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.

Swaying in the wind

"One impulse from a vernal wood
may teach you more of man
Of moral evil and of good
than all the sages can."
-Woodsworth
Always good to remind myself that I am only approaching true knowledge, or truth as some call it, when I start to realize that my ideas and opinions are just the wind that blows through the branches of my mind. I was raised around far more trees than people, and if I am grateful of anything in my life, it is this. As the tree grows stronger, the more weathered my bark becomes and the deeper my roots go, the easier it is to just let the wind howl.
How ferociously it does wail though. This has been a mighty year in the annals of human hysterics. As is always the case, I am impressed that more people didn't die and that the planet hasn't suffered a complete environmental collapse; which I reckon is good. Surely won't be much longer before our 7 billion strong species is visited once more by our longtime travelling companions of war, famine and plague. Probably best to just enjoy the interregnum and not feel too guilty about the ease with which I can live, for this too shall surely end.
The centuries since Capitalism's development have been fascinating, and if nothing else have given me the means to record my thoughts and share them with perhaps a billion people with little effort. Someone told me lately that humans are something nature has to live with and capitalism is something humans have to live with. I think this is a good way of looking at it. After much internal turmoil I have settled comfortably into my role as historian and human, no longer feeling the need to worry about the fate of all things. It is enough for me now to just to watch and learn. Perhaps this year I will finally master these symbiotic skills of observation and contemplation to finally become a truly tall tree.

All I can know is what the world does show
The more I grow, the more the wind does blow

Centrifuge Century

Some days when I do my daily rounds of the news it seems things spin so fast that some sort of social atomic fusion is bound to take place. Perhaps it already is doing just that. Here is a bit of mental buckshot at whats crackin' currently:

  Things in the Eastern Congo have started to escalate substantially. This region has been in complete flux since the Great War of Africa (1998-2003) when 5 nations and innumerable factions fought over controlling the mineral rich region. A few months ago a group named M23 broke away from the Congolese Military (mind you it really doesn't deserve the name 'military', more like militia levies) and started kicking ass and taking names. The leader of Neighboring Rwanda, Kagame, made emphatic arguments that he wasn't funding these people, but considering all the facts, he almost certainly is. The area is rich in gold, tin and tantalum, and economically is far more integrated into the economies of Rwanda and Uganda than the Democratic Republic of Congo. Having said all this there are hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in the region and the UN's largest peace keeping/ Humanitarian mission is primarily located here. When the M23 forces took the largest city of the region they behaved relatively well for African forces (aka not killing, raping and stealing everything they see), which once again indicates they are taking their orders from Rwanda. After a few days in control of the city and the UN army located at the local airport doing jack shit they mysteriously decided to leave, with absolutely no apparent military reason. Reports have also started circulating that long assumed oil reserves in the region are indeed existent. This is probably the most disturbing situation in the world that I'm aware of, but it has some competition.

    In Egypt President Morsi has been dealing with a fairly serious amount of opposition to his decision to give himself unlimited powers until a new constitution is decided upon. Given the intransigent opposition of the Mubarak era judiciary this is quite likely to be never. It is encouraging to see that the people on the street aren't buying into the old democracy-makes-everything-ok shtick and refuse to let anyone install themselves as a new dictator. When considering this country up until  last year held the record of longest uninterrupted tradition of autocracy in history, this is pretty damn impressive they are sticking to the whole civil government based on democracy concept. Good luck Egyptians, your probably doomed given the human tendency towards Oligarchy, but here's hoping you can pull it off.

   Back in the USSA Obama seems to have located his testical satchel, and finding it intact has concluded that showing them off would be a fun thing to do. Accordingly, he has told the press and the Republicans he is willing to go 'over the fiscal cliff' if they won't raise taxes on the rich. This cliff he speaks of is one of Congresses most hilarious pranks it has pulled on itself to date (right up there with the Civil War, ceding the power to declare war, and impeaching Clinton for a BJ). Basically they have made it so that if they don't compromise (which neither side will) then automatic spending cuts will be enacted, which will utterly sodomize the economy and poor Americans. Why, might you ask, have they decided upon such a daring and dangerous course of action? In short they are myopic fucktards whose parties are controlled by their fringes and whose voting base is correspondingly idiotic. This would be a lot funnier if America wasn't the unchangeable hegemon of earth due to its truly unparalleled obsession with military might and it's resulting intimidation of living things. Given this fact, the idea of America slitting its own economic throat is a little less humorous and a situation that would scare the living shit out of the rest of the planet if they weren't caught up in their own petty melodramas.

   Speaking of which, Syria is still fighting a full blown war among its various ethnic, religious and political factions. Shit just got even more complicated because the US labeled the leading rebel group, the Al-Nusra Front, a terrorist organization. In addition to this, Congress (how they find time for this amidst the posturing and bullshitting I know not) has started getting more turned on about the idea of letting our jets and missiles join the fun. You must understand that for a country that has spent so much on its military and genuinely believes itself to need to lead the world, it is really hard to stay out of a real war. This is especially true when that war is connected with one of your favorite make believe enemies, Iran. Luckily for the regime of the Assad Clan Russia is sticking with Bashar, so the US can't just send in the drone armadas just yet, but considering the fact that Iran has captured yet another American robot in its airspace, who knows.
  A lot of other stuff is going down, but I'm running out of time to type about it and at some point it all just flows into the great shit sea of insanity and therein is lost among the incalculable stank of past human behavior. It's one hell of a show, and the idea that we might write ourselves into such a completely impossible situation that the curtain must fall simply because all the actors have slain one another is a bit sad; but it is also a bit funny.
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." -Mel Brooks

wind in the sales

I think this video is absolutely the best microcosm of America, and indeed late consumer capitalism, that I've seen since good ol' W landed on a aircraft carrier to announce that he had successfully conquered Iraq. Now, to most people this video is probably just embarrassing or depressing, which are completely understandable emotions. For me however, it is the punchline for a rather long historical joke.
You see back in the 70's the capitalist class in America decided that they had had just about enough of this unionized middle class labor bullshit and got working on ways to pay less money to workers. This was done through a variety of means that are by no means novel or even unusual. In the 80's it was moving manufacturing whenever possible from the staunchly unionized Mid-West and North-East to the less organized South and West. This did a lot for wage repression, as did labor saving advances in technology, but some thought it hadn't done enough. So it was that in the 90's globalization was utilized to use labor in foreign countries with no real regulations, and then import back into America under the guise of 'free trade' and thus essentially break the back of the blue collar middle-class in America.
There was one glaring problem with this strategy however, their simply wasn't a market for the goods if you didn't have people making enough money to buy them. Middle-class America was the cash cow of the century for Capitalists, but by repressing wages the milk had gone sour. Luckily the financial sector came up with a rather cunning solution- extend credit to the consumer class so they can buy and then commodify that debt so as to be able to trade it. Doing this also gave the financial sector the sort of leverage they needed to start doing some truly daring speculative trading in futures that essentially allowed them to invent profit through creative use of economics.
Where did all this lead? It lead to the video you see here. The once mighty American working class is reduced to fighting over ritualized sales on shitty products made by horribly paid workers half way around the world. All purchased with credit cards or the equally unsubstantial American dollar, that as another form of wage repression is worth less every year. So strange how the dreams we dream become reality and then that reality becomes a nightmare.
"All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as
from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -John Adams in a letter to Jefferson (1787)