Et tu, E-Text?

Elude the messenger who kills with words.

You/we/us are reading e-text in the here and now. In “normal” dialogue I/we cannot communicate except through mutual negotiation of meaning and the repair of mistaken assumptions. Or deliberate lies.

A message in any form, hieroglyph or e-reader, is not the problem. The issue is how the delivery system shapes our behavior and expectations of human-environment interaction. So what’s the beef with technology and e-books?

Per patron saint M. McLuhan (again) the medium is the massage. As applied here e-reading is delivered in sections bit by byte doled out as allowed by the screen. It is a medium that provides limited exposure to unlimited sources. It requires highly focused nanosecond attention on temporary text-as-image rather than text as extension of printed narrative. The screen is always in focus but out of context. As always, the object as thing-in-itself communicates more than the content.

Hold a book and you hold past, present and future. You hold, smell, feel, clutch and grasp a thing that contains magic words and cultural connection. Reach for the book and engage the sensorium via ink and paper. To hold a book is to hold a legacy of dead trees, a sacrificial act of martyrdom.

It is to hold a semi-conscious connection to what it means to be alive, literate and part of a culture of words, of language and ideas. In a sense, every book is a bible. To give/receive a book is to give/receive a part of someone’s mind and engage in the human act of exchange.

What goes around comes around. What we grasp also holds us by the throat, or can lead us by the hand and mind. The choice is ours only if we exercise the right to make a choice.

Technology makes choices for us by colonizing the human environment. E-books are symptoms of technological cuteness, possibly a fetish for the insecure cool and neurotic hip. The techno-portable object requires that you are also mobile and portable. Impermanent and displaceable /replaceable. You consume the object and the object consumes you as a point-of-sale marketing niche to be spit out when done.

E-readers as a technological device implement the market algorithm of consumer electronics. It’s a recipe that guarantees immediate gratification for the price of human passivity and blind faith in machines. As multiple vendors pander to each desire or impulse we then end up scattered and dispersed. The whole cannot become more than a sum of its parts if some of those parts are missing.

As a defiant act of proprioception take a pencil to paper and feel the connection between hand and imaginary ideal. So many possibilities…so many compromises and negotiated settlements! So much more than type, click and redo. Your imagination is beyond the limits of a Microsoft thesaurus.

E-books contribute to the diaspora of a cohesive human mind. It is part of a comfortable plague that demands our money, time and essence.

Literacy is a wondrous thing because it is a human invention, made by hand and at times delivered by tongue. Do not let your words arrive canned and preprocessed. Demand free-range thought and organically grown text.

No easy resolution to the contradictions that are now appearing on your screen.

Peace, at least for the time being.

Ghetto Fabulous

World-wide sales of luxury goods are surging this year, fueled by double-digit growth in China and a resurgence in the more mature markets of the U.S.

Luxury spending is expected to rise 8% to €185 billion ($274 billion) according to the Bain & Co.'s closely watched Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study, released Tuesday.

Apple, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations in China… earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

A Canadian study on the income of artists by Michael Maranda, an assistant curator at the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto, Ontario has a sad conclusion. Maranda paints a picture of poverty. Average visual artists' incomes in Canada, at $20,000 a year, are $7,000 below the national median. The average visual artist works 26 hours a week doing studio work, supplemented by 14.5 hours on art-related jobs, and 7.6 hours not related to art.

Many indicators, including a record-setting 2011, show the firearms industry continues to thrive in a down economy and that the potential exists for another strong sales year in 2012. The $4 billion firearms and ammunition industry stands apart from other industries that are struggling in the slow economy. Demand for guns has continued at a robust pace since late 2008, about the time Obama was elected.

a postmortem about postmodern etc.

What comes after post-postmodernism?

? Neo post-postmodernism ?

? A pre-infinite ?

? An Irrefutable Totality ?

There is no all-encompassing Totality because we would have to think about ourselves in relation to It.

But there is no It.

There is just an IS. An ongoing process comprised of other processes. Think cosmically.

There is no postmodern because its birth declared it stillborn. The IS is the super-ultra-hyper-fast nano-quantum zooming non-stop chug-chug rhythm of our collective virtual essence.

If you feel fragmented it is because you are.

Tangential thought as advanced cognitive processing.

Sometimes fragmented sentences serve as beacons as echoes of our fragmented world. Sometimes they don’t. Many times images speak louder than actions 'cause deaf words mimic ambivalent inertia.

Sometimes multitasking/hyper-productivity/attention /deficit inducing disorder causes exploding high stress brains to scatter across an emotional battleground of self-doubt. Sometimes.

How to solve this problem in 6 easy steps:

1ne: Find your genitals.

They may have been misplaced, lost, stolen, appropriated, abused or colonized. But find them and reacquaint yourself with your own sexuality…in whatever way you decide.

2wo: Reclaim your body from the body-snatching market-place and pawn shop. We already serve as a donor organ between our molecular selves and Walmart. Between your DNA and sweat produced for someone else’s timeshare. Activate your body upon redemption. Express yourself in incomprehensible fits of joy!

3ree: Get high on your own energy. Your aura is a time-limited perpetual motion machine.

4our: Create because creativity is the voice of the life-force. The energy that regenerates our essence of being. So be anything but create it by your own hand…or two.

5ive: Connect as in connect to and with others in frequent real-time face to face interaction. If you do not have a community, build one.

6ix: Party like there is no tomorrow…because there isn’t.

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The global village is a company town:

A daydream about ADHD, multitasking, hyper-productivity, buy-buy-buy, work-work-work and the need for speed.

‘Velocity' is the key word of Paul Virilio's thinking, speed is the post-modern treasure, and the capital of modern society.

Reality is no longer defined by time and space, but in a virtual world, in which technology allows the paradoxical existence of being everywhere at the same time.

But this dispersal to everywhere means that you are nowhere at all.

The loss of roots, city, and country in favor of globalization implies the loss of rights and of democracy, as these are contrary to the immediate and instantaneous nature of information. In Paul Virilio's view, Marshall McLuhan's global village is nothing but a 'World Ghetto'

Velocity for the sake of immediate gratification and indulgence of the id.

Speed of cash exchange from private pockets to multinational accounts.

Rapid detection of response to blips in productivity and consumption.

Immediate deterrence of cultural/political threats to seamless control.

Quick transformation of rebellion into a new marketing niche

Instantaneous reformation of authentic identity to ahistorical caricature.

Zooming for the sake of zooming without a map, destination or reason.

Art as a nanosecond distraction on the autobahn of life.

Art as a pit-stop and potty break.

Art as a rest-stop with multiple digital views

Art as a park bench located Nowhere in Particular.

Art as a drag on the velocity of retail commodity sales

Art as a melancholy reminder of being a sentient being.

Besides, you cannot speak truth to power because,

a. You are irrelevant in relation to the totality of spectacle

b. Power is deaf, dumb and blind

c. Power doesn’t give a shit

Perhaps a quasi-sane approach is a better defense as noted by Baudrillards’ remark about a delusional course toward the world. If the irrational is the only rational choice then reality is a mere eye-blink of every day life.

Make art that stops traffic...and detours our journey into oblivion by pointing us toward a positive life-space.

It is here, on the high-wire of surreality that creatives hold the edge. The ability to imagine the impossible and thrive in chaos. As noted by Rene Cardona “Combat violent ignorance through creative illumination!"

Creative Psychosis: A Declaration of Independence

Let there be a free-for-all of gender-class and intra-ethnocide. Let ARTexplode upon this fascist night and let fall a rage of color sound image word and cheap shoes!

Psychological researchers Daniel Nettle and Helen Clegg sent a questionnaire to a range of artists by advertising in a major visual arts magazine and writing to poets appearing in Who's Who in Poetry. On analyzing 425 responses, the psychologists found that artists and schizophrenics scored equally high on "unusual cognition", a trait which gives rise to a greater tendency to feel in-between reality and a dream state, or to feel overwhelmed by one's own thoughts. At its worst schizophrenics lapse into psychosis realized as a complete break with reality. Otherwise, artists were reported to be more sexually active than schizophrenics.

I demand the right to not be all right!

An errant question might be … what if psychosis is an option…or a need? Not a DNA mandate or psychosocial deformity but a real choice of…to be or not to be…insane? Is such a psychosis an addiction? A chaotic self-indulgence?

Or is it a socially transmitted disordering of life in a violent and calamitous world. Insanity as a sanctuary in a world truly gone mad as our political lemmings race to the cliff.

May the ghost of Kenneth Patchen answer our life-line call. I fear the option of no reposit no return. I think of the schizo-artist Martin Ramirez in a self-contained world of images while assigned to the surreal world of the asylum. Harry Gamboa, the patron saint of Chicano anomie has been of immense help to me.

Pass the shrooms and salsa. We need a 5150 hold on a Club Med cruise.

A Manifesto Against Useless Crap

A riff on devolution

1. The world economy depends on selling stuff - mostly Useless Crap- stuff that is irrelevant to human existence but satisfies self-indulgence for the Must Have Next Big Thing. The production of Useless Crap does not benefit humanity, it pollutes the earth and further depletes natural resources.
2. Since all nations of the world are dependent upon producing and selling Useless Crap it is impossible for them to change and to act upon an alternative form of social contract. As a result the earth will continue to be exploited and polluted until nearly uninhabitable. Climate change is a symptom linked to decades of producing Useless Crap.
3. Automated production eliminates the need for human labor but also eliminates the income necessary to buy Useless Crap. As a result of these two interacting forces (climate change and the loss of income) basic human needs such as food, shelter, health care etc. will be unmet. The net result is economic and environmental misery for most of the human race. The rapid increase of worldwide human suffering will result in social disintegration and global chaos. A worldwide welfare state will be required to sustain daily existence.
4. There is no profit incentive for sustaining a human population beyond what is necessary to produce the essentials for survival, an economy of scale. A global dictatorship is the only solution. However, as in the case of Nazi Germany, a final solution requires the extermination of many humans for the survival of the elite few. Of course this form of extermination has always been in effect through warfare, terrorism and state sponsored death via benign neglect. The killing/dying off of large populations will become more obvious due to the accelerating disintegration of the natural environment. Global catastrophe sharpens the debate as to what is to be produced and who will survive. Selective mass death has become the only alternative to the total extinction of all of humanity. A default to a formal and institutionalized One Government - beyond the current G8 - is the only option that allows the elite to survive and thrive. Soylent Green as eco-fuel.
   

The First BIG QUESTION:

How to Survive the Global Metropolis?

The Second BIG QUESTION :

How to Decorate our techno-human world?

(See Marinetti and the Futurists)

Little knowledge/lots of questions

I don’t know much. What little I do know I try to build upon. However, existential angst drives my mania and the building is becoming a delirious maze of confused and contradictory thought. Escher meets Kafka. What used to be said for poetic effect is now overtaking s0-called rational thought. See there? A willing mistake that is a sacrilegious weavers flaw.

What to do? Where and how to go? How to save yourself from inevitability. When the real is surreal then all fabric is frayed, all thought at loose ends. To reconstruct is to build a rickety raft on a delusional sea. Yet without this there is no ground, no point of reference other than sitting on the spinning needle of an erratic compass.

The best option is to build from within the sentient being, using flesh and blood as a canvas or a projector upon the world. Why should we live in a state of knee-jerk reaction to a dysfunctional super-ego? No single truth but plenty of consequences.

Why lip-sync empty lines from a preordained script? Your noh sense nonsense is as good as the next digital psychosis.

Our blood and bones are parked in a loading zone waiting for the next bus to the graveyard of the stars. Might as well make money.

Earthquakes are sporadic alarm clocks that remind us of mortality and canned goods.

When planning your life it is best to carefully choose which history should be regurgitated. Mix and match @ pennies per lb. and let the chips fall where they may clone bastard offspring and a thankless brood.

The greatest horror is the realization that without collective recollection there is no possibility of empathy or altruism. There is no history to learn from and no connection, or culpability, for past transgressions. Hence no guilt and nothing to repair. No hope or ambition beyond another pair of Versace socks with industrial diamond studs.

This bring us to the realm of idiosyncratic aesthetics as personal identity. You are what you wear. Costume as content. Language as a plastic bauble, dangling like fresh bait before incomprehensible Others. A desperate relational world of neediness and aggressive rejection. We are all becoming borderline narcissists seeking others like a spider seeks a fly. Love is the passion to consume. Cannibalism is a form of emotional masturbation. An auto-erotic process where the profane other is consumed for the sake of energy to procreate. Did the Mayans have it right? Necro-narcissism?

Hhmmmm. Is 12/12 a tipping point? Not a cosmic apocalypse but the end of the delusion of history? Baudrillard sez xyz here. A tipping point where a straw on the camels back cracks with the words “All is unreal. All is a lie”

I feel sorry for the poor bastards who will still fight wars with guns and bullets.

What to do? Build communities of refuge. Build sanctuaries for hope. We can at least host an enjoyable delusion of communitarian resistance. Of course there will have to be rules, membership requirements and a border patrol. High orgies instead of high mass.

And pigment. Lots of pigment, odd sounds and found words reworked into experimental languages. Dancing will be required upon birth with poetry and song soon to follow. And beer. Lots of beer.

Currently there is blind allegiance to the algorithm of maximum profit and minimal loss. Our survival requires that this algorithm is disrupted, impaired and discredited. All this with the knowledge that it remains a ruling force that will never be defeated.

So we valiantly party on. A glorious melancholy bitter sweet joy that we are doomed yet have a sliver of a will to thrive. The vapor of Kool Aid has replaced oxygen.

And it is good.

On blood and barcaloungers

Cannibalism Revisited
[The Four Necessities of a Good Life]

The necessity of blood: The blood of Others is the price for our personal comfort and a sense of economic well-being. Violence is a requirement by which we obtain and sustain our leisure. By extension, war conquest and endless police actions are prerequisites for economic security. However, while global conquest insures domestic stability it is bloodlust and sadomasochism that are the underpinnings of infinite expansion. No Pain No Gain

The necessity of slavery: The oppression of Others is a requirement for individual freedom. An abundance of slaves and desperate workers allow for low cost goods and secures the comfort of those in the dominant class. It also provides a vehicle for the fulfillment of sadistic tendencies. Through slavery the erotic experience of sadism is obtained via violence, force, bondage and psychological warfare. Racism, which is an extension of sadism, is an institutional process through which the Other is constantly recast as subhuman and therefore deserving of contempt. We love to loathe

The necessity of waste: Our wealth is measured not only by what we hold but also by what we discard. That is, acts of binge consumption and ecocide are a public display of our ability to acquire, abandon and re-acquire material goods. In this sense material acquisition and wastefulness are expressions of competence. Hence, as consumers we feel that by acquiring objects we are therefore competent "hunter-gatherers". In reality we are cannibals that feed upon other humans and the earth itself. You are who you eat

The necessity of ignorance: Ignorance is developed and sustained through the systems of education, religion and popular culture. Ignorance is a commodity. It is a renewable resource that guarantees an abundance of slaves and a compliant public. Ignorance expressed as blithe idiocy and hysterical blindness are forms of denial that block any sense of moral outrage or pangs of conscience. It is a process that grants absolution for our most venal sins. Bliss is ignorance

Hegemonic multiculturalism

It is extremely important to grasp the urgency regarding the terminal condition of humanity. For us, practitioners of the healing arts, this desperate situation creates a mandate to become politically active global citizens. It requires us to comprehend the hierarchy and function of power as realized in the conquest and distortion of authentic human experience.

In this regard the terms diversity and multicultural anything have become markers for forced political correctness or sappy rainbow filled odes to racial harmony. Such bullshit. It is a cynical approach that casts cross-cultural understanding as something worthless and superficial. Yet it has a ring of truth. All this talk of cultural understanding and multiethnic hand-holding is a spectacle of denial that real life is based on moving cash and disrupting regional economies. That ethnicity, gender and class are more than components of our identity but also serve as conduits for personal interaction within a broader social structure, an experiential totality that dominates our lives and is relatively immune to our existential protests. So we find ourselves in a paradox that for all of us to survive and thrive we must take up and appreciate a different and more critical view of Otherness.

It requires us to pursue transhuman knowledge with a goal of infusing practice with a deeper understanding of life in the margins and back-alleys of the global village. As a starting point we should comprehend and respect the relationship between ethnicity and colonial domination. We should strive to become competent in identifying how the variables of race, sex and money shape our individual psychological experiences. It is the interaction of these variables that, along with early attachment, guides the developmental trajectory of individuals within a larger historical, cultural and political context.

And why this sense of urgency and desperation about humanity?

This is obviously a rhetorical question because deep in our gut we feel the pervasive threat to human life as it appears in war, torture, ecocide, racism, domestic violence and child abuse. Because we are becoming un-human in that our bodies are not truly representative of ourselves. That our minds, bones and flesh are becoming nothing more than extensions of the free market. We are like the pods in the Matrix, a consumer pod that exists only to serve the corporate state via our expenditure of labor and the recycling of cash. The ethnic experience illustrates this most clearly in that so many of us continue to be brutalized, displaced, confined and murdered in the service of financial imperative. The global village has become a company town.

In the domain of psychology the warnings about the dehumanization wrought by HMO’s is commented upon by practitioners of all stripes. The alarm sounds out a loud and clear warning that we are being forced to turn away from being healers and abandon our notions of insight, intuition and empathy. While claiming that “evidenced base practices” are more effective, witness how the underlying motive of cheap short term care echoes the ethos of the bottom line that no care, and therefore no cost, is the treatment of choice. Think Katrina.

The study of Otherness simultaneously illustrates the psychology of power and the motives for domination, control and exploitation. This returns us to the fundamental question; what is the relationship between the individual and society? What is the mind? What is it in relation to the culture in which it is formed? How do the variables of ethnicity, gender and class shape our worldview? How do we (or can we – should we) resist?

Yours in thought,

Ricardo E.