Transitions:

i stay busy, apply for work that is suitable to my resume.  Since I have been a loner and have moved a lot in my life I am used to entertaining myself, reading interesting, 'difficult' books, playing and composing music, contemplating.

It's been about 8 months since last posted on my blog; the season of the cicada has come and passed, I remain unemployed, and although i have enjoyed my forced 'hiatus' I realize the need for some kind of structured social participation to keep me from descending into total degradation.  At this point I am well into a semi-impoverishment that has been helpful in reinforcing my notions about how the U.S. 'is' in relation to poverty.  Poverty is not an aberrant by-product of our current economic system, it is essential to it.

Two things I'd like to avoid are landlords and bosses.  I went to grad school to avoid the latter, and after the last two experiences renting -- one requiring litigation -- I shy at the thought of signing another lease.  I'd truly rather live in a tent in the woods.  I suppose a lot of revolutionaries have wound up in similar circumstances.

Experiencing the cicadas this year brought some insight into the weaknesses of my chosen power animal, or my guiding metaphor, if you prefer.  The first and most obvious drawback is that once the cicada begins to sing, he heralds that the end is nigh.  The truth is still that my life has been very like the cicada, mostly spent 'underground,' a perpetual stranger and gypsy.  And I have not done much in the way of developing a healthy regime to try to extend my life after two heart attacks and a diagnosis of pre-diabetes.

Also, I notice that, though the cicada's song is often in the 'solo' mode -- it is louder and oft drowns out other natural sounds -- I found that it would soon escape my perception.  I got used to it and began to hear other things, or to take no notice of any background noise as I was working or playing outside.  I do not want my voice to be like that: I want it to be a 'hook' -- varied and interesting in tone and meaning -- to produce something that will help people in their progressive projects, to soothe and inspire, not to bore and/or annoy!

I have recently inherited a huge shell collection from my mother's eldest sister and her husband,who gathered, assembled, and catalogued most of the specimens in the 1960s.

They were childless and were lifers in the US Coast Guard. In 1962 they were lucky enough to get stationed for three years in Bermuda, and following that in Hawaii, other coastal locations where shells are (were?) plentiful. They retired to Orlando and spent many years exploring Florida, collecting shells from beaches and shell shops.

Aunt Sis piqued my interest in amateur naturalism, with specimens, field guides, collecting cards, and stories of natural wonders in far-off, exotic locations. I wonder, though, why they didn't travel more and farther after uncle George retired. They had no dependents, not even pets; and had a monthly income, though perhaps modest.

The collection includes about 50 field guides and several "scrap" books which include articles and tide charts from Hawaiian newspapers. Also the first page of Lillian's original documentation, and a Record book wherein she has catalogued much of the collection. This was done later, in the mid-seventies, after they had retired. Many of the later records are for specimens that she bought in shell shops and elsewhere, and unfortuately these mainly include the name of the shop and date of purchase rather than the actual location and date of the specimen's gathering. I can find no logic to the ordering of specimens in the Record and most locations are not specific, referring instead to 'leeward side of Oahu' or 'southern Florida beaches' so this was, probably, remembered information, not transcribed from earlier logs.

My aunt had saved two type-written pages, a kind of letter, that I presume by the conditon of those pages were written shortly after her arrival in Bermuda. In those pages she describes her trip to and first impressions of the island, and also claims that her stay there cured or at least palliated a nervous condition from which she was suffering.

Rapana thomasiana, the first specimen i reviewed using current tools has been recategorized to a synonym, with several others, of Rapana venosa. This reminded me of the entelechiological and arbitrary nature of taxonomy, of the debates between lumpers and splitters, and finally of the impact of DNA studies on whole taxons. All these things loop back to my studies of the history of science, back to my concern the contexts of categorization, the role of "that which can not yet be named" in creativity and innovation, and back to my advocacy of progressive re-orientations of creativity, if not an anarchical rejection of the primacy of or need for orientation, that intellectal habit of tethering creative endeavors to a horizon.

All this I have explained, or rather reported and perhaps must now report again. Thus the manifold gifts given and received, hopefully received wisely, received with attention to the manifold nature of gifts, and in my case, to the many folds of nature per se.

Categorization is labor, often difficult, unexciting labor accomplished through professional goodwill and the chance to find something revolutionary. Or, at times, such as is the case with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), categorization is necessary to an accounting, in order to determine billing charges for insurance companies.

Fact is, I suppose, that we may never finally seperate the labor of categorization from some kind of profit-motive, whether the profit is made directly through the actual exchange for cash or indirectly through the accrual of reputation, whether professional or amateur. Profit is the primary motive for my malacological labors; for other than the need to liquidate my inheritance I am perfectly happy to enjoy my shells aesthetically, still profoundly impressed by the vast variety to be found in nature without feeling a need to match any particular specimen to a taxon.

Here are a few specimens from a huge shell collection  recently inherited.

The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he [sic] produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)

It is essential for progressives to note that until 1980 wages in the US had "kept pace" with ever-increasing efficiency in production.  Of course this was due to collective bargaining, and wages failed to achieve parity with increased productivity only because of the relentless material and ideological class warfare carried on by employers.

After 1980, Reaganomics and its attendant deregulation and union-busting began to reduce the ratio between what workers earn and what they produce.  This should be no surprise, because Reagan and his allies were only pushing for the logical boom/bust cycles of capitalism to be allowed to continue unhindered so that they could act as the wealth-pumps that they are, funneling wealth into fewer and fewer hands.  And so we suffer the current state of affairs: widespread want and fiscal destruction in the face of over-abundance.

Soooo ... instead of being able to purchase goods outright with their hard-earned wages, workers were required to use the credit extended by the capitalists (comprised of the money retained from reduced wage parity) to buy back the goods the workers produced.  In a truly perverted double-bind that is the perfect expression of corporate greed, workers produced more and more goods per hour for rapidly declining wages, and consequently had to pay interest on the value they themselves had produced (concealed in the principal) in order to receive the dollars necessary to purchase goods they themselves had produced.

Add to this the slo-mo ponzi scheme of 401Ks and other paybacks to capitalists by labor -- money we now know is abused merely to enrich the wealthy through risky investments in which the welfare of retiring workers is never considered -- and you have the recipe for our current financial woes.

Traditionally the surpluses created by our economic cycles are destroyed through different forms of potlatch.   Rapid devaluation, or the "bubble-burst," is one form.  We have seen that the dominant forms of potlatch in the West are our throwaway consumerist culture of landfill and our penchant for war -- where both goods and labor are shredded up in a massive, interminable "clearance" -- as a solution to political problems.  In the last 50 years, with the use of an ever-more-popular strategic bombing, these "fire-sales" have become extremely efficient: we destroy the village to save it, then send in our profiteers to "rebuild."  (Though potlatch usually involved a 'gifting' redistribution of some wealth, it was mostly about the destruction of property in a kind of conspicuous consumption aimed at reputation-building on the part of the wealthy host.  My use of the term here is metaphorical, and the widespread adoption of the term literally as primarily a "gifting" or redistribution of wealth is erroneous.)

Recently we have seen large money-grabs by the capitalists in the form of trillions of dollars in bailouts.  Now that the Democrats are in charge there is a sense that the gravy train of heartless, inhuman exploitation is reaching its end.  So the super-rich seek to further line their coffers with stolen wealth, so that they can perhaps ride out this -- hopefully temporary -- leftist, peace-nik aberration, this naive concern for the practical needs of human beings as a whole that retards our oligarchy's ability to profit from the suffering of the vast majority of people on this planet, indeed, from the wholesale destruction of the planet itself, in the relentless pursuit of short-term gains!

With the election of a black man for president we may now be able to continue the course set by, among others, Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "Poor Peoples' Campaign," a course that leads to the realization that a class war ("poverty") is the source of our economic problems, a war in which discrimination according to race, gender, ability, age, sexual preference, and a host of other "differentiators" are merely expressions.

I was so strong with my 'we expected it'
and "we all are gonna go"
until I heard the last details
of his attempt to reach me

found slumped in his car
a block away trying to reach me
never again to wake, only to live
strongheart beating for hours

i was so strong until after signing
the 'Close Friend Affadavit'
that allowed me to speak his wishes
as proxy, as lifelong relation

while his lips could speak no more

never a more gentle man
will you meet, those words made for him
noble. faithful, honest, caring, kind
a blanket of words that I wrap around my grief

to make a beautiful package of all he has done
all he could have done, given a chance
and a hole appears in a space never noticed
and a light shines, removing all umbrages

a light that brands one's heart
that burns away the conceits and concerns,
and the trivialities of the daily scramble
to live the way we are told we ought

I note well the accomodation, the tiny footprint
that is the hallmark of my family
to cause others no bother, no harm
that penultimate ethic of consideration
washing down the crises swallowed

Uncle George: a true artist, self-taught
a true philosopher unschooled
who has given aid and comfort all his life
with no expectation of repayment

and all the signs i find now
sifting through his treasures
all stowed in his car, his last desmesne
a driver, a mover, a traveller to the bitter end

not so bitter i pray, though
i can only imagine the pain
the regrets of those final hours
and his attempt to reach me

merely a last expression of his concern
selfless last moments of consciousness
spent reaching out to me
I who remain ignorant of the riches lost

Bon Voyage, my friend, rest in peace

This post was inspired by an exchange between members of the NEXTLIST, upon which I lurk.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
                                                          Hamlet

"Empiricism," the name says it all ...

Why is it that people who believe science is ever so superior to metaphysics, people who are "essentially" empiricists, are always trying to school us with their 'facts' which, when they wield them in an argument, always seem like fiery swords out of the Old Testament?

Why can these scientific seekers not admit that this science they deploy has no more accurately models of "the way
things are" than metaphysics?  Is it because science, "good science," is the new religion?  For us schmucks who are truly open-minded about what reality could be like, encounters with "good" scientists might feel a bit like attending a session of the Spanish Inquisition.  Because there is certainly no one who is more intolerant that a "good" scientist faced with a "bad" believer in metaphysics.  Such scientists make no bones about abusing the metaphysician, so certain are they in their science: as certain as any zealot in his God!  And they even have their own rationalistic curses to hail upon the despised heretics.

Like the European missionaries of old, modern scientists come into the Humanities with their Enlightenment conceits, with their monstrous hybrid of empiricism and rationalism, plying their theories as certainties to professors who have long been seduced by the possibility of garnering for themselves the unquestioned authority that a scientific patina would lend to the sagging relevance of their "irrational," humanistic disciplines. The "good" scientists, with their superior funding, begin to colonize all the poor, backward disciplines with science's superior rationality, bringing the new Faith to the heathen scholars, vanquishing mystery and with it all the disciplines whose purview is that which is not empirically knowable.

Apparently, the only time that good scientists ever mention science's objectivity and it's lack of certainty (it's necessary "falsifiability") is when they need to differentiate it from religion.  As soon as this assertion is made, however, they go right back to squawking "here are the facts!" and making bald, unqualified statements about "the way it is" as determined by analytical science.  And once the "silly" non-analytical, non-empirical disciplines have been fully deprecated there will no longer be any need for scientists to hide behind their sham objectivity.  Then, with neither philosophers nor artists to object, they may wear the Robes of Mastery over their newly conquered, uni-disciplined taxono-mathematical universe.  And finally the denizens of the Business School may again feel safe walking the halls of and attending seminars in the Arts & Sciences buildings, from which they hitherto have had to take their leave in order to avoid embarrassing interlocutions with pesky philosophers and poets!

And what else is this "Science" that is given the attributes of an actor ("Science does this, Science does that"), if not the product of the kind of alienation requisite to the birthing of a demigod as described by, among others, Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx?  That alienation, where the products of man's labor, of man's imagination, are held up by him as Other and Superior to man, their creator?  But I am perhaps just silly to allude to these brilliant scholars in order to talk about science.  I know the good scientists will believe that this is so, especially since they have studied the work of neither Nietzsche, Freud, nor Marx, and never will if they can help it.

Empirical science is a field of inquiry whose purview seems infinite, but that is only because we see it as a way to explain everything, and we believe that the empirically perceivable is all there is in the universe.  The unknown is just a matter of distance that can be physically spanned, or smallness that can be optically magnified, or complexity that can be carefully un-knotted.  Got existential angst?  Here's an algorithmic solution for ya.

But everything is not a math problem.  Empirical, "normal" or "good" scientists cannot understand -- through the methods of their discipline -- anything about the human psyche, human motivations, and the artifacts that are produced as a result of those motivations. Each human is a universe unto herself.  Unfortunately that is the opinion of a distinct minority, and that is why "brain science" is ascending and the arts and humanities are disappearing from the scene as serious sources of solutions for human problems. Good science teaches us that art & philosophy are mere fancies, silly wastes of time, and mental masturbations.  And we, as human beings, will be much poorer for these lessons, because science will only be able to tame the human mysteries the way it does at present: through the use of designer personality drugs and other methods for anesthetizing the human spirit.  If, that is, one's insurance company has not already excluded one from coverage due to the discovery of certain electrical patterns in one's brain that are similar to those detected in serial killers.  In the name of a no-nonsense efficiency we will progress scientifically into a future where humanity and the humane are no longer relevant.

Note that good scientists never paint an objective picture of the possibilities of scientific innovation.  That is left to writers of fiction and other artists, with their dystopias.  Good scientists will always keep faith that Science will be the pure Savior of an ignorant and superstitious mankind, a mankind that may indeed destroy itself through using benevolent, or at least neutral Science to further its non-empirical, illogical, political and superstitious ways.  Good scientists believe that art and philosophy are fine, as long as artists and philosophers remain in their place and never challenge the superiority of science at solving all the problems in the universe.

Of course, not all scientists are "good" scientists.  People working on the edge of Artificial Intelligence, or on new interface metaphors beyond the "desktop," and in many other "blended" disciplines are looking for artists and philosophers, for all humanities scholars, to join them in an open collaboration in an environment where the mysteries are accepted as part of reality, and where science is seen as just one among many ways of modelling "reality."  Unlike the "good" scientists, the interdisciplinary scientists don't appear to confuse the model with the reality it represents, and they don't try to force their discipline's models on others -- they RESPECT non-empirical and non-rational methods as sources of new knowledge that will help "good" science progress beyond its present primitive state.

Went searching for other potential revolutionaries on VOX and found these folks:

I growl and cry, with honeyed voice,
you endure the prescience I impart,
rocking your soul, comping your trials,
honing the edge of my lonely art.

at last, free ... at last, free.

Had a great rehearsal yesterday.  It would have been truly great if Bill were here to participate.  One can only hope that he will be soon.

In their Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, Deleuze and Guattari claim that minor artists work subversively within the language of a Major (dominant) culture, yet without a "people."  Here "a people," or perhaps one could say "an audience," does not yet exist, and thus the work of the minor artist is in a sense "promethean."  Nota bene that Prometheus, in the Ancient Greek, means "forethought."  There is so much more to say about Prometheus here!  Perhaps in a future post ...

A "people," in the sense we are talking about here is the product of social change, in the movement toward equality, the movement from a minority to a majority.  D&G's formulation is soooo 20th century, and so it remains classically dialectical or "synthetic."  Political activism and social change now, however, require something different, since dialectics and universals have largely been deprecated.  We don't want a mere reversal, a new set of Masters (not even "benevolent" ones), we want to abolish the master/slave relations that are dominant in Western societies.  What will replaced these notions has yet to be discovered.  It is up to our minor artists to show us the shadowy, as of yet mysterious and unrecognizable, perhaps even monstrous outlines of what will be.  We interpret or "know" history always after the fact, in the manner of Lacan's "point de caption" or "quilting point," where meaning is always ascertained in retrospect.  (See also Walter Benjamin's "Angelus Novalis.")

We could not say, now, that Kafka remains a minor artist. Every dunderhead, neocon and freeper has heard of the term "kafkaesque," although s/he may not know its meaning nor how to properly use it in a sentence.  But what about an artist like Bob Dylan?  Was Dylan ever a minor artist, an artist without a people?  Perhaps in his early days in Minnesota.  I really need to get my hands on a good Dylan biography.   

At the end of my rehearsal yesterday I found some greasy pages in my ancient song binder, upon which I had handwritten the lyrics for Dylan's "Masters of War" --  a tune that I was probably turned on to by Bill.  And as I sang that tune, with my improving voice, I felt such power, and I envisioned the effect such a song, sung in such a way, could have on the right people/audience.  The arrangement itself would be rather tedious and boring without the power of the words and the conviction of the singer.  I guess this is true for a lot of songs: simple technically, but it's the groove and the feeling expressed in its execution and the deep meaning of the lyric that matter.

And I like Dylan's remarks on the song from the liner notes of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan:

'"Masters of War" startles Dylan himself. "I've never really written anything like that before," he recalls. "I don't sing songs which hope people will die, but I couldn't help it in this one. The song is a sort of striking out, a reaction to the last straw, a feeling of what can you do?" The rage (which is as much anguish as it is anger) is a way of catharsis, a way of getting temporary relief from the heavy feeling of impotence that affects many who cannot understand a civilization which juggles it's own means for oblivion and calls that performance an act toward peace.
 Source

I have oft noted, of late, how filled with rage, how impatient, how rude, how inconsiderate everyone, including me, seems to be.  I feel that we have once again reached the last straw.  It is significant, however, that Dylan says that the rage "is as much anguish as it is anger."  "Anguish" is used here, I presume, in its philosophical sense, as an existentialist term, where its meaning "is often understood as the experience of an utterly free being in a world with zero absolutes (existential despair)." Source   "Anguish," "angst" and "anxiety" are all psychical responses to the abstract, to the unknown or unknowable, unlike "fear," which is a response to a known, material threat.

Just before the Dylan tune, I had played another such tune, "Into the Mystic," by Van Morrison. I took the old magik Guild D25 into the bathroom to perform the tune, the acoustics were so fine and I really belted it out, hitting all the notes, no problem.

We are Ready 2 Rock!