower Pool Creek Canyon, along with the huge sage brush bushes.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as “the Copenhagen Interpretation,” because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers circa 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called “model agnosticism” and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, “The map is not the territory.” Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as “The menu is not the meal.”

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, “My current model” — or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel — “contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised.” In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude. — Robert Anton Wilson (1986, preface)

28 : May : 200614 : November : 2015

place: Baldwin, Colorado

flower power!

Sharmin will hopefully augment this shot of Sonya with some of her ample photographic records of the long weekend’s adventures. later in the evening…

turns out that the Search By Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project — is a globally-deployed effort by an extraterrestrial intelligence to keep tabs on the human race…

long conversation with Chris and Scharmin. well, Scharmin dozes off in front of the fire part of the time. the cabin is such a comfortable space for hanging out with friends. Sonya and Alex have stored up magic memories of the place, the surroundings, and the magnificent physical environment it is nestled into. I wish Loki was here with us. somehow I am not completely convinced that his absence from the US this summer is simply due to the need for teenage companionship. but that cannot be substantiated.

no chance to use the telescope productively. there is enough overcast so that the sun cannot be seen well enough to make it worth it, and it is cloudy all three nights. not to mention too cold to be hanging out of doors for long periods when there is a warm bed to fill later after the stiff margarita to sip!

2 : August : 20052 : January : 2022

place: Chino Valley, Arizona

Unocal memories

Reflecting on parallel universes, light musings surround the controversy that today ceased rumbling around CNOOC (Chinese National Offshore Oil Company) and Unocal (Union Oil of California). Back when I worked for Unocal in the early 1980’s, it is hard to imagine any other response than hearty guffaws to the suggestion that in 20 years the US oil concern would be up for auction with Chinese buyers out-bidding Chevron. No longer in contact with any of my colleagues from those days, I would be curious to hear their situations, if, indeed, they still are employed by the firm. Times change the conditions of the market. Unocal has been an acquisition target since the early 80’s when I was there — when the infamous Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens was in hot pursuit of the company, such that the board tried to sink the company into multi-billion debt to make it less attractive. It is a different time indeed when a Chinese company, 70%-owned by the Chinese government, makes an aggressive bid to acquire a legacy US corporation. And on top of that, a company dealing with the major strategic resource of the developed world of the 21st century. No wonder Washington hawks are screaming! After watching the entire Cspan-aired Senate hearings on this precise merger, I was astonished at the lack of intelligence in the expressions of the ‘experts’ called in by the Senate. So little understanding of the movement and evolution and change of power in a dynamic world. Fighting or resisting inevitable power shifts is for the naive who cling to temporal power under highly conventional paradigms. It is clear that China is rising, and the US perhaps falling — in the broad sense. the empty cup tends to fullness, the full cup tends to emptiness. Rather than deal with the realities of socio-political evolution, the Washington power-brokers cling to an out-dated and very static worldview. Few seems to get Sun Tzu.

But how is it, these men and women who populate a corporate landscape, how do they live? Remembering back to the instance of going on a executive retreat to an exclusive resort in Ojai, north of LA, for a 4-day review of Unocal’s status in the oil business. My task was to present at an informal seminar an overview of state-of-the-art technology and applications for gravity and magnetic in petroleum exploration. Golf was on the schedule for a majority of the older execs, their bonding exercise. Open bar helped with that. I got the feeling that everything simply went along a certain and safe pathway to the intended goal of regular paychecks which were fed into mortgages, car payments, and very short vacation splurges (only 10 days of holiday per year for the first 5 years). Like a corral to tame the wild engineering student broncos. At the end of my briefing on the Colombia Llanos project, I showed a series of slides including portraits of the local peasants, the landscape, and the on-the-ground operation. It was very quiet when I was showing images of the people.

I have always maintained that my departure from the Big Oil scene was in no way an altruistic choice. this despite an early radicalization which included studying “The Communist Manifesto” in 7th grade — a fact that classmate Russ Werner picked up. he was the funniest kid in the junior high school, and the best cartoonist as well. he left a note in my yearbook addressed to the Pinko Commie Rat. no, that predilection did not factor in, though I can point to Roger Steffens program on KCRW, where I was a volunteer-member, The Reggae Beat brought the vibes of the Rastafarian belief system into high relief with guests the likes of Bob Marley, Alton Ellis, and Peter Tosh. If music can radicalize, it did. Bob Marley speaks as powerfully as any German philosopher! Jah Rastafari Makonnen! not to mention programs like “Alma del Barrrio” on KXLU “schizo-radio on the Left.”

I also recall, when living off of Lincoln and Ocean, taking a long slow look at a Roland Jupiter 8 keyboard, running around $1200 at the time, now I really wonder what would have happened if I had bought that rather than a Nakamichi tape deck, a used 6’2″ twin-fin swallowtail surfboard, and a Fiat Spyder.

No, leaping from the Big Oil gravy train was merely the next step. on the eve of departure, the actual handing in a letter of resignation to Dennis Mett, the director of International Exploration, there was the huge Mombasa project that came up. For six months after I left, I would get occasional phone calls from Bill Sax, the VP of the International Division, asking if I wanted to continue working for Unocal and go to Africa for a couple months to oversee a mag survey from offshore up into the Great Rift Valley. By that time I was on another trajectory completely. Not nearly as lucrative, but somewhat more soul-satisfying.

Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa. — T. Boone Pickens

22 : May : 200531 : December : 2023

The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”

18 : April : 200514 : November : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

perturbing

VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System): A perturbation in the reality field in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information. Characterized by quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an armillary coherence. — Philip K. Dick

that’s no Internet!

23 : October : 200425 : January : 2025

place: Akureyri, Iceland
enclosure: https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2004/10/20041023_mil_ind_speech.mp3 14572916 audio/mpeg

until that day

Check out this 10-minute farewell speech by an outgoing US president. And you might understand better the position that we are in today with the US internal (and consequently, external) politics dominated by the military-industrial complex. pretty surprising, considering who it is coming from. General Dwight Eisenhower. but the mapping out of the consequences of allowing a society to be under the shadow of this agglomeration is chillingly prophetic. The situation is grave. And I DID cast a vote in this election, after some years of not doing so, based on my experiences in the 1980 presidential campaign which was a farcical face-off between Carter and Ray-Gun, with John Anderson making the most credible and successful campaign as an independent candidate to date. I worked as campus rep for Anderson, met him a couple times, and saw clearly that the electoral college system was stifling democratic expression in the country. It’s good to see that the whole structure is under deep scrutiny these days, now in Colorado and California (Maine and Nebraska already award proportional electoral college votes based on popular votes). Scrapping it would at least bring a superficial element of democracy back into a system that is hardly democratic in the sense of one-man-one-vote. Instead, direct or indirect cash reserves are the true test of a candidates viability (not intelligence or fitness for the job), and campaigns burning up billions of dollars in media propaganda confirm that only those with access to extreme wealth have any possibility of acceding to power. That base fact along with the rapid evolution of the realities of life in the US to a psychical space of absolute fantasy through the power of wholesale mediation of what once was direct human connection.

5 : February : 200227 : January : 2025

place: Boulder, Colorado

practice levity

A play of Light, an iridescence, in an empty air. Against gravity; against the gravity of literalism, which keeps our feet on the ground. Against weighty words, the baggage of traditional meaning and the burden of the law; travel Light. Gravity is from the fall, and is to be defied; deliver us from the pull of the fundamental. Practice levity, and levitation. Oh for the wings of a dove, the spirit; the wingéd words that soar, the hyperbole or ascension. — Norman O. Brown

Another quotation (fragment, package of illuminated social energy or pseudo-energy.) What is it about the word that makes me so suspicious of its power-base? Is it rooted in the childhood triangulation of speech, autonomous action, and results? Somebody looks over my shoulder and asks, what the hell are you writing? It doesn’t make any sense at all. yer right. Textual traces don’t make sense, they merely play with the acquired intelligence. sprites, immaterial materialism that keeps up the wall between internal and external. Makes a shunt, highly conductive, and shorted black: to live by.

15 : January : 200123 : September : 2018

place: en route Phoenix, Arizona - NYC, New York - Reykjavík, Iceland

starting

A brutal long day with nine hours of flying broken in two halves. On the road again for another intensive springtime. and then summer will come. and what next? Big questions come up. As usual.Cobbling together a pathway. And too much listening to other people, and not finding the heart is speaking loud enough (taught not to listen, I guess). Intelligence is no great advantage in this world unless it is combined with fortitude and concentration and the ability to focus attention. Going to see if Willa would be game to share her java scripting from her journal pages to restructure this site. Talks with Janet about her massive genealogical work motivates me even more to be more inclusive and extensive with the web space. Linking all content into a more cohesive whole. Or at least creating a deep cross-referencing system.

30 : August : 199917 : April : 2024

place: Helsinki, Finland

medium: rare

On the above note, couldn’t any longer project energies into this space, but days have pulled me forward through nights as Rilke’s cornet: Reiten, reiten, reiten, durch den Tag, durch die Nacht, durch den Tag. Reiten, reiten, reiten… Threads build into a new fabrics to wear as old ways get worn, pressed between body and outer beings. Too many things happening for me NOT to be noting some of them. In case I forget what happens now, off in some future time, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe when this medium itself is not readable anyway: creating archaeological ruins in the moment, of the moment. Head so full, even eyes can’t see sometimes now, thought-forms dragging along despite outside influence, or just accumulating. (Summer is a time of storing and accumulating, and it is already gone.) Surrounded by successful people. Why is success important? It seems to have a deep evolutionary reading. Having or lacking the tools for survival: strong body, intelligence, creativity, cleverness, adaptability, conserving resources for lean times, positioning the self (security) properly for when the body declines, when success’ only prop is what was, formerly.

10 : October : 199722 : August : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado

static chill

measured sentences today marked the passing of time, I quit writing real sentences because. now frequently I see reflections of other frames of reference (deja vu — such a weak word, unable to pull itself into English, and yet these instances dog me daily now). meta-verse, meta-contact. always mediation always the insurgency (no rapt attention) injecting. only little hopes (we shall overcome). shouting at cloud riots straddling a bicycle seat talking to the wind and wishing I had watched the sunrise without sound background of house news noise. silence would have been the direction to flow into. words built up the day, words scattering across the way, words and looking at what there could have been behind them. in a position of leading life and following life, there is always the element of confusion that greets each successive moment. to be able to have possibility and nothing more than the fullness of it. Dar-es-Saalam comes up in conversation today, so does John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk (his birthday), and Guattari, the Thousand Plateaus, more “static chill”