Brakes slip and wind pulls,
rain-sheets Rothko my vision.
I’m still having fun.

Public Radio
from Colorado brings me
All Things Considered

Not sure if I’m done
mourning my past, but I know
it’s time to move on.

Afraid of failure,
I try on and off new mes.
Metamorphosis.

Border crossing is, he continues, is in anthropological sense a ritual:

The border ritual reproduces the meaning and order of the state system. The border ritual is a secular and modern sort of divine sanctity with its own rite of sacrifice. Several hundred clandestine migrants die en route to Europe each year. From January 1993 to July 2007 the deaths of more than 8800 border-crossers were documented in Europe. The Mediterranean Sea is turned into a cemetery for the transgressive travellers.

Border crossing can be experienced in terms of honour and shame:

A legal journey is regarded as an honourable act in the spirit of globalism and cosmopolitanism. The legal traveller passes the border gloriously and enhances his or her social status, whereas the border transgressor is seen as anti-aesthetic and anti-ethical (they are called ‘illegal’ and are criminalised). We live in an era of ‘world apartheid’, according to which the border differentiates between individuals. While for some the border is a ‘surplus of rights’, for others it is a ‘color bar’ (Balibar 2002: 78–84).

We prefer stability, except complete stability is boring.

Also, we prefer stability, but we are creatures of the natural world, and everywhere in the natural world, organisms only achieve stability with violence at the edges.

Life requires growth; life is growth. The only things that are really stable are non-living things. (Maybe this explains our infatuation with golems, robots, and other inanimate but living beings.)

All populations eventually hit resource boundaries. Due to this, there are punctuated die-offs, or asteady background noise of death. Populations come into conflict with others over common resources and violence emerges. In other words, the violence of limited resources is inherent in life, because life must grow and consume resources in order to survive, which I’ll define as “simply to live in the first place.” Life = growth, and growth inevitably leads to resource issues which threaten growth. Anything that threatens growth, that threatens life, IS violence. (This is a mistaken thread of thought, but I’ll get to “why” further down.)

Humans develop different ways to manage this violence.

1) Move, thus expanding resource boundaries and eliminating the source of conflict. This only works until all places are filled, or all resources have been claimed. This might be part of the fascination with “natives” out in “natural” territories, where we perceive people still have the freedom to up and move, and havent’ “developed” the further ways of managing the violence inherent in existing.

2) War. In other words, resolve resource conflict through direct violence against others. If you can’t liberate yourself by moving, the violence inherent in resource limitations remains and must be managed somehow. War involves attempting to direct the violence AWAY from you and towards SOMEONE ELSE. Inevitably there is some blowback, and even when so unevenly matched as to be “no contest,” people still don’t generally like war, so eventually other options are pursued (one hopes).

3) Invent/discover. Another way of resolving resource issues themselves – not by moving yourself, but by moving the boundaries by finding ways to increase abundance. This is uniquely human – to use our intellects to learn new ways of utilizing existing and new resources in order to expand our resource limitations. We are creative, we grow ourselves, we are life upon life.

4) Bureaucracy. Within society, power is exercised to limit growth. Think, population control. This is a form of structural violence, when in a hierarchical society, the management is imposed and obfuscated through administration. (See Graeber’s Malinowski lecture)

5) Empire. Through a combination of the above methods, empire involves creating spaces of safe growth surrounded by conflict. You push the violence to the edges, allowing the core to enjoy continued growth, relatively oblivious to the realities of the world. There are resource limitations, but only people on the edges of society experience them.

Of course, there’s also diplomacy and self-management, but since we live in a top-down society, this too is a form of violence. “We” are not getting together and agreeing on sustainable choices for society. To the extent that it happens, it is expressed through the structurally violent systems of bureaucracy and empire. Think of China’s population growth laws.

But we know that, given education and reasonable stability, people choose to not have children. Privileged populations limit themselves.

So what’s the problem?

Sustainable development, population control, seem to feel terrible to people, frightening. Why? I believe that, left to their own devices, people would choose these options. People would self-manage.

There are two problems, both sharing the same solution. One is misinformation coming from those with vested interests in maintaining their own personal, privileged status quo. Powerful interests not only misinform, they also activate and nurture people’s natural fears of the violence of bureaucratic imposition. Some other people OVER THERE are going to discuss on our behalf and then agree to yet MORE rules we would rather not have, and we’re going to be stuck dealing with them. Who wants that?

Indeed. Who wants any of this hierarchical administrative violence?

The solution is direct democracy. The solution is a non-hierarchical society of consent.

Yes, things that need to happen do eventually happen in administrative societies like ours. But it becomes much more difficult over time, as power concentrates and, resentment over the exercise of power grows.

“Smart liberals” bang their heads against the tables and wonder why everyone doesn’t understand what “we” all need to have happen. But of course there is resistance. On both the right and the left people are frustrated with bureaucracy and top-down administration. Unfortunately they don’t really realize that’s what’s frustrating them. People are alienated from decisions being made about their lives on every side, and this is a dangerous brew.

Those in power, and those who feel they are smarter than everyone and know what needs to be done, are afraid of giving up power, and afraid of giving up control and the speed of life. If people need to be involved in everything and consent to everything, it’ll take longer for things to get done. Maybe. But it takes forever for things to get done now! Our representational democracy is nearing the end of its life. What will replace it?

Unlike animal populations, human populations choose to manage their own size. It need not be enforced from on high. Rather than structural violence to manage the stupid breeding and greedy masses, education and open discourse enables nonviolent management on a personal level through individual choice.

And here’s where the “life = growth” thing is wrong. Ultimately, I believe it would be possible for a human population to self-manage itself to a place of stability, but still be alive, vital, healthy. How is that growth? It may be metaphorical growth, but really it’s just change. Life grows, it’s what life does — but when populations reach boundaries, they experience constant change, while still living, but not growing. Humans have the ability to find ways to self-manage our growth through conscious, informed choice, without experiencing violence. Internalizing the limits within each individual, the violence would disappear in a puff of smoke. Perhaps this relates to Graeber’s ideas in Fragments about imaginary counterpower, in that the violence doesn’t disappear, but we keep it in an imaginary place that informs each person’s individual choices and actions. Outside of society, but within each individual, the only ethical options.

A numerically stable society with well-managed sustainable resources wouldn’t grow, but would certainly contain a lot of vibrant change as everyone went about living and enjoying and inventing. “Smart growth” is just a growth-obsessed society’s only way of imagining what really needs to happen: managed, contained living. Which sounds terrible if you think it’s being forced on you. Not so bad if you choose it for yourself.

Hmm, sounds like the “affinity groups” of the direct democracy/direct action realm…

There was a thread on the Doctor Who Forum where someone wondered if fan scripts ever get made into episodes. Someone gave the excellent advice that, if you want to write for Doctor Who, what you really need to ask yourself is, “do I want to be a television script writer?” Because, while you can write all the fan fiction you want, there’s a lot more work, and generalist work, involved in achieving an actual episode of the show.

I’ve often thought, “oh, I’d like to teach science or anthropology,” or, “I’d like to fix Macs for a living,” or, “I’d like to run a pub” or “get involved in global water/food access issues” — but there are more things involved in actually achieving those goals. One should want all the things involved in being a teacher or academic/professor, or all the things involved in general computer repair, software and network support. One needs to want to run a business and all that entails, or get into law or fundraising. These generalities are a bit more daunting to take on board. Also, when it comes to global causes and changing the world, I think I’m adjusting my perspective to see the utility of small contributions and changes, and one’s small place in larger projects over which one has little control.

I’m not sure what I’m capable of, which can terrify me when thinking about potential goals. But, trying to get there is the whole point. Trying to surround myself with people and activities that nurture and encourage my humanity, and hopefully being a part of that for others. Trying to increase my organizational and learning skills, to live better and more wholly, and finding ways to be happy with the journey.

Gilbert’s quest feels to me a little like the traditional mission of the avant-garde artist. She is keen to discover her real self, the one concealed by a middle class commitment to husbands, babies and suburbs. But it’s not long before we see that she is also a postmodernist. For she is searching not for a single self, but for several of them.

This is a book about eating, praying AND loving. Gilbert seeks her self in Italy, Indian AND Indonesia. Gilbert is tempted along the way to cultivate one of these existential modalities. But no. She refuses to choose…

This is the postmodern voice. When told that one ‘life choice,’ one ‘self choice,’ must cost us the other, the postmodernist says, “I refuse to choose. I will have them both.”

Indeed.

But this doesn’t mean I’m not an adult, in the guilt-inducing false child/adult dichotomy. I’m not very interested in being “an adult” and feeling bad about when I’m “not working” or living up to my potential or whatever (what kind of potential are we talking about?). Beating myself up over these things just makes things worse, at least for me. Maybe that sort of negative, guilt-ridden motivation works for some people.

I’m interested in being a healthy, full human being. Human beings are always changing, and change isn’t always progressive or healthy. Human beings aren’t work machines, and to become one wouldn’t be good. I’m interested in being kind, and treating others, and myself, with respect, intelligence and playfulness. In trying to guide my change in healthy ways that are progressive for me.

Much the same way that capitalism’s focus on profit and as the primary value of action (rather than other values like, say, accomplishing useful things, or mutual aid, or enjoying life), and competition as the primary mode of being, damages us all, stunting the humanity and autonomy of even the most priviliged people, so does the protestent work ethic restrain us from being full human beings, happy with ourselves, kind to ourselves.

Sure, I have goals. Thinking about the above has helped refine them. And I have work to do. But, working on them is the end in itself: living. The means are the end. The work I need to do is growth towards a better, happier me, not just work so I can get something.

Put another way, I want to internalize and live out certain values, rather than acting a part and meeting expectations.

I have a lot of growth to do. It’s nice to have a few days where the above seems clear in my mind. (Reading Anarchism and its Aspirations has helped, as these things sometimes do.) But I so easily return to negative thinking, hopelessness at all I have yet to learn and do. I need to internalize these values and not let myself be so easily cognitively trapped — however materially trapped I am — in the workaday world and its ways of thinking and oppressing.

Being upset by things like tween bikini waxing, and inspired by things like RightRides, also helps, in a motivational sense…

For example:

I was thinking recently about serial fiction. The BBC has done an updated adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, with cell phones and twitter. The creators’ contention is that Sherlock isn’t defined by 19th Century ephemera like frock coats and gas lamps, but by things like the unique characterization of a detective who solves mysteries by deductive reasoning, and explains his methods and reasoning.

I also learned that House, MD is loosely based on Holmes. Certainly Holmes was a popular precursor to many other popular and recurring characters in detective fiction like Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

I found myself thinking of novels and serial fiction as such modern phenomena: television shows, characters like Poirot, science fiction “universes,” and all these things leading to the peculiar phenomenon of “fans” who follow specific characters or universes. But on reflection, people have always liked to revisit favorite characters and worlds. From Greek gods and heroes to Native American legends and stories, “experiencing a very real social connection to imaginary beings and telling story after story about them” seems, on reflection, to be a human universal.

But where does the Western mass media version originate? The creation of so much serial fiction that we can view it as a phenomenon — and product! — unto itself, with fan clubs (Hercules spawned roman cults, so I guess that’s not necessarily new…) — where does it come from?

Let’s work it backwards: authors can make a living writing serials and reusing characters and worlds because owners of presses (magazines, newspapers, TV networks) will happily pay them. There is an audience. Where does the audience come from? Increased literacy and spending power, perhaps. Maybe also Marxist alienation! But let’s get more material. Where did magazines et al. come from in the first place? Because Wikipedia suggests that serial fiction has been around almost as long as magazines.

It looks like magazines appeared out of the newspaper and gazette subscriptions in the 17th and 18th centuries. But where did they come from? It turns out the earliest regularly-published, standard-format publications were handwritten newsletters in Italy and Germany in the 16th century. Merchants and politicos were willing to pay for information to get an edge. And, I guess it’s not surprising that enterprising publishers inventing subscription busines models and the like saw a benefit to adding entertainment and art into the mix. The first magazines begain in the mid 1700s, and the first serial fiction was being published soon after.

Oh, and those early handwritten newsletters were handwritten because printing presses were too slow at the time! Oh, hello, Internet!

Discovering I like “modern” art, and exploring Autechre’s 2010 albums, Oversteps and Move of Ten, I came across this review of Oversteps that is really more like an art critic’s review of Autechre’s 20-odd year career, followed by a short review of the album. It’s one of the best writeups I’ve seen of their music, and also helped me flesh out my thinking on art in general. I even decided to wander the halls of MoMA a couple times while listening chronologically to all of Autechre’s back catalog.

“Like all good art, Autechre allows itself to be symptomatic, instead of futilely trying to be socially relevant,” writes the reviewer.

On a recent visit to the Met, the Modern area was mostly closed for installation, prompting me to explore earlier art more. Exploring Braque, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and others, it struck me how much art has changed. Particularly post-photography. There are many other things about “modernity” that influence artistic expression, but I am stuck on the idea that mechanized means of production — and reproduction — greatly affected the art world. One begins to understand the point of, say, Warhol.

Autechre are creating music decades after the invention of tools to make music electronically. Tape loops, record players, turntables, synthesizers, hip-hop, disco, remixing… Music has been made for half a century out of the tools dreamt up in the 40s and 50s. So many factors have influenced changes in art and aesthetics. The blooming of the middle class as both audience and producers of art, rather than just elites and patrons; post-war industrialization and invention leading to easy reproduction and re-use of art…

no electronic musician today can create without doing so on the administered grounds of an abstracted avant-garde moment which pioneered both electronic products and likewise the principals that they are somehow liberating which comes along with them. In short, the avant-garde slipped into the culture industry and the administration of younger generations through products. No artist today can use a synth or music software without being tacitly forced to subscribe to the obscured cultural zeitgeist of generations earlier

This is true of all instruments; they are products of a previous cultural zeitgeist. After all, Mozart did not compose for the piano, because it didn’t exist yet; his era’s pianofortes were rather different in sound. But no previous artistic age emerged from such industrial mass production and engineering, so perhaps there is a fundamental difference.

Artists of the past sought to master and perfect their vision. In “the modern era,” this sometimes seems to have shifted towards a constant exploration of boundaries, a desire to stretch and redefine our limitations. Perhaps this is endemic to “the modern era.” And, yes, I think the best art is more symptomatic than overtly engineered. Evolutionary rather than intelligently designed, you might say. The latter most often seems to me to produce mere curiosities.

Regardless of the validity of my judgement (perhaps the servings were just right!), it led me to wonder about how universal this experience is.

I recall being young, and how important it was to have my own things. Sharing’s great, but having your own serving or toy can make you feel more individual, independent, or adult. Hand-me-down’s are understandable, but you’d rather have your own that’s unique to you; it’s tied up with your sense of identity, maybe. Even as a grown-up, I’m inclined to buy a new “something” for myself rather than have someone else’s used things, even if “refurbished,” although economic circumstances are highly influential in this decision process.

But, how much of this is a universal human urge? How much of it is influenced by a culture that highly values newness and ties identity to material posessions? As a young person, do you sense the need to have your own things because you see it as something adult figures value? Or are these innate urges that modern marketing merely magnifies? Does this urge go all the way back to our ancestors who may have valued the tools and supplies that served their survival in an uncertain world, and looked to cling to them and defend them from loss, damage or misuse?

As our species faces ever more pressing issues of sustainability, and (hopefully) questions the deep assumptions of capitalism, can we find ways to encourage and magnify the also human urge to share resources wisely and efficiently? Is there a possible world where three young boys out on the town decide to get just one large serving of fries to share rather than each purchasing their own? (Or is that actually pretty common in many places, and I’m limited by only seeing one example, with these boys, in this city, in this part of the world?)