The characteristic of rambliness

"The characteristic of meaning is that not everything has it."
-Jean Baudrillard, The Lucidity Pact

I've been thinking about this for about a year and a half, and I'm still not sure whether it's true. There are three possibilities: everything is meaningful, nothing is meaningful, or some things are meaningful. Baudrillard dismisses the first two. My worldview dismisses the second (disciples of Richard Dawkins can stop reading here). It's not a question of whether meaning is intrinsic or constructed (or both). The question is, when interpreting the basic events of our daily lives, which is more burdensome: a knowledge that Everything is meaningful, or the task of determining what is and isn't?

Take, for example, our obsession with self-knowledge:

This is the Wordle visualization of the content of this site for the last year. Is there meaning in the fact that the largest word is "people," seemingly incongruous because of my extreme introversion? If I knew that it was meaningful, but could have no grasp of that meaning, would that be worse? And that's only considering one word in the hierarchy...

This is where you call me a loser for thinking about this.

Ideal living is often summed up in trite phrases, like "live every day like it was your last," or, "look for the diamond in the rough," but these don't work in practice because they amount to veiled propositions about meaning. The propositions themselves usually remained obscured and unexamined, so we can never really accept or definitively reject the aphorisms. Of course, now that I've criticized the conventional wisdom, I'm supposed to offer a different spin on the same "truth." But I don't have one.

The reality is that everyone has a set of presuppositions about whether events and things are meaningful, and 90% of the time these presuppositions are not examined --- because to do so nearly guarantees unresolvable internal dissonance and paranoia.

I think this emergent self-examination is what happens to many academics somewhere between their 2nd and 4th years of graduate school. Like groundhogs, most of them see their shadow and run back into the hole (the hole is called "the tenure track"). It usually arises because of a question about whether their epic thesis on a clay pot from a 2nd century Welsh town is truly significant labor.

Yet we can't dismiss significance and meaning out of hand, because we all crave transcendence on some level. Everyone has reached momentary heights of blissful interconnectedness and holistic epiphany --- maybe while listening to a moving piece of music, or experiencing genuine intimacy with another person for the first time --- which tell us that either there is or ought to be Meaning beyond survival. Whatever it is, we want it.

I'm getting old

I never used to complain about weird hours, no sleep, or long drives. I don't know if it's because I got married or because my inner crusty old guy is starting to become my normal outer self.

I also find myself becoming tired of travel in general, mostly because the more I think about it the more selfish it seems. This is less true of touring (where you're supposedly "giving" people something wherever you go, creating value, etc.) than normal post-college travel, but still applies. As I begin to accept my limitations and realize that I will not go everywhere in the world before I die, I also begin to see more clearly the consumptive nature of travel. Of what value is all this "experience capital" anyway, especially to anyone other than myself? Am I really going to bring home some wonderful knowledge from far away that will improve my local community? That's a pretty Platonic idea and one which is all but obsolete in contemporary globalism.

It's more likely that by traveling I'm only spreading the gospel of consumptive late capitalism. It forces a weighing of the potential benefits (to me) of worldly experience, versus the potential benefits (to my community) of staying and investing in a real home. Some might claim that their enlightened transience allows them to be "citizens of the world" and have a community that spans the globe, but I contend that most of those people simply have no real community at all, and are stretched too thin to be much more than cultural leeches to the localities they come in contact with. Their "doctrine of placelessness" is also often accompanied by virulent delusions of their own importance.

I suspect many of these people are trying to escape what they perceive to be a kind of determinism in placefulness --- whereby your homeplace becomes inextricable from your identity, and therefore limits how much of your self you can intentionally construct. Having a local connection is a block to the long-held elite-white-people value of culturelessness (unless the "local" connection is New York or London, which are just nodes in the Space of Flows). I think that's actually a good thing. If that makes me "provincial" or a "yokel," I don't really care.

Corporate Cosmopolitans and the End of Place

A recent read: "The Social Theory of Space and the Theory of the Space of Flows" by Manual Castells.

Castells' characterization of "managerial elites" in information society is an interesting (though certainly unintentional) scholarly corroborator to David Brooks' "organization kids" as the heirs of the corporate world. Castells, as I understand him, seems to implicitly rule out any dissenting participation in a corporate cosmopolitan lifestyle, suggesting that complicity in its comfort and homogeneity is mandatory for entrance. Consequently, there's no such thing as "changing the system from the inside" --- you are the system you choose to inhabit. Choose wisely.

Apparently of equal importance for entrance to the elite corporate class is an acceptance of placelessness. This most certainly is not the same rootlessness that has been romanticized and canonized in Beat poetry, and lately co-opted by advertising --- although corporate recruiters would like you to think that it is. This placelessness is a sense that all places are indeed simply different turns on a single, homogenized space. It is therefore a "safe" placelessness. The idealized itinerant wanderer experiences many places as dissimilar entities with distinct historical backgrounds and contexts, and must pay a personal, cultural, or ideological cost to participate in the life of those places. Conversely, corporate cosmopolitans experience many places as simply physical sub-spaces of a single homogenized ideal space, and their experience is insular and without cost. "Cosmopolitan" in this case is a misnomer. "Monopolitan" might be more appropriate, since while these travelers are indeed placeless; they are simply participants in one global, virtual city of the elite, with outposts all over the physical world. Castells calls this the "space of flows" and depending on your point of view, it renders a historically rooted sense of place either quaint and provincial, or completely obsolete.

In his words:

"Articulation of the [technocratic-financial-managerial] elites, segmentation and disorganization of the masses seem to be the twin mechanisms of social domination in our societies. Space plays a fundamental role in this mechanism. In short: elites are cosmopolitan, people are local. The space of power and wealth is projected throughout the world, while people's life and experience is rooted in places, in their culture, in their history. Thus, the more a social organization is based upon ahistorical flows, superseding the logic of any specific place, the more the logic of global power escapes the socio-political control of historically specific local/national societies." (pp. 415-416)

...

"A second major trend of cultural distinctiveness of the elites in the informational society is to create a lifestyle and to design spatial forms aimed at unifying the symbolic environment of the elite around the world, thus superseding the historical specificity of each locale. Thus, there is the construction of a (relatively) secluded space across the world along the connecting lines of the space of flows: international hotels whose decoration, from the design of the room to the color of the towels, is similar all over the world to create a sense of familiarity with the inner world, while inducing abstraction from the surrounding world; airports' VIP lounges, designed to maintain the distance vis-a-vis society in the highways of the space of flows; mobile, personal, on-line access to telecommunications networks, so that the traveler is never lost; and a system of travel arrangements, secretarial services, and reciprocal hosting that maintains a close circle of the corporate elite together through the worshipping of similar rites in all countries.

"Furthermore, there is an increasingly homogeneous lifestyle among the information elite that transcends the cultural borders of all societies: the regular use of SPA installations (even when traveling), and the practice of jogging; the mandatory diet of grilled salmon and green salad, with udon and sashimi providing a Japanese functional equivalent; the "pale chamois" wall color intended to create the cozy atmosphere of the inner space; the ubiquitous laptop computer; the combination of business suits and sportswear; the unisex dressing style, and so on. All these are symbols of an international culture whose identity is not linked to any specific society but to membership in the managerial circles of the informational economy across a global cultural spectrum." (p. 417)


For those of us who have a developed sense of place and a deep love of our particular cities, this is a frustratingly divisive mentality. It is emotionally charged, and can be alienating. It suggests that the only thing to value in a real place is what it can offer you --- in terms of material, ambiance, and convenience. Localized communal narrative is of no value in this scheme. Corporate globalism, if it is to maximize its profits and economies of scale, must necessarily enforce a cultural and historical amnesia that eliminates local distinctiveness. If we carry this to its logical conclusion, we might as well bulldoze every city in America except New York and Los Angeles. Whatever they got here they got there, right?

...

But why is this so polarizing? I think that those of us who desire and work to have a sense of place --- who love our built environments first and foremost because they're ours (not for what they offer us) --- often feel that something is wrong with us when we are repulsed by a set of values that seems to enjoy wide acceptance among educated people. Those of us who reject or critique cosmopolitan corporate life are regularly regarded by other educated people (often organization kids) as either unsophisticated or simply contrarian.

I was angry as I was reading the Castells piece because it was validating and giving credence to many of these discomforts, by speaking into them with a broader voice that could articulate things for which I previously couldn't find a vocabulary. I don't mean I was angry at Castells, I mean I was angry because the text facilitated a transition from "I don't like this [a matter of preference or taste]" to "this is wrong [a matter of broader moral consequence]". That's a crucial turn to take. The potential disappearance of our historically distinct places into a nebulous global space is not just an abstract semantic change, not just a paradigm shift; it is a loss with a moral component. It is a tragedy.

How can this tragedy be articulated? We're generally very uncomfortable when people make broad categorical statements in a moral space. But I think the problem with those statements is not that they are broad or categorical or moral, but that they haven't gone through the process of wider validation, reflection, or scrutiny --- they're just made out of the initial emotion with no filter. What we're actually uncomfortable with is the implicit assumption that the problem is never with me but always with the world/system/whatever. But the opposite "always/never" statement isn't true either. The problem is not always with me (that is to say: not everything is a matter of taste or comfort or culture). So the question is not whether it is right or wrong to make categorical statements in moral domains (a moral question about moral questions?), but rather how do I negotiate the intersections and divergences of the brokenness in myself with the brokenness in the world? How can I tell when I'm uncomfortable because I'm broken, versus uncomfortable because the world is broken? Our hearts have valid things to say to us (this is something I have to relearn over and over) that are rooted in truths beyond just our preferences. There is a critical and beautiful process of realizing "this isn't due to my brokenness [though I am broken], I am perceiving aright, the world is broken and I can see it."

I think Castells is helping me contextualize more broadly those elements of my past experiences. It's easy to answer the question "what don't I like about this situation?" but it's not easy to say why I don't like it. In this case he pulls that deeper question into view, naming those things which are lost, and by extension, validating the sorrow in the losing. Social science is often afraid of those things which it cannot quantify (morality is a prime example), but what I appreciate most about Castells' analysis is that he communicates in a detached and factual manner, yet without being reductive. I find that exciting and encouraging --- we can talk about these issues in a way that is ultimately productive, decisive, and generally applicable, rather than just a self-indulgent and aimless expression of tastes or opinions, with no consequence to anyone but the expressing individuals.

Consider

33 people were murdered at Virginia Tech. This is big news; in fact, it's more than news, it's a circus. Maybe it's even entertaining.

128 people have been murdered in Philadelphia so far this year. I drove past the covered body of the 128th two nights ago on my way to see my sister. This, apparently, is not news.

[Trans/ad/e]mission

I have recently come into a greater personal consciousness of that particular strain of anti-western [read: anti-American] antagonism that is purportedly responsible for terrorism. A lot of talking heads will set this up as a Muslim/Christian conflict: an increasingly Muslim east against a [post-] Judeo-Christian west. That's a stereotype and it doesn't hold water. It's less a feud of the monotheists and more of a violent indictment of the religion of Self that has risen in the postindustrial world. I agree with the newly vocal minority of critics who suggest that what fundamentalist Muslims really hate is the godlessness, unqualified secularism, and rampant decadence of the consumerist west.

The thing is, I hate it too. The new imperialism is more insidious than the old. American pols talk the talk of "spreading democracy" but that quickly turns out to be a euphemism for the real (or hyperreal) gospel of the corporation. I don't need to rehash here the social sins of American institutions abroad. Those are only symptoms of a deeper disease that is not simply cultural or legal or structural. Forget Secular Humanism. We're way past that, post-humanist maybe. The new American gospel is Secular Consumerism. It tears away all mystery, atomizes individuals, and hurtles inexorably towards the Total Realization of Everything (cf. Baudrillard's Lucidity Pact) --- that self-destructive paradoxical finality where there is nothing left to imagine, so everything becomes unreal and illusory.

[We're virtual now. How can the suffering of Those people over There be real? My own life isn't real. I don't care what anybody does as long as my sustained virtuality is not interrupted. Put a needle in my arm and start pumping RSS and mini-feeds.]

Militant Islam has a reasonable goal (if not a reasonable method): to retain the right to have a society based on symbolic exchange, which maintains a place for mystery and imagination, and which has communal respect for the intrinsic boundaries of human beings. Our urge to "spread democracy" amounts to little more than a desperate attempt to legitimize, for ourselves first and others second, our new consumer religion. Everyone should live as we do. We feel threatened when they don't.

It gives me pause when I realize that if 9/11 had happened 5 years later than it did, some part of me would have seen a certain justice in the event. Our quintessentially American arena of pop discourse --- the on-screen spectacle --- was expertly used against us. Our monumental, phallic shrine to pure money --- dollars representing nothing tangible, capital divorced from the object realm and Platonized to an abstract fetish --- was destroyed in a jarringly physical way. Though I would never, ever condone one human being taking the life of another, I am certain that I hate everything those towers represented just as much as the zealots who destroyed them. I see the same injustice, oppression, imperialism, complacency, decadence, and deception that they saw. I mourn for those lives lost (not innocent lives, simply ignorant lives), but I refuse to mourn for the wounds of the institution. The only difference between our "enemy" and me is that I cannot, will not, set myself up as judge and executioner --- because I and those I love have been complicit in oppression, and we are guilty as well. For that I am filled with remorse.

Tangentially: the God that I believe in does not allow us to take vengeance into our own hands. He does not, as so many others, make himself known by his capacity to destroy or to punish or inflict. Instead, He says, "Look what I have made." He is known by the ability to create that which is good and to repair that which is broken. Yet vengeance still belongs to Him, because only a God whose essence wholly contains and defines Beauty and Creation and Wholeness and Love could be trusted to take vengeance justly. Furthermore, a God who does not take vengeance could not be said to love or to care, or to be anything other than transcendently apathetic. And I believe that at the last, He will take just revenge --- not on human beings whom He loves, but assuredly on all the towering structures of human greed and oppression. Though for the moment, we are beating Him to it by destroying ourselves. The God I believe in is not spiteful, but is grieved by us.

Another thought: It is entirely possible that my sentiments here will land me under scrutiny by some kind of governmental body, or on some sort of "watch list." So be it. That is simply more damning evidence that our insipid secular consumerism is just as dogmatic and theocratic as any fundamentalist regime in the Middle East. We're the real fascists now.

[A nod to this post for provoking some of this]

HDR

This photograph was constructed using a relatively new technology called High Dynamic Range imaging (HDR). A computer program compiles bracketed exposures of a single scene into one image with a contrast ratio of about 100 times what a normal computer screen can reproduce. The resulting file can be "tone-mapped" to a normal dynamic range (somewhat analogous to multi-band audio compression/limiting) such that much more detail is visible, and contrast can be boosted locally instead of globally. The resulting images are often quite beautiful, if a little unreal.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before this particular micro-aesthetic becomes an annoying visual cliché, like dozens of Photoshop effects already have. Can it then still be "beautiful"?

For that matter, does technological development of this kind actually spring from need --- or is it more simply novelty for novelty's sake? That is, to what extent does technological development respond to actual needs, versus creating by its onward march a felt lack that would not have been perceived otherwise? Perhaps need and development feedback positively. I am of course talking about consumer technology here, those developments which are targeted at a buying public. I suppose it could be argued that we don't need 99% of what gets developed for these markets. If technology does address needs, it almost always exceeds them too, creating a gap in which we realize that what we have must not be enough ("Ooo, I want that"). The amplification of this gap is accomplished through advertising --- forcing us to acknowledge the obsolescence of what we have, to usher in the novelty of what we do not.

Considering this particular case, I had thought about this issue as a "problem" before. But I might have accepted it as a limitation of the medium, since display media have greater limitations than the associated recording media. Now technology enables me to work around those limitations --- but what I produce in so doing is not more lifelike, it is in fact less so. As such, the new process seems less addressed toward solving an existing problem than it is toward generating a "gee-whiz" reaction. When the novelty wears off, does the technology remain worthwhile?

Which came first, the disease or the drug?

Manual vs. abstract labor

This article is phenomenal --- I now understand my anxiety about somehow having graduated college with no real skills, placed in the larger question of "what is meaningful work?" I need to mull this over for a while.

A Singularly Non-Objective Meditation on the (de-)Merits of Facebook

Facebook simulates community. I take issue with Facebook particularly because it does this most effectively among its cohort (Myspace, Friendster), and to a far more insidious degree than any kind of alternate-world or MMPOG (the Sims, 2nd Life, etc.) --- precisely because it presumes to be nothing more than a reflection or addition to “real-life” systems of interaction.

This is the axis of competition among online social networking sites: who can most exhaustively digest and image the sum of interactions between people. Yet in its very striving toward exhaustive representation of “real-life,” the virtual network necessarily becomes a stand-in for what it attempts to mirror --- since there is less and less distinction between the virtual network and the real network. In the end, Facebook ceases to simply be a mirror when the interactions taking place in its virtual space begin to have consequences in the real-life space, rather than only vice-versa. Thus, the two spaces become equal spheres, supposedly interacting in parallel. But let us go further --- it is not much of a stretch to suggest that the virtual has already taken primacy away from the real. Most people spend as much or more time uploading and looking at pictures on Facebook than they do at the actual events in which those pictures were taken, and make many more connections to others in the virtual realm than could ever be sustainable in a real-life space, subject to the limits of time and social energy. Facebook then is the social relational equivalent of what Jean Baudrillard describes as “hyperreality:”

It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfect descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes.

The Precession of Simulacra (emphasis added)

Here lies the functional essence of Facebook: to perfectly describe and enable a system of social interactions as an “operational double,” which ensures that we the participants never encounter any of the risks or difficulties normally associated with the real-life counterparts. This is fabulously attractive.

But since it is so attractive, on a long enough timeline, more and more of our interaction must migrate into that virtual space, free as it is from consequences. That is to say: we may begin a relational interaction in the real-life space --- perhaps because we arbitrarily consider it to be in poor taste to initiate in the virtual realm --- but then move this real-life interaction into the virtual space as quickly as possible, and thereby avoid potential “vicissitudes” which may arise (e.g. “I ‘Facebooked’ the girl I met at the dinner party, and it turns out she has a boyfriend”). Most relationships can then safely live out their existence in the database, while we commonly pass “Facebook friends” in the street and fail to even acknowledge their presence. (Perhaps we forgot that they are our “friends,” perhaps we are afraid of not having the safety of the virtual space.)

As the tangible, physical, face-to-face interaction becomes less and less convenient, and more and more anxiety-inducing by comparison to the virtual, it also becomes dispensable. We drift towards reducing our entire communal existence to a database. Databasing is the new reductionism, or perhaps the new Babel. And the more of our lives we surrender to the database, the more homogenous we become, the more subject to control. It is the same illusion of choice presented by consumer society --- except that rather than a false variety of products on a shelf, we are offered a false sense of self-determination in filling out predetermined fields in a form. Never mind that the very idea of a universal form is inimical to the concept of individuality. Besides, there is no need to be “truthful” either: truth is a non-entity in the virtual space; lying lets us believe we are cheating the system, thereby bolstering the illusion of self-determination and power. We then proceed to consume other people like products, while similarly offering ourselves for consumption in a tidy, deterministic package. “Short-circuiting its vicissitudes” indeed --- there are no vicissitudes when we are all alike.

Whither the real? Baudrillard continues:

Such would be the successive phases of the image:

it is the reflection of a profound reality;
it masks and denatures a profound reality;
it masks the absence of a profound reality;
it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

Facebook is in the third stage, and rapidly progressing toward the fourth. We can readily admit that Facebook relationships may serve to mask the absence of genuine real-life relationships, but as more interactions migrate into the virtual space, they cease to have real-life counterparts. The end result is that the online social network must bear “no relation to any reality whatsoever.”

As such, the virtual network strips away the tangibility of true human community and creates a horrifically poor substitute, a simulation which masquerades as “community” while concealing our true relational poverty. Eventually, given enough time, we will be unable to navigate back to any semblance of real community, because our simulated interaction will look nothing like it. We will have forgotten how actually to be together.

This may sound alarmist or excessive, but is simply a projection of our current trajectory into the virtual. Consider the recent flap over Facebook’s “mini-feeds.” Over 700,000 students took the time (however small) to join the “Official petition group” against the mini-feed, arguing that it invaded their privacy. I would argue two things here. First, what they found objectionable about the mini-feed was that it introduced an element of accountability to their virtual space that all too closely resembled the “vicissitudes” of real-life interaction. Second, it is alarming to note how much more care and ownership seems to be taken by constituents of the virtual community than by those same constituents in their real communities, that is, how much less it takes to arouse communal ire in the virtual realm than in the physical. The “eschatology” of Facebook begs simple but profound questions: if people cared about their neighborhoods, their streets, or even the people in their houses half as much as they cared about networking their online persona with other online personae, how much would be different? If people spent all that time they spend in virtual interaction building real communities and caring for real people with real needs, how much would be different? In “short-circuiting the vicissitudes,” short-circuiting the risk, short-circuiting the discomfort of the real, we have also short-circuited the possibility of doing good.

What is real community? I suggest that the prophet Isaiah has an answer: “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?” (Is. 58:7). Facebook then, is its antithesis. It allows us to feel and appear connected (e.g. “You are connected to X thousands of people through classes”) while stripping us of the power to harness those connections to serve and sacrifice for one another. Relationships are meaningless without the ability to use one's agency on behalf of another person, as most highly exemplified in Christ’s statement that “Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He then followed through on the axiom, with the purpose of creating a truly transcendent Community (the “Body of Christ,” that is, the Church). The exercise of sacrificial agency is the cornerstone of genuine community, and the means by which meaning is created in it.

Thus, migrating to a digital simulation, however totally exhaustive it may become, undermines the possibility of building shared meaning in relationship, replacing intimacy with “networking.” I would suggest that it also cuts the thread that binds up our motive and identity in community: common narrative. Espen Aarseth calls simulation “the hermeneutic Other of narratives; the alternative mode of discourse” (Genre Troubles: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation). Facebook gives us the feeling that we are part of “Something,” but that something is directionless and not building towards anything meaningful. If we somehow were to realize that the Something is meaningless, we would lack the agency within the simulation to effect any change for the better.

Why do we participate in this? Do we believe that interacting virtually will add meaning or value to real-life relationships? That somehow “adding” someone on Facebook after a brief and largely meaningless interaction in a group project or a dinner reception will increase the chances of that relationship either continuing or being more fruitful? In all probability, it lessens (or even destroys) the possibility of the relationship giving rise to real meaning, because the relationship has been instantly cheapened. It is crammed into reductionist packaging and moved out of the real and into the digital, where everyone can be anyone and anyone is everyone, where “truth” and “identity” are fluid at best and non-entities at worst. No risk, no remorse, nothing lost --- but nothing gained.

If we are the kind of people who value ease and escape, then the virtual social network is a total and tender opiate, inviting and even intoxicating. But if we are people who value meaningful community and collective construction of narrative, it is a disgusting waste, a pathetic squandering of human time and effort.

One can live with the idea of distorted truth. But their metaphysical despair came from the idea that the image didn’t conceal anything at all, and that these images were in essence not images, such as an original model would have made them, but perfect simulacra, forever radiant with their own fascination.

The Precession of Simulacra

Fun morality & Molech, illustrated

"You went to Molech with olive oil and increased your perfumes.
You sent your ambassadors far away; you descended into Sheol itself.
You were wearied by all your ways, but you would not say, 'It is hopeless.'
You found renewal of your strength, and so you did not faint.

Whom have you so dreaded and feared that you have been false to me,
and have neither remembered me nor pondered this in your hearts?

Is it not because I have long been silent that you do not fear me?
I will expose your 'righteousness' and your 'works,' and they will not benefit you.
When you cry out for help, let your collection of idols save you.
The wind will carry all of them off, a mere breath will blow them away.

But the man who makes me his refuge will inherit the land and possess my holy mountain."
-Is. 57

Here's a gem of cultural analysis on the American cult of individualism/consumerism, resonating deeply with the supernatural perspective from Isaiah:

"The effectiveness of the mass media, however, as the key agent of psychological totalitarianism is not based on political or religious ideology. Rather it rests upon a base that I have described elsewhere as the myth of technological utopianism. Unlike religious myths in which meaning was spiritual—nature or the gods —this myth is thoroughly materialistic. Technological utopianism substitutes the perfect health and happiness of the human body for the spiritual well-being of the human soul. This meaning is ineffective because it is based on individualistic consumerism. For meaning to be effective it must be shared meaning that binds people together in common responsibilities and reciprocal moral relationships. Consumerism is a shared belief but it leaves one psychologically isolated, for it is based upon freedom without responsibility. The attempt to create meaning in consumerism, to spiritualize consumerism, fails because its utopian promise of perfect happiness and health cannot be achieved in this world, and therefore happiness and health remain transitory, as anxiety, suffering, and death constantly remind us."

-Richard Stivers, from Ethical Individualism and Moral Collectivism in America
(go read the whole thing; listen for the echoes of Ecclesiastes)


Along with the contemporary fragmentation of our selves (Stivers' description of what a Biblical scholar might see as the sundering of community in the Fall---resulting in distrust of other people and fear of manipulation), our "collection of idols" has become equally fragmented, and as such, far more insidious and difficult to specifically identify. Perhaps it is not too far a stretch to say that our Molech is consumerism, and that which we fear is simply isolation as punishment for non-conformity to public opinion. The lie that real freedom is "freedom from responsibility" directly undermines the promise of a restored, redeemed community which results from taking responsibility and laying down one's life in purposeful sacrifice---the essence of true Freedom is a Choice, yes, but more specifically, it is the ability to choose that which is Good (permanently) versus that which is pleasing or pacifying (transiently). It is this dream of mutuality through sacrificial exercise of moral agency, in purposeful community, not mindless collectivism, that the words in Isaiah hold out to us: "inherit the land and possess my holy mountain."

Noise

Take a look at this.

Interestingly enough, I consider Masami Akita (Merzbow) to be quite influential in much of the music and soundscape that I make. Supposedly he's a pretty nice guy. Since when is Radiohead a "noise" band? And why is free jazz degenerate?

The main problem here is assumption. M.A.N. is all about the idea that there is a particular form (i.e. the Western diatonic scale, used in Common Practice) that best fulfills the Purpose of music. This is rooted in Kantian Aesthetics, one of the high points of Enlightenment hubris and a validation for centuries of cultural imperialism. Furthermore, the diatonic scale itself is an invention of Pythagoras, which was implemented in Europe only at the beginning of the Renaissance --- which is to say, there is nothing Christian at all about the Western major/minor modalities. In fact, if a religio-philosophical label had to be attached to them, it would be Greek Humanism, as glorified by the Enlightenment. Most actual God-worshipping music of the early church (indeed, quite pioneering in harmony and notation) was written far outside the restrictions of Common Practice compositional methodology.

M.A.N.'s problem is that "noise music," as they define it, deviates from what they consider to be a Universal Standard. Yet that very standard is born of a centuries-old intellectual tradition which is in fact inimical to the core of Christian belief and practice --- and has masqueraded as Biblical morality for so long that it is simply accepted without question by most Christian people. Before they can cry "conspiracy" at a bunch of DIY music nerds, paranoid pharisees need to recognize the lies they themselves have swallowed --- and understand that blind phobia of postmodern cultural production is neither consistent with their core beliefs, nor a loving way of engaging their children.

In lashing out without understanding the ideological underpinnings of either their own or their target's paradigms, M.A.N. is absolutely no better than the legions of ignorant, unquestioning "bluecollar postmoderns" who look to MTV or Pitchfork Media as oracles of truth.

Instrumental music

My March/April column for Prism Magazine, a social action-oriented publication for more progressive Christians. It's on the place of contemporary instrumental music in the religious consciousness (i.e., how does a person of faith appreciate a band like Mono?).

Sound and Fury

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

s + f = 0
.: |s| = |f|

Unless both s AND f = 0, then:
Both s AND f are quantifiable and non-zero.

So:
Sound = x (an integer)
Fury = -x
or vice versa.

Which means:
Positive sound + negative fury = nothing (x - x = 0)
Negative sound + positive fury = nothing (-x + x = 0)
Negative sound + negative fury = something twice as bad (-x - x = -2x)

But
Postive sound + postive fury = twice the sound or twice the fury
depending on how you look at it

Either way, sounds good to me.

Post-everything

I'm sick to death of irony. I'm also sick of tension, tolerance, sarcasm, and the despotic imperialism of the postmodern, along with the smug condescension of its legions of followers. Who knew relativism could be such an absolutist, totalitarian dictator? Modernism gave us two world wars and the Holocaust before we wisely gave up on it. So after all the dismantling, all the deconstruction, all the touting of pluralism, what do we have? Hipsters. We may not be hell-bent on assimilating the Other anymore, but we certainly don't embrace it. We just co-opt it and sell it, and if you're not buying, you're a bigot.

Pardon me, but what the fuck?

I pray for the return of narrative, beauty, and common struggle.


+ (See John Leland's Hip: The History, The Baffler's Commodify Your Dissent, & David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise)

Playing:
Knut - Terraformer
Ocean - Here Where Nothing Grows
Stars of the Lid/Labradford - The Kahanek Incident