Okay, Brad. I get where you’re coming from (ha ha). Really glad you checked in here.
Beautiful trailer at the link you provided. It scares and saddens me beyond words to think how so much beauty can be destroyed by pig-headed persons with their heads so far up their asses, they make decisions in macrocosm which run parallel to what they do to themselves in microcosm, going blind rooting around for gold in their own entrails. Now that’s some sick yoga.
Beauty?
You say beauty?
[it] is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree for you to find refuge, peace, wisdom of the elders (multitude of counselors)
the ‘knowing animals’ basically is our close window look-in to their world
thanks to steve jobs et al
et al
et al, the 3 trillion gathered at Trump’s table
A pretty feminine engaged energy was Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook
Would we lean in more
like that…
far too lazy to grab the hi res image tonight, there are some out there…
Marco,
You told us to ‘press buttons’ right?
source? too lazy for me to get, but it was you to me, please link
Ah, thought flung into the ether, loosely, not really caring if it gathers weight and makes much sense. Thought evaporating immediately like the first snowflakes which hit the pavement, or falling like autumn leaves and while changing color and before hitting the ground, turning into butterflies which then flitter away.
Rainer Maria Elk’s got some mighty large antlers.
He falls to his knees, crowned and feathered,
and sees stars.
Rainer get up and dance: replenish the barren earth.
Rainer rise and sing, Ave Maria,
Golden waves of grain:
Booty is the beginning of error,
yanked from the terra
of Rapunzel’s head.
rainer does not dance
but flies
like icarus
push
push’
pushes
the one frame side out or two
at the most
bureaucracy is killing us now
we
need
iceberg challenge
what we need is - to love the ones we hate,
our friends
kids
spouse
motherfather
of
our / the / next / generation / survival
enjoy the show
to…
break…
frame…
yes, break break/frame with me
in the old times, they said:
break bread
love, meats, cheeses, loves
breads, eggs,
let us break break,
meaning
let us
fellowship together / or jag
This Yes song is very good. You’re a prog-head, Brad. Earliest incarnations of bands are most often better than when they figure out who they are, and too much refine their sound. I prefer stripped back, rawer stuff, with the energy and vigorous freshness of first discovery in it. Watching this Yes performance you posted (I love the meaty bass in it), I thought of early Genesis. I love the stage-dress and face-paint of Peter Gabriel.
Alchemical procedures: Genesis in a retort. Yes?
Watcher of the Skies
The comment section as sketch pad, a place to stay loose and try ideas. Doing the reverse of what one usually does, and dropping what one keeps on the margin into the frame, to disrupt what’s stiffly formal, rolling what’s in us like bowling balls at those who walk around on stilts, looking down their noses at others, and having a good laugh watching them wobble, if not falling into each other and crashing to the ground. Is this what you mean by breaking the code of the bureaucracy that is killing us, suffocating us from within? Bureaucracy which has been built up within us, hammered in and filling up all of space, closing in, collecting dust through the years, turning darker and gloomier, and not only shutting out the skies we would watch, but weighing us down so much that we cramp up in despair and don’t even imagine flying anymore.
Raven descends,
From hate to love,
And breaks the plane
To become a dove
Green Achres is the place to be
Wax wings melting into fire for thee.
Plop goes the iceberg
In the snake-oil float.
And the dove drags its wings
across a bank of snow.
(I have this image in my head of a dove with wings dipped in ink and while flying, grazing the walls and leaving behind the most wonderful calligraphy.)
Is this what you mean by breaking the code of the bureaucracy that is killing us, suffocating us from within?
In a nutshell, to break that code, we truly need to change ourselves. I really believe that is a powerful act that can ripple out and change the world.
But to break the code, we need to understand it.
I think that Max Weber provided a good understanding of bureaucracy. According to him, bureaucracy is a very efficient form of organization because of its focus on impersonality and equal application of rules in our real world of uncertainty.
Bureaucracies are meant to deal with uncertainty by rationalizing as much as possible (legal processes, social relations, work processes, etc). They are essential to modern societies, but because of their emphasis on good modern values (such as efficiency and reason), they tend to grow. The worst case of this would be the Nazis, who grew out of a very modern society, yet singled out those values and took them to the extreme.
There is an awful lot of uncertainty today. How will political leaders manage it?
In my view, this is where Trump is wrong - seeming to believe that all things, all of life in fact, could / should have the business template applied - as if there are no significant problems with that! Yea, well if the ‘free’ capitalist market could very accurately factor in long term costs and externalities then I would feel better. But it doesn’t. Yet there is increasingly the acknowledgement that there are more bottom lines that just one. But it will be tough, as even current IMF head Christine Lagarde (mentioned in the article) was found guilty of negligence when she was France’s Finance Minister. She defended and said she acted on behalf of her France (ie nationalistically). I believe that Mark Carney (governor of the Bank of England and mentioned in the same article) is one of the few who gets that capitalism as we know it is not sustainable. He also appears to have a strong moral sense (he is a Canadian after all 
). Bill Gates, today, would be another person who gets it. Now if that business leader ran for the Presidency…
I wonder about the technology titans that gathered at Trumps table. Peter Thiel loves Ayn Rand for example. I think it’s safe to say that many of them are still safely nestled in the old bubble of neo-liberalism as they experience it.
The organization / organizing principle most appropriate today requires less emphasis on instrumental connections between people and ‘rational’ solutions (especially from privileged vantage points) and more on…shall I say love?
Can love break the code? James says
I think I finally cracked your code
I’ve hacked, your system from within
You get what you put in
Here is the official video on that:
Hi Brad:
Thanks for reining in the discussion and refocusing on the subject. I thought you were taking me for a walk back out into the wilds of the mind, prompted by your rather cryptic shorter replies, and as you could see I’m happy to go along, but it was getting away from the topic of discussion.
The market unbounded, unregulated, leads to wealth concentrated into fewer and fewer hands at the top. That’s just the intrinsic nature of the beast. At best, out of the obscene amount of surplus generated, there are those who “get it” and practice philanthropy, but that literally depends on the intelligent realization, character, generosity and goodwill of the person.
Such individuals and what they do with the obscene surplus of their money is welcome, definitely better than the alternative which is increasing poverty and damaging the planet, but it’s not dependable. I have this nagging sense that philanthropy from the obscenely wealthy helps alleviate and refocus energies, lubricates talk about real problems, generates goodwill for working toward solutions, but something about it, deeper down, still doesn’t sit well with me. I suspect that a "conscious capitalist” who practices philanthropy is like a predatory animal practicing vegetarianism. It might be done for a time, and convince many people, getting them all excited and enthusiastic, but eventually there must be a reversion to the intrinsic nature of the beast.
Reading your words here, Brad, and the articles at the two links you provided, the following scene from Dostoyevski’s novel "The Brothers Karamazov”, a book I haven’t read in years, of its own accord popped into my mind - from Part 2, Book IV. entitled “Lacerations”, Chapter 7. “And in the Open Air”.
(A brief synopsis I found, just to provide a little context: “Book IV. Lacerations/Stains - This section introduces a side story which resurfaces in more detail later in the novel. It begins with Alyosha observing a group of schoolboys throwing rocks at one of their sickly peers named Ilyusha. When Alyosha admonishes the boys and tries to help, Ilyusha bites Alyosha’s finger. It is later learned that Ilyusha’s father, a former staff-captain named Snegiroyov, was assaulted by Dmitri, who dragged him by the beard out of a bar. Alyosha soon learns of the further hardships present in the Snegiroyov household and offers the former staff captain money as an apology for his brother and to help Snegiryov’s ailing wife and children. After initially accepting the money with joy, Snegiryov throws the money back at Alyosha out of pride and runs back into his home.”)
“But now listen to something quite different!” Alyosha went on. “I have a message for you. That same brother of mine, Dmitri, has insulted his betrothed, too, a noble-hearted girl of whom you have probably heard. I have a right to tell you of her wrong; I ought to do so, in fact, for, hearing of the insult done to you and learning all about your unfortunate position, she commissioned me at once–just now–to bring you this help from her–but only from her alone, not from Dmitri, who has abandoned her. Nor from me, his brother, nor from anyone else, but from her, only from her! She entreats you to accept her help…You have both been insulted by the same man. She thought of you only when she had just received a similar insult from him–similar in its cruelty, I mean. She comes like a sister to help a brother in misfortune…She told me to persuade you to take these two hundred roubles from her, as from a sister, knowing that you are in such need. No one will know of it, it can give rise to no unjust slander. There are the two hundred roubles, and I swear you must take them unless–unless all men are to be enemies on earth! But there are brothers even on earth…You have a generous heart…you must see that, you must,” and Alyosha held out two new rainbow-coloured hundred-rouble notes.
They were both standing at the time by the great stone close to the fence, and there was no one near. The notes seemed to produce a tremendous impression on the captain. He started, but at first only from astonishment. Such an outcome of their conversation was the last thing he expected. Nothing could have been farther from his dreams than help from anyone–and such a sum!
He took the notes, and for a minute he was almost unable to answer, quite a new expression came into his face.
“That for me? So much money–two hundred roubles! Good heavens! Why, I haven’t seen so much money for the last four years! Mercy on us! And she says she is a sister…And is that the truth?” "I swear that all I told you is the truth,"cried Alyosha.
The captain flushed red.
“Listen, my dear, listen. If I take it, I shan’t be behaving like a scoundrel? In your eyes, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I shan’t be a scoundrel? No, Alexey Fyodorovitch, listen, listen,” he hurried, touching Alyosha with both his hands. “You are persuading me to take it, saying that it’s a sister sends it, but inwardly, in your heart won’t you feel contempt for me if I take it, eh?”
“No, no, on my salvation I swear I shan’t! And no one will ever know but me–I, you and she, and one other lady, her great friend.”
“Never mind the lady! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, at a moment like this you must listen, for you can’t understand what these two hundred roubles mean to me now.” The poor fellow went on rising gradually into a sort of incoherent, almost wild enthusiasm. He was thrown off his balance and talked extremely fast, as though afraid he would not be allowed to say all he had to say.
“Besides its being honestly acquired from a ‘sister,’ so highly respected and revered, do you know that now I can look after mamma and Nina, my hunchback angel daughter? Doctor Herzenstube came to me in the kindness of his heart and was examining them both for a whole hour. ‘I can make nothing of it,’ said he, but he prescribed a mineral water which is kept at a chemist’s here. He said it would be sure to do her good, and he ordered baths, too, with some medicine in them. The mineral water costs thirty copecks, and she’d need to drink forty bottles perhaps: so I took the prescription and laid it on the shelf under the ikons, and there it lies. And he ordered hot baths for Nina with something dissolved in them, morning and evening. But how can we carry out such a cure in our mansion, without servants, without help, without a bath, and without water? Nina is rheumatic all over, I don’t think I told you that. All her right side aches at night, she is in agony, and, would you believe it, the angel bears it without groaning for fear of waking us. We eat what we can get, and she’ll only take the leavings, what you’d scarcely give to a dog. ‘I am not worth it, I am taking it from you, I am a burden on you,’ that’s what her angel eyes try to express. We wait on her, but she doesn’t like it. ‘I am a useless cripple, no good to anyone.’ As though she were not worth it, when she is the saving of all of us with her angelic sweetness. Without her, without her gentle word it would be hell among us! She softens even Varvara. And don’t judge Varvara harshly either, she is an angel too, she, too, has suffered wrong. She came to us for the summer, and she brought sixteen roubles she had earned by lessons and saved up, to go back with to Petersburg in September, that is now. But we took her money and lived on it, so now she has nothing to go back with. Though indeed she couldn’t go back, for she has to work for us like a slave. She is like an overdriven horse with all of us on her back. She waits on us all, mends and washes, sweeps the floor, puts mamma to bed. And mamma is capricious and tearful and insane! And now I can get a servant with this money, you understand, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I can get medicines for the dear creatures, I can send my student to Petersburg, I can buy beef, I can feed them properly. Good Lord, but it’s a dream!”
Alyosha was delighted that he had brought him such happiness and that the poor fellow had consented to be made happy.
“Stay, Alexey Fyodorovitch, stay,” the captain began to talk with frenzied rapidity, carried away by a new day-dream. “Do you know that Ilusha and I will perhaps really carry out our dream. We will buy a horse and cart, a black horse, he insists on its being black, and we will set off as we pretended the other day. I have an old friend, a lawyer in K. province, and I heard through a trustworthy man that if I were to go he’d give me a place as clerk in his office, so, who knows, maybe he would. So I’d just put mamma and Nina in the cart, and Ilusha could drive, and I’d walk, I’d walk…Why, if I only succeed in getting one debt paid that’s owing me, I should have perhaps enough for that too!”
“There would be enough!” cried Alyosha. “Katerina Ivanovna will send you as much more as you need, and you know, I have money too, take what you want, as you would from a brother, from a friend, you can give it back later…(You’ll get rich. you’ll get rich!) And you know you couldn’t have a better idea than to move to another province! It would be the saving of you, especially of your boy and you ought to go quickly, before the winter, before the cold. You must write to us when you are there, and we will always be brothers…No, it’s not a dream!”
Alyosha could have hugged him, he was so pleased. But glancing at him he stopped short. The man was standing with his neck outstretched and his lips protruding, with a pale and frenzied face. His lips were moving as though trying to articulate something; no sound came, but still his lips moved. It was uncanny.
“What is it?” asked Alyosha, startled.
“Alexey Fyodorovitch…I…you,” muttered the captain, faltering, looking at him with a strange, wild, fixed stare, and an air of desperate resolution. At the same time there was a sort of grin on his lips. “I…you, sir…wouldn’t you like me to show you a little trick I know?” he murmured, suddenly, in a firm rapid whisper, his voice no longer faltering.
“What trick?”
“A pretty trick,” whispered the captain. His mouth was twisted on the left side, his left eye was screwed up. He still stared at Alyosha.
“What is the matter? What trick?” Alyosha cried, now thoroughly alarmed.
“Why, look,” squealed the captain suddenly, and showing him the two notes which he had been holding by one corner between his thumb and forefinger during the conversation, he crumpled them up savagely and squeezed them tight in his right hand. “Do you see, do you see?” he shrieked, pale and infuriated. And suddenly flinging up his hand, he threw the crumpled notes on the sand. “Do you see?” he shrieked again, pointing to them. “Look there!”
And with wild fury he began trampling them under his heel, gasping and exclaiming as he did so:
“So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your money!”
Suddenly he darted back and drew himself up before Alyosha, and his whole figure expressed unutterable pride.
“Tell those who sent you that the wisp of tow does not sell his honour,” he cried, raising his arm in the air. Then he turned quickly and began to run; but he had not run five steps before he turned completely round and kissed his hand to Alyosha. He ran another five paces and then turned round for the last time. This time his face was not contorted with laughter, but quivering all over with tears. In a tearful, faltering, sobbing voice he cried:
“What should I say to my boy if I took money from you for our shame?”
And then he ran on without turning. Alyosha looked after him, inexpressibly grieved. Oh, he saw that till the very last moment the man had not known he would crumple up and fling away the notes. He did not turn back. Alyosha knew he would not. He would not follow him and call him back, he knew why. When he was out of sight, Alyosha picked up the two notes. They were very much crushed and crumpled, and had been pressed into the sand, but were uninjured and even rustled like new ones when Alyosha unfolded them and smoothed them out. After smoothing them out, he folded them up, put them in his pocket and went to Katerina Ivanovna to report on the success of her commission.
The entire chapter can be read here:
I know my last comment is general and vague. (I apologize for that.) I offer the excerpt from Dostoyevski’s The Brothers Karamazov more for contemplation, to add some deepening to consideration, to break the spell a bit of news-speak and political-speak. No replies need be made. (Anyway, it’s worth reading the whole chapter, which isn’t very long. The background story leading up to the rejection of free money is remarkable. It brings the idea of philanthropy down into the concrete personal realm, showing how complex and difficult a simple generous act can be.)
I think especially for more creative-type individuals who visit this site, the following is interesting too, from Eric Hoffer’s book “The True Believer - Thoughts on the nature of mass movements” (1951). I offer this too just for contemplation. I like Hoffer’s plainness and directness of language. This is from the chapter entitled “The Fanatics”:
“Whence come the fanatics? Mostly from the ranks of the noncreative men of words. The most significant division between men of words is between those who can find fulfillment in creative work and those who cannot. The creative man of words, no matter how bitterly he may criticize and deride the existing order, is actually attached to the present. His passion is to reform and not to destroy. When the mass movement remains wholly in his keeping, he turns it into a mild affair. The reforms he initiates are of the surface, and life flows on without a sudden break. But such a development is possible only when the anarchic action of the masses does not come into play, either because the old order abdicates without a struggle or because the man of words allies himself with strong men of action the moment chaos threatens to break loose. When the struggle with the old order is bitter and chaotic and victory can be won only by utmost unity and self-sacrifice, the creative man of words is usually shoved aside and the management of affairs falls into the hands of the noncreative men of words - the eternal misfits and the fanatical contemners of the present.”
"The man who wants to write a great book, paint a great picture, create an architectural masterpiece, become a great scientist, and knows that never in all eternity will he be able to realize this, his innermost desire, can find no peace in a stable social order - old or new. He sees his life as irrevocably spoiled and the world perpetually out of joint. He feels at home only in a state of chaos. Even when he submits to or imposes an iron discipline, he is but submitting to or shaping the indispensable instrument for attaining a state of eternal flux, eternal becoming. Only when engaged in change does he have a sense of freedom and the feeling that he is growing and developing. It is because he can never be reconciled with his self that he fears finality and a fixed order of things. Marat, Robespierre, Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler are outstanding examples of fanatics arising from the ranks of noncreative men of words. Peter Viereck points out that most of the Nazi bigwigs had artistic and literary ambitions which they could not realize. Hitler tried painting and architecture; Goebbels, drama, the novel and poetry; Rosenberg, architecture and philosophy; von Schirach, poetry; Funk, music; Streicher, painting. “Almost all were failures, not only by the usual vulgar criterion of success but by their own artistic criteria.” Their artistic and literary ambitions “were originally far deeper than political ambitions: and were integral parts of their personalities.”
“The creative man of words is ill at ease in the atmosphere of an active movement. He feels that its whirl and passion sap his creative energies. So long as he is conscious of the creative flow within him, he will not find fulfillment in leading millions and in winning victories. The result is that, once the movement starts rolling, he either retires voluntarily or is pushed aside. Moreover, since the genuine man of words can never wholeheartedly and for long surpress his critical faculty, he is inevitably cast in the role of the heretic. Thus unless the creative man of words stifles the newborn movement by allaying himself with practical men of action or unless he dies at the right moment, he is likely to end up either a shunned recluse or in exile or facing a firing squad.”
I tuned out this conversation for a while, but just caught up with the exchanges since my previous comment, and I have a couple things to add—inlcuding a key piece of information, it seems to me—but first let me express my appeciation for both of you, @JDockus and @bradsayers, for breaking frames in your dialogue in the ways you have.
First, John, the passages you’ve shared from Theodor Adorno on the psychodynamics of fascism are…chilling. I mean, on a certain level, what he describes is obvious. It’s just a matter of remembering what we already knew, and snapping out of whatever mediated mind-state we might be in. We’ve seen fascism coming for some time now. We’ve known we’re being played. And yet, it’s eerie that 80 years ago he could describe the exact pattern we’re witnessing so precisely.
Really, every single paragraph of what you shared is worth reading and re-reading, so I hope more folks will see it.
What is most eerie, however, is to see that these patterns are not only concentrated in the leader figure, but become internalized and operate within us. The compulsion to abandon thought and awareness, to regress into the purely irrational, is pervasive—a reactivity stoked by almost all our digital media. Artists are not immune to this tendency, but rather prone to it, I’m afraid to say.
What gives real pause, however, is to begin to see how this behavior is being engineered with accelarating sophistication. Witness this report concerning the psychmetric micro-targetting—fueled by “big data” and Facebook ads—that the Trump campaigned used in the election. The Trump “effect” was not merely the result of the crude antics of a reality TV corporate fascist, but also involved cutting-edge technology that the Trump team used, strategically and systematically, to influence voter behavior.
Gotta hand it to them. What the Obama campaign did in 2008, the Trump team did even better in 2016.
@bradsayers, thanks for the skipped stones of your verse. Glad we can do that here. And nice that Duckus even plunked down a dove or two.
I loved the James video—best thing I’ve seen all year. I wish everyone I know could see it!
Also, I want to acknowledge the poignancy of this statement:
Which harmonizes nicely with…
Lastly, I’ll just reflect that as “creatives” we’re really in quite the pickle, aren’t we? Damed either way: to feed off the “psychosis,” at best go “meta” with it, while at the same time opposing and denouncing it from the bottom of the being. It’s quite the creative conundrum. I am feeling humbled by the challenge.
Hi Marco (greetings to you too, Brad, if you read this):
I read the article at the link you posted here, on aNtiDote Zine: “Trump Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself [Psychometrics and the (counter) revolution in marketing that is helping fascism to power around the world]." Bloody fucking hell.
I must’ve been on the moon for the last five years (as stated in the article), pursuing my own solitary interests, because I really hadn’t been aware of Big Data and Predictive Intelligence to the monstrous extent that it has now been developed, for zeroing in on “targets”, until July of last year when a friend of mine, looking around for another job, mentioned to me a company here in the Bay Area with which he had put in an application that specializes in data mining, Big Data, and Predicative Intelligence for use by businesses who hire their service. As soon as he shared this with me, I went onto YouTube and watched some video of professionals in symposiums and gatherings talking about it, all starry-eyed and excited. Almost everything I found struck me as unduly optimistic and utopian. Perhaps most of the stuff posted on it thus far has been by those who have vested interests in it. I’m sincerely glad you posted this. (Anyone who reads this, give the article Marco posted a gander.)
Here’s an excerpt from an email I wrote to my friend back in July of last year, giving him my first gut instinct and impression about it (I should mention that he didn’t get the job, and appeared positively relieved when I next saw him in person):
“This big data stuff has some Orwellian Big Brother aspect to it. Predicting what others are going to do and then beating them to the finish-line and handing them on a silver platter exactly what they desire. Somehow it’s an affront to the human spirit. In everyday life matters are rather messy and disordered, and each individual I’d like to think is incredibly complex with all sorts of things happening on multiple levels, reaching down into the subconscious. Predictive Intelligence makes it seem like the common run of human beings are just rats in a maze, and these highly intelligent tech-specialists are the scientists in their white coats conducting experiments. The aim is to get the rats to go where they are directed to go ‘for the most efficient result’. That’s the dark and scary side to all this.”
_Yet I see it’s inevitable. This is where everything is headed. Humankind as we know it is cyberfucked."
“Personally I know I don’t fit in with these techie people. They’re extremely intelligent and have a passionate utopian belief in the work they’re doing, and no doubt doing it they’re raking in the dough and living cushy lifestyles. I’d like to see more discussion of the flipside or on the shadow side of all this. That’s where the human conscience or moral center is located.”