Age of Oblivion

What sort of era are we entering into?

Let us consider a few stories that will hopefully paint some pictures that might help us answer that question. 

During the midst of a massive demonstration in Kiev, Ukraine thousands of protesters received texts at the same moment from their government saying- "Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.". 

The Pentagon decided not issue a new medal to honor drone pilots  and cyber warriors after uproar over the decision to rank this decoration above some medals given to troops wounded or killed in battle.

Our planets newest country, South Sudan, descended into civil war when its two largest ethnic groups started attacking one another, making an already uncertain future look grim.

A member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria blew himself and 21 of his comrades up when he mistakenly used real explosives during a training session at a training camp north of Baghdad. 

Regular Mexicans in Michoacan formed self defense groups and started waging war against the local drug cartel because it had been terrorizing the local population, the government responded by sending in federal forces to try and control these groups and prevent them from succeeding where the government has systematically failed. 

Members of the American media have citing an exceptionally cold winter as evidence that climate change isn't occurring because the phrase 'global warming' was used in the past by those raising the issue.

We live in odd times folks. An era so chock full of hypocrisy, contradiction and people that the earth, our mighty living home in vastness of space, seems to be revolting against our behavior. It's hard to imagine where things will go from here, and for that reason most people seem determined not to think about it. The Age of Oblivion, where you must focus entirely upon the present because the past is too full of horrifying warnings and the future is shrouded in too many terrible possibilities to consider. 

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." -H.P. Lovecraft 1926

It would seem to me that rather than choosing one we have opted for going completely insane and plunging ourselves into a darker age than any of us can fathom. I think the saddest part is that the only positive answer I hear from anyone is that science and technology will save us... why not just believe in God if you are going to go that route?

Trust and Truth

"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." -JFK
It seems a tragic truth that the lie, or perhaps myth, has become more prevalent than the truth. This most recent revelation that the NSA is monitoring every human on earth that they feasibly can has hardly made a ripple in the placid sea of complacency that is the American psyche. I'm not sure if people still buy into the whole terrorism argument as a justification for spying on our own people to a level that makes Hitler and Stalin's governments look like amateurs, or if they are just too busy consuming to read or care. Part of me has to wonder if it isn't all just for marketing purposes that the people in charge have decided to abolish privacy.
Of course it is the machines that do almost all of the actual snooping, just as the they have started to do a good deal of the governments killing. Richard Brautigan once wrote:
"I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace."
I would claim that his vision of the future has proven to be the exact opposite of what is taking place. The environment is more fucked than ever, and fixing to get even more so at a compound rate. Our labors have not ended and set us free; in fact more people are enslaved than ever before. And worst of all, instead of machines of loving grace we have ones of omnipresent authority that watch and kill all according to the dictates of the Oligarchy.
Although it is a very small comfort that at least a few people are willing to ruin the rest of their lives in order to leak the truth about the workings of the Empire, the fact that perhaps a million people were in a position to do so and have remained silent is far more telling. Not only does our modern era breed alienation, it has spawned a dependence on government and technology that will lead us deeper and deeper into the horrifying darkness of Corporate Fascism. I don't think we were tricked, nor were we forced. It came solely from our preference for safety and comfort over all else. All we had to do was ask the question that Juvenile did almost 2,000 years ago-  QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES - Who will guard the guards themselves? The answer in our era is apparently no one. And the creepiest part is that the guards are now robots created to control the servile masses.

"Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor"

-Marx

Society of the Spectacle

This summer I have had the pleasure of becoming unplugged to a large extent. Working for extended periods in areas where electricity does not flow and cell phone towers do no reach has become an odd luxury in my life. Up in the mountains the screaming spectacle of modernity seems far below and beyond understanding. It is in this setting that I find myself reading a book that has helped answer many questions concerning this strange society that spawned me.

The book is Society of the Spectacle and was written by Guy Debord in 1967. Despite being almost 50 years old, the book is prescient and prophetic. Written more in the style of Tao Te Ching, it presents of theory of modern capitalism that I find more convincing and articulate than any other I've read or heard. I really recommend it to anyone who is genuinely seeking a better understanding of this world of ours. Here are the opening lines-

"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."

Nothing too revolutionary yet, just an update of Marx's observations about alienation and the fetishization of products. This next section was the one that really started to get me pondering-

"The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images."

This line blew my mind. All my childhood people had been staring at televisions, preoccupied by their next purchase, lost in a wilderness of desire of semi-conscious consumerism. It dawned on me that a lot of the people I had grown up around had substituted the spectacle for a life of actual experience. It was the realization of the old religion dream- be able to transcend the painful suffering for a better existence without pain and loss. The muted mindless madness of this society of the spectacle does seem to dull the pain, and the people seem to be standing in line for the opportunity join the show.

I think its safe to say that in the years since computers started conquering human consciousness this has become even more true. The internet is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of the spectacle. An entire reality conjured up to replace the harsh and savage truth of what sort of a civilization we got going here. By using images on a machine's screen for communication and information we have entered a world in which the majority of people we interact with exist not as living breathing hominids, but rather a series of spectacles. Even our military has enthusiastically used this advance to rain death and destruction without even needing to send some fate-fucked proles to do the deed. Now it can be a middle class consumer in Nevada who commutes to work, plops down at a computer and proceeds to carry out the Empires prerogatives whilst siting in a cubicle within a air conditioned room in the desert. If that isn't the incarnation of everything this society is working towards I don't know what is. 

Time to face the strange changes

"It's a little lonely in the desert..."
"It is a little lonely when you're around people too", said the snake
-Antoine Saint-Exupery The Little Prince

   There is a timeless serenity to the desert. Although a forest and mountain dweller my heart always feels especially clear when looking out over the starkly stoic landscape of the South West. It is a place that seems like it can swallow humanity whole and not even have any indigestion.
  As climate change is set to increase the desertification process substantially in the immediate future, I think it serves as a fitting reminder of how nature responds to mankind. So often it has been portrayed as 'environmental collapse' or the 'end of the world', but in a less dramatically anthropocentric view, its really just the living organism called Earth trying to find a solution to an invasive species. We rely on grain to survive, and we have used up almost all the space we can to produce food, eaten the oceans and killed off all the great herds, so when climate change results in chronic food shortages the problem will essentially be solved from a planetary perspective. Famine will sweep the globe, wars will certainly erupt in never before seen dimensions, disease will probably do its part as societies collapse and then ecosystems will slowly recover.
  The desolation we are all working towards will see much of the worlds farmland turn into a desert, which will no doubt seem like a tragedy to us humans, but other lifeforms will surely take it with less theatrics. The desert has always sustained an impressive amount of life for an arid area, and it also seems to make humans a bit more thoughtful and sustainable (Hopi, Kalahari Bushmen, Himba etc.).
  Speaking of the Hopi, they have a wonderful creation story. It is much like the others in that the world is created and destroyed multiple times until we got to the current era. The first time it was destroyed because a birdlike creature called the talker convinced people that there was differences between them, which caused conflict among the humans and led to the animals no longer trusting or associating with us. The second time it was a love of goods that resulted in trade that became more important than living in harmony with nature, and so this too was brought to oblivion. The third go round saw the rise of civilization with its swarms of people, who built flying machines and used them to wage war upon each other. This too was laid waste and those who had not lost their way were once again saved to make another attempt at life. They were told that this 4th world would not be as easy and beautiful as the others, and that they would have to live in a harsh landscape if they wanted to avoid the decadence and oblivion of the previous worlds, and so it is that the Hopi today live in the most desolate desert in the South West, keeping their traditions, waiting for the day that once again this world is destroyed and they are allowed to live because they have not lost their way.
   The Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur records the fable of a powerful king who asks assembled wise men to create a ring that will make him happy when he is sad, and vice versa. After deliberation the sages hand him a simple ring with the words "This too shall pass" etched on it, which has the desired effect. As we travel deeper into the desert of our own making, I think we would do well to remember these wise words, least we get too caught up in our madness.

Apathetic Apologetic Anesthetic

"He has strangled his language in tears" -Shakespeare Henry VIII
As the years of my life pass a feeling of acceptance settles into my consciousness. I never thought that one day it would be possible for me to acquiesce to such absurdities as this world consists of, but it seems to be happening. More than once people would respond to my diatribes and discourse with a far off look in their eyes, followed by some paraphrasing of 'you will grow out of it'. It never once occurred to me that they might be right, that my passion too would be subsumed by acceptance. There was a point where the more I learned about human behavior and history the more I felt certain that there was no way for me to live passively in such a situation, yet here I am, almost 30 and becoming benumbed.

Such seems to be a common occurrence among us moderns. If anything is killing humanity it is surely apathy. Not exactly a new development, really been just amplified by there being more people on the planet. Positioned by fate as I am, the view from these eyes has witnessed a level of abject indifference that seemingly has no limit. I used to think this was something refered to as doublethink (see this entry) but have now concluded it comes from a lack of precision diction. People can't express themselves, so they can't think clearly, so no ones says anything and shit just rambles on like a drunk hobo looking for a train. You can't question without a quest, so I think this one shall be mine for a time. Language is the coolest thing we have going for us, regardless of which you use. Yet it seems all too common in my ears to hear people trudge painfully through a sentence with words that fail to satisfy. Orwell commented on English being in a bad way over half a century ago, and this tongue has only gotten more tongue tied (ankyloglossia amnesia I shall call it). The lingo isn't fit for a dingo, and yet this shit spreads over the world and the seven seas like a damn disease. Maybe we tried to build the tower of babel and comedian Creator had to have the last joke, so in our brains he blew a shitload of smoke.
To be fair, I must concede that if you look over the my 230 posts you'll find I'm writing a pretty gargantuan amount of bullshit, but at least I expressed myself. It is incomprehensible to me that some people these days probably go their whole lives without ever being able to properly portray what they thought on any given day. What a fucking temporal tragedy to me. But in this world of starvation, drones, shopping malls, strip mines, wind chimes and crazy rhymes I suppose that's just the way she goes...

Nomads

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." -Nietzsche 
For the past few months I've been reading an epic historical work called 'Empire of the Steppes' which covers several thousand years of nomadic migrations. I'll spare you the pages of notes I've taken documenting the rise and fall of innumerable empires and even more incalculable wars; I fully recognize that such things interest few people. What I thought would be interesting to most people is the authors defense of nomadic barbarity towards sedentary people. After recounting the staggeringly violent life of Ghengis Khan she says he did none of it out of cruelty or anger. It was the result of a fundamentally different point of view. One that saw cities and agriculture as an opposing way of life, one that bred weakness, decadence and slavery.
 City after city, empire after empire, fell to the horde of the great Khan, and all were burned and slaughtered if they resisted, which most did. If not for the intervention of one of his advisers it is probable that he would have had his troops kill the entire population of Northern China, burn the cities, destroy the irrigation system, and let the whole area revert to its natural state; which is exactly what he had done to Eastern Iran. This foreign policy seems ruthless beyond understanding but we must remember that virtually every empire he conquered started the war, he just finished it with a decisiveness no one was ready for. Often they would ride away from a ravaged area long enough for those who had hidden to come out, only to have a rear guard return to finish the rest off.
 While reading about these tumultuous times I found my mind wondering if this seemingly irresistible human tendency towards killing on a large scale was all motivated by the same thing- ignorance of the other.
The nomadic hordes of Temujin were more cunning and effective than brave. Their tactics and weapons almost always ensured they suffered very few casualties relative to what they inflicted. Through discipline and experience they were able to trick enemies into doing exactly what they wanted and when the moment was right they would destroy the opposing army in its entirety.  When America sends our soldiers, pilots and robots to kill in the exact same areas that the Mongol horsemen once rode we do it in a similar way. Our weapons and tactics make us largely invulnerable to our foes and our strategy seems to our enemies to not go beyond death and domination. Also like the hordes of the great Khan, we travel far from our homes to wage war upon people whose way of life we are incapable of understanding. As complex, populated and technologically advanced our way of life is, at our core we seem to have not changed at all.

  

Returning to America

A comrade in consciousness once told me that American's hate their culture so much they make a new one ever 10 years. I have spent a fair amount of this decade outside the borders of the USA, and so whenever I come back it always seems like I have a lot of catching up to do. For such a far flung Imperial power that takes an interest in telling just about every other country on earth what they should do, we are a remarkably insular nation. There is a logic, or perhaps lack thereof, that is truly unique which I would argue is virtually incomprehensible to an outsider, and to be fair, largely indefinable to the inhabitants. I will not seek to unravel that mystery here, but merely to appreciate how odd the land I come from truly is.
  I think it's safe to say that all places on earth are idiomatic to varying degrees. The thing about America that has struck me of late is the casual insanity of it all. I get the feeling more and more that people here are alienated in such a profound way that they have somehow developed an inbuilt immunity to modernity. Maybe its the rapacious consumer culture, or the incalculably hypocritical nature of American politics, could even just be that in our society its ok to just not give a flying fuck and so a preponderance of people here don't. In all likelihood, it is surely a synthesis of many things that makes this place so peculiar. It is an odd mixture of fear, respect and bewilderment that we illicit in the rest of the world. I feel genuinely fortunate to have become a historian in such a place and time, for I feel that never will I ever get to the bottom of this rabbit hole.
  Within my first 12 hours of being back in the USA a gang banger ran up on my cousin and I as we walked to his car in a not that bad neighborhood in LA. He was so twisted on drugs that comprehending his purpose was difficult at first as he asked random disjointed questions and stared wildly at us. Once we started walking away he started shouting his gang affiliation and asking us if we wanted to get shot. My cousin, who has lived in LA for over 10 years now, very calmly just said no, we didn't have any problem and continued walking away seeming almost bored with the whole situation. Once it was over he told me that this sort of thing happens all the time and that you just get used to it. In a country where anyone can have a gun and be crazy enough to use it on a complete stranger for absolutely no reason, one just has to take shit from people like that or carry a gun oneself with the understanding that if you pull it out you need to shoot to kill. No other economically developed country has such an ethos and is probably a large part of why the world must acknowledge our military dominion in so many places on the planet.
  While the gun debate in Washington manages to sink to even more asinine depths of lunacy it seems ever more likely that denial will continue to be the backbone of this country. How does this nation think it can have a dialogue about this issue when one side claims guns are essential to our freedom and the other side seems unaware that we owe everything we have as a nation to their use? An old frontier saying said 'God created man, but Colonel Colt made them equal'. That is bullshit on both accounts, but it does speak to the reason guns are so central to the psychosis that is American identity. You may not be able to afford much here, but chances are you can get your hands on a gun, and that what ever comes of that you will feel more powerful. Also, if you can believe in an all powerful God creating mankind you can surely believe that a pistol will make you free. Having said that, I would like to close with two quotes by religious men about this issue:
 "All human strength vanishes when confronted with firearms. A man is dead before he sees what's coming." -Martin Luther (1569)
"our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim; by allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is the one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing; by allowing these developments, we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes." -Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)

The Trail We Traverse

For a historian, the passage of time is a sacred thing. It is a thread that weaves all humanity together into this baffling tapestry we call the present. Like walking a trail in a complete wilderness, one must take careful note of ones path so as to avoid walking in circles and also to insure that you can retrace your steps if you go the wrong way. I would never presume to say humanity is lost, but I would argue that we are not taking very careful note of the trail we tread. Here are some things that I think are worthy of contemplation.
1) The decision to alter our world has lead to the majority of land (and also the oceans) of earth being affected by human activity to varying degrees. This has lead to an exponential increase in population roughly corresponding to how much of the earth we have devastated to create what we want. If we don't come to some sort of consensus on how many humans is desirable and how many is disastrous it is very probable that we will kill every ecosystem on the planet after a few dozen more trips around the Sun. Considering we don't yet know how to produce something complex as a functioning ecosystem, destroying the ones we have is a rather dubious decision that at the very least we should be conscious of making.
2) The prevalence of doublethink as a fundamental aspect of social structures and thought is a development that not only deserves disciplined discussion, but also introspective analysis. "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them both to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then to promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed." I can't speak to life in the poorer portions of planet earth, but I can say with as much certainty as any human can say anything that doublethink is a fundamental part of life in America and Europe. The ability of America to claim it is preserving peace by waging war, or maintain international order by violating international law, speaks to the truth of this. Consider how every crises in Capitalism seems to spring miraculously from nowhere, even though the exact same thing has been happening for hundreds of years now. The maze of madness that is the modern financial system is a dungeon of doublethink that is so cavernous and crazy we only accept it because it is almost impossible to understand it. We should think deeply on this turn in the trail before we forget the way we came.
3) What sort of a planet and people do we want? Honestly asking this question and then acting accordingly seems like the best hope for us humans. If we can start a dialogue based solely on answering this one question, I think we would find that we all have a workable similarity in our answer. Sure some want injustice, ignorance and intolerance, but they don't have to openly admit it because people seem to be pathetically passive as long as they are fed and entertained. If this simple question became the basis of political discourse I think it is conceivable that we could quickly transcend mountains of bullshit that has confused our course for centuries. Some might say its absurd to hope that we can change what is dubbed 'human nature'. That claim would require that you completely disregard all of history and the phenomenal changes that have transpired in human society therein. Perhaps if we tried we could make people that not only learn how to live without destroying biodiversity, but also break the ages old rule of oligarchies.
These three ponder points are what have been bouncing around in my brain this first week of 2013. What once was a trail is now a road and thus seems to tell us where to go. All I hope is that whatever fate is in store for us we at least measure our steps, be conscious of the trail we take and all the ones we do not.