[rhizomatic reference #101]
"Even a pawn can take down a king"
- from The Terminal List: Dark Wolf
People, people, people -
There are a lot of people, you & me
There's more money, more money, more money
Than people, people, people.
But people, with enough money, move
People with less, to do
What they would rather not do themselves.
Why money, money, money
Can move people, people, people
is because people have agreed
that money can be turned into anything
That the people have, or can make, or can do.
But, few people now are set to survive
Without the operations of the tower of what money
Has built: the roads, hospitals, plumbing, etc.
And that machine, like all things, can decay -
just like the cars that drive a large sector
of the economy; upkeep, operation, repair, replacement,
construction, from miniscule scale to macro.
How many people are employed (globally), just because
people want to, or have to, use and buy cars? And,
what if, suddenly, people just don't need cars any more?
A big factor of why people get out of bed and are forced (?)
To go into a job to "make ends meet" and as much
luxury as possible or desired, would go up
in smoke. And, people would still Want to go places
and cars make that happen.
BUT, if all those people in employed in [X] industry
Decided, hey, you know, i don't like all this rush
and hubbalaboo. I don't need a car that can give me
directions to kalamazoo - I can read a damn map myself.
Then maybe a whole lot of people could take it a little easier.
We'd have to take more direct control of food production, however,
since the farmers want something in exchange for the food,
and the truckers want something in exchange for the driving,
and the gasmen want something in exchange for the gas, etc.
AND, all those people, even if they really wanted to do all
those things for free, they really couldn't even if they
wanted to, at least because there would be no trucks if no-one
built any cars.
So we'd have to cut out trucks to cut out the gasman, which
means that all the food would have to be much closer. Which
means people would be more involved in food production if only
due to proximity and acquaintance.
OK, whatever, people may or may not want to spend more personal
time in the sourcing of their sustenance - the point is,
that if people collectively would like to chill out, we're
still gonna have to work somehow, at least to repair the
machines that do the work we don't care to do any more.
And those machines themselves have a tail that
follows them around through human activity streams
- ie. lets say we have enough space, and have built some
mechanical contraption that can do enough farming to feed us,
one person or whatever, that is solar powered. We
would still need the whole socio-economic machinery to produce
those solar panels and bring them to wherever we happen to be:
we'd still need a truck.
So even if we can somehow get more of our time back and
collectively take a breather, all those who have built to this point
did it for us, even if they didn't want to - an apparent karmic debt.
We live and Act our stories within the works of dead men
and women, drive on highways born in the minds of
dead government workers. Repopulating buildings with human
activity in our cities that were built centuries ago.
So thanks, all you eternally great grandpas...
you made it so we all seem to have to run
on a treadmill, but at least we have neat toys
.. wars a racket gonna rachet up more tho ..?
.. but perhaps the world doesn't end with a bang;
it could end with a whimper, as T. S. Eliot would say,
that of old ways of being & doing ending ..
.. causing changes so definitive as to justify saying,
"the world of our ancestors no longer exists .."
"See, greatness takes more than talent and hard work. It's about surviving the death of who you used to be"
- from Him
.. shades, thus named because
"all writers, all creators, are shadows"
- Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations
, was thinking, '..I can at least partly empathize with those con servatives who yearn for a supposedly "better" yesteryear, or rather I pity them ..
.. certainly, there were certain aspects of the past that were better than they are now, but it's also the case that there isn't a way to go back to that .. other than in memory, that is ..'
.. & yet, if the past surpassed the present in certain respects, is it still possible to retain or regain these without the 'baggage', the not so great bits ..? .. while that remains an open question, it's possible to explore trajectories for further research ..
.. surely there should be a prize for transposing theses & laws from physics into the fields of psychology & sociology, & Cory Doctorow should win it .. we've often argued here that the physical & mental spheres aren't clearly separated but rather porous & inter-con nected in @LL sorts of interesting ways; as above, so below & all that ..
.. Doctorow outlined the idea of Enshittification, the seemingly inexorable deterioration & degeneration of internet services & platforms with time, & what is that if not a restatement of the third law of thermodynamics (that order in a system similarly degenerates with time) ..?
.. the Strauss–Howe generational theory describes a sequence of generations in US & Western history that go through cycles, rising then deteriorating with time .. according to this thesis, we're currently in what the theorists call the fourth turning, which started in 2008, & is supposed to end around 2033 .. assuming we last that long ..
.. the theorists understand the fourth turning as one of 'crisis', & surely we can agree that the current 'state' of the world, such as it is, couldn't possibly warrant a more apropos designation .. the fourth turning is understood to be marked by degeneration in a wide range of fields, including wars, revolutions, & a degree of societal collapse, to list just some of the more notable characteristics ..
.. it's also important to emphasize that each past fourth turning was followed by a cyclic historical recurrence of a new 'first turning', a new high distinguished by strong institutions, an overall optimistic society, & notable achievements in all fields ..
.. indeed, there is no reason to assume this will not eventually come to pass in the next decade .. & surely we should @LL look forward to the end of this infamous, iniquitous, ignominious trajectory we're on currently, & the beginning of something new .. that is, if we fail to destroy the world & everyone & everything in it in the interim ..
...
an agentic afterword
.. it's important to keep in mind that all theories & models are just that; reifications of an ever shifting reality into images of thought that reflect it more or less accurately, but never perfectly ..
.. still, anyone who claims that what transpires over the next decade will not determine humanity's fate has a lot of heavy intellectual lifting ahead of them to demonstrate why this isn't the case ..
.. the battle for humanity's very soul will be waged by people acting in the world today, & not by models that have already determined the outcome, the latter being not so much the nature of the future, but rather whether or not we will have one ..
.. we should count ourselves lucky to live in such interesting times ..
"They think the coming disaster is going to be ecological; that the problem is political, but no, no, the great war is psychological"
- from The Prisoner
.. & maybe origin stories don't "sell" any more cuz somehow,
everybody knows we're closer to the end ..
