Purple is for People

My blog is staying it's dark shade of purple.

Here's the deal about Iran:

It's tough to feel about it. I mean it is tough because there are such conflicting feelings for me, I have trouble isolating them for the purpose of explaining them, or forming any sort of theoretical guidance on the basis of these feelings. Not that anyone is asking my opinion, but this is precisely it--there is no lack of feelings, but instead, a wide flow of them, making it difficult to say nothing, and perhaps even more difficult to say something.

It seems that most Western media has turned "green", often literally changing their website colors to the color of Mousavi's supporters. This is an easy position to take, all the more so for people from the part of the world already opposed to Ahmadinejad. Being Western, and being generally, or at least newly-neo Liberal, it is easy to look at the opposition to the non-democracy as a vote for democracy. A voice against a stolen election is a voice for fair elections. No?

But what are we looking at here? At best, a journey from worse to bad. Mousavi does not represent justice necessarily, nor democracy, nor a new or free Iran. He is part of the regime. He has already ruled in Iran as prime minister, during the Iran-Iraq War, over the course of which 500,000 people died. I'm of the opinion that any leader who controls a country in fighting a war is not a leader at all.

Of course, I side with the anti-statists, the anarchists, and the opposition to genocide by states against people. I differ in this opinion from a lot of people, some of whom back America in such choices, in addition to any number of other "democratic" states. I take the strange position that any entity occupied in killing people for the sake of controlling them is bad for humanity. Therefore, as long as this occurs, the people are not free.

So when I see video like this, I become understandably upset.


As the man said, when I see a cop beating a worker, I know what side I'm on. Same thing goes for militia men shooting at people on the ground.

If I had to join a political entity, I would join Médecins du Monde. Started by Bernard Koucher after he left MSF. "The associations provide care to the most vulnerable without regard for sex, age, religion, ethnic origin or political philosophy."

Not to support democracy, not to provide one vote per person. To always support whoever is the most vulnerable. No countries, no gods, no masters. Only humans.

The liberal mind, on the other hand, looks for a body to join. They want a side, or a cause. I've already heard, on NPR's All Things Considered this afternoon, comparisons between Mousavi and Obama. When asked for evidence the election was fraud, the analyst said (I paraphrase) "It is like assuming that Obama would not carry the African-American vote." Wouldn't it be nice if every situation had a good guy and a bad guy, and all it took was to change the color of our Twitter avatar to the correct one?

I'm seeing a new sort of democracy, which I won't call a Twitter democracy. Let's instead call it a trending democracy. Less of the old left/right distinction, and more of the even older "go with the flow" distinction. Americans die, and we hang up a flag. Iranians die, and we hang up a green one. We boil down tragedy to a consensus of blame, and then make sure we show ourselves as against this blame. We, as good people, are against tragedy. For nothing, but against badness. It doesn't matter who it is, as long as s/he opposes this tragedy, and we will follow him/her right into the next one.

I don't know much about this Mousavi. But I do know that even if he won, Iran would still not be a democracy. If they can shut down the media, kill people in the streets, and act as they have, they are not a democracy. And even if Iran was America, the people would still not be free. Each motion forward is only as good as the number of people who are killed because of it. Greater than, less than, and equals to.

The Poverty of National Calling Plans

The small-scale buzz around Bruce Sterling's SXSWi talk is pretty amusing, mostly because as he put it, "this offhand speech of mine -- truly a rant, delivered from notes -- is provoking a remarkable response specifically BECAUSE there is no crisp digital record of exactly what I was saying."

I love this sort of stuff (even when it doesn't involve shadowy Internet well-knowns). Literature is archaeology, man. And it's like we're digging through a city (well, maybe a hamlet) wiped clean by the sandstorms only a month ago. Is that a toothbrush? Maybe it's a shamanic scepter! Nah, maybe just a toothbrush.

But as our French Philosopher Phriends would remind us, the archaeology of truth is the sandstorm itself. None of this theology of the book! It's the Internet, after all. We all love the fact that it's okay that we make it up as we go along.

I'm pretty good at the making stuff up part. I have a degree in philosophy. The rule of philosophical scholarship is that you can make a dead guy say anything you want--you just have to manipulate the puppet strings. These puppet strings can be quotes taken almost of of context, the abstracts of papers somebody else wrote about someone else, or if you're of Zizek-stature (or first-year undergraduate) the mere name-drop may suffice.

Unfortunately, I also have these interests in stuff. Stuff makes me think. This means I can't quarantine my bullshit into academic papers alone--unfortunately for me, these reinterpretations, quotations, appropriations, and exhaltations are constantly circulating in my head, driving me slowly, but surely, to a state of being entirely boring. Unfortunately for you, I have a blog, which you seem to be reading. Hmm. I wonder what will happen next...

So, let's play the game.

WHAT DID BRUCE STERLING REALLY MEAN WHEN HE SAID THOSE THINGS?

What did he say anyway? Well, no one really knows for sure (this is going to be so easy).

Always start with the text.

"The clearest symbol of poverty is dependence on ‘connections’ like the Internet, Skype and texting. ‘Poor folk love their cellphones!’ (Sterling) said.”

"connectivity will be an indicator of poverty rather than an indicator of wealth," (note taken by Rohde).

The internet is poverty? Cellphones are poverty? What is he saying? These things GO AGAINST EVERYTHING MY INTERNET MARKETER TOLD ME!!!

Here is some actual Sterling text. From his short story (architectural fiction, no less) "White Fungus":

"Cell phones are the emblems of poverty."

Interesting enough. Would probably make some liberal cell phone users nervous.

But look at this--"symbol of poverty", "indicator of poverty", "emblem of poverty". Are we noticing a trend here? Call the semioticians!

Also of note: the quote from "White Fungus" is placed, in its original context, with the phrase "computers are not sources of wealth."

So what do we have here? We have wealth and poverty opposed. We have "source" as a flow of wealth, whatever wealth might be. We have "connectivity" as a given, of some sort. We have poor people with cell phones. And we have symbols, emblems, and indicators.

Wealth and poverty, the meaning of which these statements seem to circulate, have different applications. They are material concepts, but social as well. Generally involving value, the value may flucuate. Are we talking about social value? Are we talking about material value? Or are we talking about material value derived from social value? Or the other way around? What sort of poverty do cell-phones represent, and of what sort of wealth are computers not the source? Who is poor, and who is rich as a result?

The Twitter-phobic Internet folk have interpreted the point as purely social in message, and therefore at root, idealistic. We spend a lot of time on our cell phones, and therefore the precious, bourgeois "free-time" in which we would otherwise pursue such worthwhile, humanistic goals such as good, honest fire-side conversation, staring whistfully at clouds, and playing polo, suffers as result. It is an ironic musing worthy of a minor scenario of the Odyssey: through our frantic attempts at universal communication, a female cell-phone beast eats our ears, eyes, and mouth. Odysseus sails away on a plank, born on the gentle breeze of Athena's brain waves, thankful he never signed up for the cursed free internet-service.

If anybody is losing anything of value, it's happening materially. Material, of course, extends into the consciousnesses and compound consciousnesses of people, in less than solid, i.e. symbolic forms. But just because we assume a loss of something that never existed, like "true, meaningful conversation", does not mean we can declare a robber. Because somebody kicked over your invisible dandelion wine is not a cause for blows. If you're not talking to other human beings in a meaningful way, that's your problem, buddy.

We've written up the Internet to be some grand form of communication. It certainly is a form of communication (by way of good old fashioned reading and writing) but how grand is it? Those singularity morons aside, what exactly do we expect from the Internet, and how has it either surpassed or fallen short of our goals? These sorts of material questions deserve attention. So put down that pen and paper, junior Thoreau. Turn up your headphones, and let's dance.

Communication, as a flow of symbols throughout our conscious perceptions of the world, are not strictly the material facts of life, but they are the way we understand them, as the capacities of our sentience dictates. In addition to providing a smooth flow of sensation in the way we would hope between the ideally closed confines of our mind and the cold, cold world, they also get a bit tangled in the intermedium, the interpretive membrane of flesh. Is what you feel what's really there? Is what's there what you really feel? How sure are you that you feel what you feel? In these tossing seas, in which there is no Ithika, there is as much agonism between every drop of water as there is undifferentiatedness in the silence of drowning. Don't worry, we're pretty good swimmers. And maybe the gods do exist; you never know.

So we can worry about the hubris of the "real world" at the same time as we kick and thrash in the liquid of our minds. But you best not forget strictly material world--or else you will find yourself floating face down. The interfaces between the worlds of consciousness and the hard rock that may in fact be out there is important, but only important when we have a bit of each in both hands. Think about the world, but also world about the think. Right? Right?

In other words, cell phones: what do they do for us, and how do they work? What they do for us only goes so far as we know how they do it. Otherwise we're just plugged into our own sensory feedback loop. There are clear benefits of communication that don't require a list. But how do they work?

Poorly. And I'm not just talking about signal strength. Look at the material models for our high-tech communication networks. It's full of "pay as you go" reverse indentured servitude, credit/fee contract scams, and monopolies. I pay over a hundred dollars in "connection fees" per month to stay networked in the way I find useful. WTF? That's more than my car insurance. I could set up my own telegraph station a hundred years ago for less, probably. What future is this?

Not to speak of the hardware itself. Dropped calls, bad operating systems, bricked phones on their way to the e-waste fields of China. App stores? Fart programs? Are we serious?

Materially, (in the strict sense), we are all slaves. When I build a transistor radio set, perhaps I'm connected. But with a cell phone, I've mortgaged my flow of information.

This is the ongoing rebuilding of the credit economy. Housing collapsed--wait for the information infrastructure. People can't pay their data bills, and drop off the network. The content begins to shrink. There is a rush to "flip" domain names, but nobody is reading anyway. Eventually, land lines shut down, or are taken over by the government because they the tubes are too big to fail. It's not dot-com VC sink holes, its the crash of information itself.

So in a class sense, we are the texting, twittering, blogging poor, the proceeds of ill-gotten AdSense all being eaten by the Company to pay for our web hosting fees. If you advertise, you are basically sharecropping.

And I haven't even mentioned the fact that a cell phone will not make anything edible, does not cure a single disease, or reclaim a single molecule of CO2. All it does is call people! We'd be better off giving every person a good pocket knife than a RAZR.

Is ubiquitous connectivity useless then? A tool of the oppressing class to profit off our work, and nothing else? Should we burn the factories, and shove our clogs into Web 2.0?

Is there no benefit for the poor having cell phones? What about teenagers? I think it is safe to say there is a benefit. When I was trying to find an apartment and a job at the same time, with no mailing address or reliable internet connection, my cheap, free-with-contract cell phone was my only link to the material world. It was my access, and the only one I had--not to community or SMS, but to anything. Access is good--because then you can use it however you want and make it as utile as you wish, even if it is for mostly LOLing. In this world when few material things are concrete these days (think of rural Africa, where a cell phone connection is more likely than a water and sewage line) this shard of access is the only thing many can depend on--and we are rapidly re-organizing our material lives around this anchor. The problem is that we are kept poor by these anchors, because someone else is dolling out the rope.

The material use of a tool or object is a certain sort of value, and the control of that object, via less-material pathways such as "contracts", "property", and "debt" is another sort of value. I believe a bearded man other than myself wrote something about that once. Along with the rise of Access as a new axis in our material lives, other sorts of value appears, connected in different ways. There are various sorts of social value, with different amounts of relative worth.

For example, cell phones are status symbols, by which we judge relative wealth. Just like cars, before people decided they'd rather drive electric flat-screen TVs than new SUVs. The cell-phone is a commodity as well as a tool, and there are certain values of having a certain connectness; being able to say "you can always reach me on my blackberry" has a value in addition to anything that might be said in the email. And this is before you cover the damn thing in pink rhinestones.

But the act of communication, can be a commodity, as much as it is the use of a tool. Lots of people buy into the idea of communication more than they actually communicate. My Loyal Internet Marketers for one. (Yes, I have about twenty or so. They all follow me on Twitter. The best part is, they are just as useful whether I read them or not! And they are free! If one quits, s/he is replaced by two more!)

There is a certain idea of the Internet going around, one which you might be familiar with. It is a familiar story (though not perhaps as familiar as The Odyssey), and one much loved, especially in this country. It is a love story--Demos, our perennial hero, falls in love with Techne, and they decide to start a family. Because they believe their love is so perfect, they decide to adopt a child: Kratia. Kratia, unfortunately, is not a child, but a dark spirit from way back. Because of their love, Demos and Techne were blinded to the spells of Kratia, and did not see it in its true form. They thought, oh, its only a kid, give it a cell phone, and it will be fine. But then when the monthly bill came back...

We think that technology, somehow, is the final proof of democracy. We've merged our belief in the destiny of capitalism and freemarkets with our sleepy trust in democracy to maintain a fair balance of power. These two great tastes actually don't taste like anything together, but in fact continuing doing what they do best--democracy consolidates the power of the people into commodity leaders, away from the economy where it belongs; and technology continues to evolve like a tool, according to the actions of those who wield it.

As our economy gets more technologically rigorous, the powers that control the economy also control more technology. In the interest of maintaining this power, they use the tools they have at hand, lulling Demos to sleep with Techne's sweet songs.

Don't know those lullabys? Ever heard of American Idol? Vote early, vote often--the true democrat's popularity contest. How about the Obama SMS network? Feel connected? Feel like one of the people? Yes we can? How much do you get charged per text message?

The technology of the Internet has given democracy its return to populism, all right. You feel more like Demos when you're with Techne, don't you? You are so in love with her, you can't even remember who you were before. But don't blame Techne. She's under the spell too. It's the product of your love, that demon, bastard spawn that crawled off into the dark woods when you two were busy humming little love songs... Power... what gave birth to evil itself...

Anyway, that's enough with the stories. But wait, one more:

"The Internet — we used to call it a ‘commons’. Yet it was nothing like any earlier commons: in a true commons, people relate directly to one another, convivially, commensally. Whereas when they train themselves, alone, silently, on a screen, manifesting ideas and tools created and stored by others, they do not have to be social beings. They can owe the rest of the human race no bond of allegiance." - Sterling, in "White Fungus"

Did the true commons ever exist outside of the Arendtian notion of the agora, and those other high-minded Greeks and liberal humanists? Sure, we commune all the time. But humanity is not a commune--never was. There were always tools, people, and power. The relations shift around, but the players stay the same.

So what is worth? Where does the true value lie? Not in any particular person or tool, certainly. It's in the relationships between them. The pathways that guide certain people to use certain tools for certain goals. The path of a hammer to hit a nail; the text message to offer a friend a job; the processing of information to sort out a story--a story that might teach someone how to use a tool better. The objects, and even the people are mere symbols, emblems, and indicators of power and potential power. The symbols only have the value we give them, as we use them to mediate between ourselves and the world. Cellphones are emblems of our poverty. Computers don't make value (unless your desktop is at Moody's). And here we are, back in the beginning--people and symbols, symbols of people, people symbolizing tools, and tools symbolizing people.

Poverty--who is poor here? I suppose in the end, everyone with a cell-phone. They are the least common denomenator of Access these days. So we're all poor, in the respect of technology. Only some of us more than others, and and some of us, decidedly more materially than others. But maybe some day, a cheap, open-source free access to the networks will be devised... and then we can all be the salt of the earth. After looking at the bailout packages, I would rather we were all equally poor, frankly.

What does Bruce Sterling think? Hell if I know! Shit, that guy is crazy. Every read any of his stuff about global warming?

The Noble Democrat

In the last post I read regarding racism/bigotry, I wrote about the difference between racists and bigots; the former run the systematically racist institutions of the country, under the perhaps believed pretense that the institutions are fair, because they have the support of the majority population. The majority opinion, however, is often largely composed of bigots, who actually have a believe that some class of people is better/worse than another (although maybe only unconsciously), and so allow--either positively or through lack of action--the racists to continue operating racist institutions under the auspices of "fairness".

I think that this conception of the problem is hard for many "critically-minded observers" to grasp, because we look at the problem of racism/bigotry as a singular issue, one of "hate vs. love", or "democracy vs. intolerance", whereas the difference between a person having some hatred within them is very different than the substantive and systematic problems that allow for material persecution to arise. In other words, in most (but not nearly all) places in America, a person can walk down the street in relative freedom without being harassed and threaten with bodily harm, but this does not mean that there are not systematic reasons why more "minority members" of society are in poverty, or incarcerated, or in other words put at a material disadvantage to the material benefit of others.

So, in yet "other words" again, many avowedly liberal elements take an altogether simplified critical view of a problem that they claim to be facing, and therefore do not help solve the problem, and instead, perhaps are complacent. "Democratic" ideals will not provide the "A.N.S.W.E.R." to racism, because it is through "democracy" that racist systems such as our immigration policy is "elected" by our nation of bigots. As I try to remind people often, and they just as often like to forget or shrug off as an fluke of history, many regimes of outright hatred, oppression, and bigotry (can I scream 1933 any louder?) have been democratically elected.

Anyway, this is all a recap, and a further emphasis. The real reason for this post was that I happened to come across a neat little articulation of this sort of dynamic between the "higher" culture element of racism and the "lower" element of bigotry. Often they work in concert, such as in an out-and-out fascist regime, where the leaders exploit the hatreds of the people in order to catapult their policies. I would theme anti-immigration politicians in this country under this category.

However, another sort is perhaps just as malignant while appearing to be helping to fight bigotry. This is the liberal attitude of which I gestured towards; in which bigotry perhaps is critically engaged, but with the favor being towards an ideal "liberal" society in which the values of democracy are identified as being counter to bigotry, when in fact, they allow it to roam free, and perhaps to gain power. The systematic racism may roam free, divorced by liberal democratic theory from the bigotry that is so obviously abhorrent.

Enter, if you please, Herman Melville. The man may have had certain prejudices; I cannot say, as I never had contact with a mid-19th century man, nor Melville himself. But I have had contact with some of his writing, such as Chapter 26, from his novel The Confidence-Man. The title of the chapter in this de-light-ful book is as follows:

Containing the metaphysics of Indian-hating, according to the view of one evidently not so prepossessed as Rousseau in favor of savages.

The chapter is an account of a backwoodsman who hates Indians; apparently not an uncommon character in Melville's day. The narrating character tells us about these persons:

"The backwoodsman is a lonely man. He is a thoughtful man. He is man strong and unsophisticated. Impulsive, he is what some might call unprincipled. At any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it stand alone."

This is not too far afield from most bigots; having little education or "social" rearing, they rely upon their own feelings in their politics as they have had to in their lives, and thus are given to the maxims of popular opinion rather than the ideals of learned society. A reliance upon one's own abilities may lead to a false sense of superiority. And even what he learns is often skewed:

"For however charitable it may be to view Indians as members of the Society of Friends, yet to affirm them such to one ignorant of Indians, whose lonely path lies a long way through their lands, this, in the event, might prove not only injudicious but cruel. At least something of this kind would seem the maxim upon which backwoods' education is based. ... 'As the twig is bent the tree's inclined.'"

A strong-willed, not-quite-supremely educated person is often a bigot. This seems plausible. But the most interesting part of Melville's chapter, to me, is the title. Although it isn't mentioned in the chapter itself, this backwoodsman is contrasted in subtle fashion to "one prepossessed as Rousseau in favor of savages".

Of the bigot/backwoodsman: "Suns and seasons fleet; the tiger-lily blows and falls; babes are born and leap in their mothers' arms; but, the Indian-ahter is good as gone to his long home, and "Terror" is his epitaph." However, the person who is enamored with the idea of the "noble savage", on the contrary, is a fickle creature--the vicissitudes of whose so-called steady, critically-reasoning gaze are subject to shift with the currents of popular theory. Is the concept of the "noble savage", a theory that intends to posit a pre-Fall (or perhaps pre-felix culpa) innocence of man, really the logical and theoretical opposite to bigotry? Is loving through false equality the fix to hating via false superiority?

Now, we can look back upon Rousseau's theory as a merry occasion in our history of colonialism, when those silly Europeans thought that the funny-colored people they were killing might have been a transference of their own misplaced innocence. Thank goodness for the Christ! If it wasn't for redeemers, we might have to actually deal with our issues in this life.

But is the humanism of today really any different? Or have we simply shifted our colonialism to within "us", letting the vegetables on the bottom of the melting pot burn and stick to the bottom, as long as the top is heated comfortably? Those of democratic theory try to convince us that only if everyone is equal, then hate will magically disappear as a relic of the dirty world before the "son of man" that is equality saved us all. As long as equality is resurrected in the Millennial future, we can say that it has merely died for our sins, and not for our taste for blood. By attempting to find the "soul" of humanity as an equal and innocent equivalent within us, those of the "noble human" philosophy neglect to deal with the hatred that is our actual existence. The fact is, this is not just an optimism; it is an avoidance of the reasons that people hate. How will nostalgia for the "noble savage" stop the Indian-hater from stalking his prey?

It really isn't so complicated. One only has to see what the problem is: the Indian-hater still exists. As long as he exists, he will conduct his war:

"Ever on the noiseless trail; cool, collected, patient; less seen than felt; snuffling, smelling--a Leather-stocking Nemesis."

Until, that is, we actually have a chance to inscribe that epitaph for him. And frankly, that isn't the responsibility of any noble savage.

American Politics (part 74 of 4958)

Here's today's lesson on American Politics, and why Americans will never be able to understand other people in the world.

The fact is, American's have this cushy view of politics as something not unlike the stock market. It's something everyone "knows" how it works, and therefore, they "know" that it matters the their daily life. But no one really has to know all the details, unless that is your job. Even the Americans who know how it works only know enough about it to make their money off of it. I'm sure we could push this analogy even further until it balances out if we started comparing how much the actually working Capitalist (or the modern day equivalent) really "knows" about work. Not to say that the average labor unionist "knows" much more... but I digress.

In the rest of the world, politics is not something you have a career in, or something that fills a certain proportion of the evening news, or something to have an opinion on when celebrity lifestyles are not giving us that sweet chance to identify with something. Politics is something that happens and you react, because it involves your life.

I received an example of this difference in "politics" today as I walked through Union Square after work. There was this delightful "protest" going on between anti-War and/or anti-Israel protesters and pro-War and/or pro-Israel protesters. It was hard to say who was protesting and who was counter-protesting, because there were only about fifteen people there total. Everyone else was going home from work. Look! I took a picture!



"What protest?" What do you mean, what protest? They have signs... duh! Ok, here:



The Pro-Israel people are in blue, the Not-Pro-Israel (because who could be against Israel???) are in green. Everybody else is not-giving-a-shit and walking right on by, like people do. The three cops were being harangued by one side and then the other, but I'm pretty sure they didn't give a shit either. That's really everyone who was there. A perfect representation of American Politics. Two focus groups, about equal in size, standing politely on either side of the fence... err, sidewalk, sorry, and holding signs that are just about as empty of meaning as they are full of slogan. And look! Two of them are even having a polite, earnest exchange of ideas in the foreground, after which the one with the more logical and sound argument will probably have convinced the other that their side is right. Yay!

On the other hand, let's look at Palestine, the place of the issue that these fine citizens are being oh-so-opinionated about. What do you know, but they have protests there too! Lets look!







Hmm. That doesn't look much like the totally sweet "Democracy" that we have in this country. What went wrong there?

Well, since you asked so nice, I'll let you in on a secret. In a country were bureaucracy is the rule, and we have set up complicated systems to prevent us ever having to give a shit about anything important, there is no actually rule of the people. The system rules itself, because we designed it to, and we spend an awful load of money every year (its called taxes) to make sure we will never have to trouble our pretty little heads with anything more complicated than a cardboard sign. On the other hand, where people's lives are actually threatened, the people actually do rule. And when the people rule, they rule violently, because that's what people are. There is nothing democratic about the rule of the demos. Here in America, we export violence, just like we now export our paperwork and customer service. That's why we have no politics. We only have the shadow of politics.

I'd ask how Americans can sleep at night, but I know how. With the help of Ambien and other sleep-aids, they sleep quite nicely. It's in places where the tear gas wafts into your house at night because the police are storming houses in your neighborhood at 3AM that it becomes difficult to sleep...