Being-with-Internet

Before I begin with the recollection of your new favorite section of Being and Time, number 73, I want to say a few things about Heidegger.

There's books written about this guy, and way more books than about other troubled intellectuals who did bad stuff, because, well... because. Generally, the sides on Heidegger are two. Either he is a Nazi, whose philosophy is inseparable from his political history, or his philosophy is metaphysics, and not political. I'm of the opinion that his philosophy should be considered separately from his political history... and that this philosophy reeks of Fascism.

He's brilliant, sure. I've said before that Being and Time taught me how to write. Every word is so carefully chosen, not only as a signifier but within the delicate structural framework of syntax and semantics that is philosophy. Just look at all the quote marks thrown around words, and the italics. These are not just emphasis, thrown out casually. Each is done with the same purpose as putting a castle on a hill, rather than a valley. There is literally an architecture to Heidegger's prose, and it backs his philosophy across every square, grade, stairway, sloping rooftop, and empty space in his thought. It's some of the best philosophy of the 20th century.

But it's also Fascist. The more lenient philosophers and political thinkers will often let Lenin and other leftists off with a wag of the finger, and a wise word about propaganda, political movements, and state power out of control. But this is not just a guy with a captive audience, and ego-crush on history. The architecture of the thought is Fascist, and it is so close to really good metaphysics that it should scare anyone who still cares about metaphysics.

Of course, writing philosophy is one thing, and kicking Jews out of academia is another thing. Anyone can do either, but it took Heidegger to do both, and seemingly, with the same univocal hand and mind. There is mass Fascism, and there is micro, little-Eichmann Fascism, and then there is intellectual Fascism. Being and Time is the reason I give anyone I hear talking about "authentic" anything a long, hard look. No matter how much Heidegger will argue that there is no moral distinction between authentic and in-authentic being, you can hear the goddamn crazy in his voice. He is lining people up in his head. Just a few sections on, in 75 and 76, when he starts talking about "resoluteness", and "loyalty" to the being of history. And in the famous Rectory Address (which you should really read if you haven't, to know what I'm talking about), when I visualize him actually speaking this, it's uncanny.

The point is, when I implement Heidegger here to make certain points about Time, I am doing so with this in mind, and also, against Heidegger. I have no doubt that he, and many Heidegger scholars, would disagree with the reading I'm about to make, and that is good. It is intended to pull away from his philosophy. His writing is still very well done, and very powerful, and this section made me think about time in certain ways that drew out my conclusions. But I would not say that what I'm about to draw out is Heideggerian. Who knows, however; perhaps, if he lived now in the age of digital reproduction, he would see that authenticity for the sham that it is, and maybe his metaphysics would go in a different direction. Maybe not. This is the strange part about history: that ultimately, it both is what it is, and is what it isn't.

Heidegger's text will be in blog block quote style, and my comments will not. All emphasis is Heidegger's.

Section 73 of Being and Time: "The Vulgar Understanding of History and the Occurence of Dasein."

Our next aim is to find the right position for attacking the primordial question of the essence of history--that is to say, for construing historicality existentially. This position is designated by that which is primordially historical. We shall begin our study, therefore, by characterizing what one has in view in using the expressions 'history' and 'historical' in the ordinary interpretation of Dasein. These expressions get used in several ways.

The most obvious ambiguity of the term 'history' is one that has often been noticed, and there is nothing 'fuzzy' about it. It evinces itself in that this term may mean the 'historical acutality' as well as the possible science of it. We shall provisionally eliminate the signification of 'history' in the sense of a "science of history" (historiology).

Isn't this great?!? Okay, a helpful hint: look at the different implementations of the word "history". There is "history" the noun. There is "historical", the adjective, or the state of something being history. There is also noun of this adjective, "historicality". Then there is "historizing", the verb that is the act of something being made history (more or less), and lastly, there is "historiology", or the science of deciding what all these words mean.

Heidegger is very careful with these words, and the different between the different parts of speech will spell out how he thinks history functions, from a metaphysical and existential standpoint. In the next few paragraphs, we'll see how exactly he wants to separate and unify these terms.

The expression 'history' has various significations with which one has in view neither the science of history nor even history as an Object, by this very entity itself, not necessarily Objectified. Among such significations, that in which this entity is understood as something past, may well be the pre-eminent usage. This signification is evinced in the kind of talk in which we say that something or other "already belongs to history". Here 'past' means "no longer present-at-hand", or even "still present-at-hand indeed, but without having any 'effect' on the 'Present' ". Of course, the historical as that which is past has also the opposite signification, when we say, "One cannot get away from history." Here, by "history", we have in view that which is past, but which nevertheless is still having effects. Howsoever the historical, as that which is past, is understood to be related to it, either positively or privatively, in such a way as to have effects upon it. Thus 'the past' has a remarkable double meaning; the past belongs irretrievably to an earlier time; it belonged to the events of that time; and in spite of that, it can still be present-at-hand 'now'--for instance, the remains of a Greek temple. With the temple, a 'bit of the past' is still 'in the present'.

This is the first of four significations of "history". Something 'past', in that "'the past' has a remarkable double meaning; the past belongs irretrievably to an earlier time; it belonged to the events of that time; and in spite of that, it can still be present-at-hand 'now'.

What we next have in mind with the term "history" is not so much 'the past' in the sense of that which is past, but rather derivation from such a past. Anything that 'has a history' stands in the contect of a becoming. In such becoming, 'development' is sometimes a rise, sometimes a fall. What 'has a history' in this way can, at the same time, 'make' such history. As 'epoch-making', it determines 'a future' 'in the present'. Here "history" signifies a 'context' of events and 'effects', which draws on through 'the past', the 'Present', and the 'future'. On this view, the past has no special priority.

Second signification. History is a becoming, a separation from the basic dimension of time, or to describe it in a familiar but perhaps problematic way, 'how we make our fortune'. To take our place in history, or to write ourselves into the history books, etc. To separate a span of time from other spans of time, and to segment it.

Further, "history" signifies the totality of those entities which change 'in time', and indeed the transformations and vicissitudes of men, of human groupings and their 'cultures', as distinguished from Nature, which likewise operates 'in time'. Here what one has in view is not so much a kind of Being--historizing--as it is that realm of entities which one distinguishes from Nature by having regard for the way in which man's existence is essentially determined by 'spirit' and 'culture', even though in a certain manner Nature too belongs to "history" as thus understood.

Third signification. History is the works of man, as split off from the rest of Nature. Again, post-modernly problematic, sure, but the way we casually refer to history may be problematic. However, I might argue that it is not problematic at all. Differentiating any single thing, be it human, animal, object, or idea, from the rest of the shapeless undifferentiated chaos of the world, is the first step towards representation.

Finally, whatever has been handed down to us is as such held to be 'historical', whether it is something which we know historiologically, or something that has been taken over as self-evidence, with its derivation hidden.

And the last signification means, in my view, history as history, or those past, epochal, cultural products we refer to as history and manipulate and study as such. This is the "meta" signification I guess--the pure history that is the subject of history as science, outside of our memories, products, and opinions.

If we take these four significations together, the upshot is that history is that specific historizing of existent Dasein which comes to pass in time, so that the historizing which is 'past' in our Being-with-one-another, and which at the same time has been 'handed down to us' and is continuingly effective, is regarded as "history" in the sense that gets emphasized.

The four significations are connected in that they relate to man as the 'subject' of events. How is the historizing character of such events to be defined? Is historizing a sequence of processes, an ever-changing emergence and disappearance of events? In what way does this historizing of history belong to Dasein? Is Dasein already factically 'present-at-hand' to begin with, so that on occasion it can get 'into a history'? Does Dasein first become historical by getting intertwined with events and circumstances? Or is the Being of Dasein constituted first of all by historizing, so that anything like circumstances, events, and vicissitudes is ontologically possible only because Dasein is historical in its Being? Why is it that the function of the past gets particularly stressed when the Dasein which historizes 'in time' is characterized 'temporally'?

If you aren't familiar with Being and Time then most of that just shot past you. Here's the gist, about which I can think of several professors who would be shaking their heads sadly if they knew I was writing. Heidegger believes that true being comes from being-there, in connection with various other beings, also being-there. Da-sein, get it? Of course, it's much more complex that simply being-there. There is 'care', which is the state of being with others in a way that one can say one is being-with them but also sort of seperate. And there is also time, which is a dimension in which Dasein must exist, for two there-being beings to be said to be there-being at the same time. Right? So time is necessary, for this true being, this Dasein. Not so far fetched, right?

Okay, so Heidegger is asking if history, of which we have just finished outlining four different ways in which we use the word, is the way that things be-in-time, then what is the relationship between history and these four different significations, and Dasein proper?

Personally, I'm more interested in his discussion of history than Dasein. As I said before, I think when he starts separating authentic being from inauthentic being is where he gets off course. There is no Proper-History, and Pedestrian-History. All of it is simply history, though it may have different facets. Same thing with Being. The thing about Being, is that no matter what you call it, what you dress it up as, or what titles and crowns you give it, it is still just Being. That's why it's so mysterious! Unless you eat psilocybin. Then Being is a whole lot of other things too. As my friend Steve once said, "energy is happen". But let's get back to history. Onward.

If history belongs to Dasein's Being, and this Being is based on temporality, then it would be easy to begin the existential analysis of historicality with those characteristics of the historical which obviously have a temporal meaning. Therefore, by characterizing more precisely the remarkably privileged position of the 'past' in the concept of history, we shall prepare the way for expounding the basic constitution of historicality.

The 'antiquities' preserved in museums (household gear, for exmaple) being to a 'time which is past'; yet they are still present-at-hand in the 'Present'. How far is such equipment historical, when it is not yet past? Is it historical, let us say, only because it has become an object of historiological interest, of antiquarian study or national lore? But such equipment can be a historiological object only because it is in itself somehow historical. We repeat the question; by what right do we call this entity "historical", when it is not yet past? Or do these 'Things' have 'in themselves' 'something past', even though they are still present-at-hand today? Then are these, which are present-at-hand, still what they were? Evidently these "things" have changed. The tools have become fragile and worm-eaten "in the course of time". But yet the specific character of the past that makes them something historical does not lie in this transience that continues even during their objective presence in the museum. But then what is past about the useful thing? What were the "things" that they no longer are today? They are still definite useful things, but out of use. However, if they were still in use, like many heirlooms in the household, would they then not be historical? Whether in use or out of use, they are no longer what they were. What is 'past'? Nothing other than the world within which they were encountered as things at hand belong to a context of useful things and used by heedful Dasein existing-in-the-world. That world is no longer. But what was previously innerworldly in that the world is still objectively present. As useful things belonging to that world, what is now still objectively present can nevertheless belong to the "past". But was does it mean that the world no-longer-is? World is only in the mode of existing Dasein, that is, factically as being-in-the-world.

Blam! My mind is blown! How can we say something is old, if it still exists right in front of our eyes? What is historical about them--because certainly there is something historical about them--is that they existed in a dimension of time that is-no-longer. They are from another epoch, whether it be the neolithic, the dark ages, "the Orient", or the 50s. We call them whatever we want, but still, they are in different rooms of the museum. Furthermore, they are in the museum to begin with. These things belong to our world now, but they also belong to another world then, which is definitely no longer this one.

The historical character of extant antiquities is thus grounded in the "past" of Dasein to whose world that past belongs. According to this, only "past" Dasein would be historical, but not "present" Dasein. However, can Dasein be past at all, if we define "past" as "now no longer objectively present or at hand"? Evidently Dasein can never be past, not because it is imperishable, but because it can essentially never be objectively present. Rather, if it is, it exists. But a Dasein that no longer exists is not past in the ontologically strict sense; it is rather having-been-there. The antiquities still objectively present have a "past" and a character of history because they belong to useful things and originate from a world that has-been--the world of a Dasein that has-been-there. Dasein is what is primarily historical. But does Dasein first become historical by no longer being there? Or is it historical precisely as factically existing? Is Dasein something that has-been only in the sense of having-been-there, or has it been as something making present and futural, that is, in the temporalizing of its temporality?

Here he is checking in with Dasein, by commenting on a difficulty. If the old stuff belonged to a world that is past, then in that world, it must have had Dasein (or the sort reserved for things rather than people) in order for it to really belong to that world. But the problem is, Dasein is characterized by it being now, among those Beings currently existing. So what happened to the old Dasein? Did it evaporate? Or is there as Dasein-shaped hole? Or is it something to do with the nature of Time as a continuum, that fundamentally supports the possibility of all Dasein, and through it, history? (WOW! You guessed number three! Good job! In metaphysics, it's always the most complicated rhetorical question that is the correct one. Either that, or none of them are.)

From this preliminary analysis of the useful things belonging to history that are still objectively present and yet somehow "past", it becomes clear that this kind of being is historical only on the basis of its belonging to the world. But the world has a historical kind of being because it constitutes an ontological determination of Dasein. It may be shown further that when one designates a time as 'the past', the meaning of this is not unequivocal; but 'the past' is manifestly distinct from one's having been, with which we have become acquainted as something constitutive for the ecstatical unity of Dasein's temporality. This, however, only makes the enigma ultimately more acute; why is it that the historical is determined predominantly by the 'past', or, to speak more appropriately, by the character of having-been, when that character is one that temporalizes itself equiprimordially with the Present and the future?

We contend that what is primarily historical is Dasein. That which is secondarily historical, however, is what we encounter within-the-world--not only equipment ready-to-hand, in the widest sense, but also the environing Nature as 'the very soil of history.' Entities other than Dasein which are historical by reason of belonging to the world, are what we call 'world-historical'. It can be shown that the ordinary conception of 'world-history' arises precisely from our orientation to what is thus secondarily historical. World-historical entities do not first get their historical character, let us say, by reason of an historiological Objectification; they get it rather as those entities which they are in themselves when they are encountered within-the-world.

If 'the past' is part of Dasein, how is it separate from our own individual pasts, and furthermore, separate from our sense of time in general? Well, let Heidegger introduce you to primary historicality, which is Dasein, and secondary historicality, which is the network of the world outside or our Being. Our Being relates to the world via Dasein, and objects relate to the history imbued to the world via Dasein, what he calls "the world-history".

This is where I step in. I am fine with a phenomenological reduction of history--things that are historical only are because we perceive them as such. But the only reason Heidegger is interested in creating a first/second order historicality, is so he can continue to privilege Dasein, the authentic Being, as something metaphysically more awesome than other things. After all, the 'volk's' sense of history is more important than, say, the history of production relations. Right? Because who cares about the factory, when OUR HISTORY AS SUBJECTIVE ACTORS is under discussion! Drill, baby, drill!

But really, look how he justifies it, as we continue:

In analyzing the historical character of equipment which is still present-at-hand, we have not only been led back to Dasein as that which is primarily historical; but at the same time we have been made to doubt whether the termporal characterization of the historical in general may be oriented primarily to the Being-in-time of anything present-at-hand. Entities do not become 'more historical' by being moved off into a past which is always farther and farther away, so that the oldest of them would be the most authentically historical. On the other hand, if the 'temporal' distance from "now and today" is of no primary constitutive significance for the historicality of entities that are authentically historical, this is not because these entities are not 'in time' and are timeless, but because they exist temporally in so primordial a manner that nothing present-at-hand 'in time', whether passing away or still coming along, could ever--by its ontological essence--be temporal in such a way.

He's so close, it kills me. He's right in saying that things do not become "more historical" by being older according to the timeline of years. And he's also right by saying that if "historicity" is not a factor of distance across this dimension, then temporal distance (say, number of years) in itself is "of no primary constitutive significance for the historicality of entities", and not because these things are somehow divorced from time, and timeless, beyond measure. They can be measured, and this measurement doesn't matter to their historicity.

But he thinks this proves that it is a sort of history that is therefore separate from our "present-at-hand 'in time' ": our present sense of the difference between past and future. It's a tautology--because Heidegger believes that current, present Being is fundamentally distinct from all historical, past senses of Being, then the difference between our appreciation of time-as-presence must be fundamentally different from our appreciation of time-as-history.

I would argue precisely the opposite. Our only sense of time is of time-as-history. Many philosophers have argued that the cone of perception extends only into the past. Of course, it is infuriating to us that we cannot "remember now", because as soon as we do, it is past. But think about it--what he is describing about history is precisely how we think about time. Our sense of history is not concerned with the difference in years. But our sense of history is certainly no separate from our subjective sense of "time passing". So doesn't this lead us to believe that our sense of history, and our sense of temporality are unified?

The trouble, it seems to me, is our necessary layering of measurement onto the segments of time. Remember the second signification of history? After the first, that past is both past and present, there is the second, that any particular past, is a derivation from such a past-present. A number line extends to infinity in both directions, but the minute you grab any segment of that number line, you must identify some sort of units to clarify which portion of the line, in relation to all other portions. To say segment 1,2 is different than 3,4 is easy; but to say segment 1,2 is different than -infinity,infinity is much more difficult. Hence, we develop the term 'zero', the point from which we extend in either direction towards infinity. But remember, 'zero' is also an infinity point. "Now" is just as non-existant as "zero past" and "zero future". Sure, we think about the past backing its way up to Now, just as the future extents outward from now. But this is simply a factor of time's passage, which in dimensional geometry, isn't actually "going" anywhere. Imagine backing up in time from a point in 10,000 BC all the way to Zero Past, or the point at which the dimension of time expires. Just as much of a pain in the brain as trying to "remember now", isn't it?

But this is the way we think about time. You could call it the Dasein in Time, or the fundamental condition of Time (or history, if you want to try this argument from the Marxist angle), or the authentic, primary history. It really doesn't matter what you call it. Time still is what it is, and is what it isn't. What we do know is that we have a sensation of time, and a sensation of history as time 'that is past'. If we reduce time and history to our phenomenological perception of it, this is what we are stuck with. We have the line of time, we have the expression of various segments along it, and we have the head-pounding problem of when we try to invent zeros for this line, in order to measure it correctly.

I contend, what is primarily historical, is this problem. We will always hurt our heads thinking about it, but we won't stop trying to think about these zeros, either.

But what is very interesting is what these meditations have uncovered about the way we think about time, which we ignored, maybe because our heads hurt so much, or just out of habit, trying to keep all the measurements straight. When we look at them, they only ensnare us further into the problem, but in ways that are very interesting, and provoke thought about new aspects of the problem.

Heidegger's four significations of history are true. We think about the past in terms of a unified past and present. We separate the particular past from our 'sense of the past'. We use history to define our world, and our place in the world. And most interestingly, we take up the material of our history, and study it as history, to try to know more about ourselves.

And all of this changes, the more work in historiology we do. The more 'raw data' of history we accumulate, and the more we categorize it and sift it, bringing it into our 'now', the more our history changes. What would Heidegger have thought of the Internet? No authentic Being out there, to be sure. But an awful lot of other stuff. Lots of being-in-general. Lots of history, both being studied, created, and lost. The Internet is a giant web of presence, but a presence that is impossible to measure, and is never infinite. It changes our perception of temporality, but nevertheless extends our temporality, allowing us to look at particular moments and segments in repetition, completely skip other moments, and interact with history at a speed we find comfortable, whether fast or slow. The Internet is a master tool of historiology. It is a SF nightmare scientific tool, but the tool is set to work on our perception of the world, and can never be unplugged, and we cannot look outside of its scopes anymore. The Internet began as a repository for data, but now it is the tool for producing the data, distributing the data, and the tool for producing the tools, and the relations of production. The Internet is the world-history, both as a repository thereof, as creator, and conduit, and content. You can unplug from the computer, but you cannot unplug from world-history. There is no timelessness outside of cyber-time. There is history that signifies in a seperate segment from cyber-time, but because cyber-time is part of our phenomenal perception of temporality, and part of our history, there can be no temporality existing separately, and no alternate history. There is only one history--a tangled web of then-and-now, ever changing, re-expressing itself, and constantly being experienced.

Really, its not just the Internet. Any tool, any object in the world changes our interpretation of it, and our Being in the world. When you pick up a hammer, your hand is changed. It can bash in nails. It can bash in heads. It is still your body doing these things, but it is doing it as part of being-with-hammer. The Internet is the same, only we are all connected to the same Internet. We are being-with-Internet. It's not all the same Internet, but none of it is different. It is all part of the same world. It is only so apparent because it is instrumental in our perception of history, which as you remember, is how we visualize our selves in the world. We all have always been connected via the ecosystem, and via our species, and via the distributed genetic logic of our interior chemical structures. ACGT. All of our chemistries speak the same language, and are in the same temporality. But because of consciousness, through some peculiar mechanism, we are driven to understand the span of time and space by segmentation, by splitting it into categories, and egos, and nows and thens, lines and dots, and all the rest. Now, with these consciousnesses interfacing with the same machine, we are starting to bring these individual, conscious-ego world-histories back together, re-writing and re-reading our historiological understanding of our own histories, and creating the world-history anew as we go. We are ditching some of the more quantitatively temporal segmentation strategies as we go. Minutes of the day.... time zones... yesterday versus the day before... what does it matter? All that matters is what history continues to be, and continues to show us about itself. And, what it still refuses to allow us to comprehend, by way of its own structure.

It will be said that these deliberations have been rather petty. No one denies that at bottom human Dasein is the primary 'subject' of history; and the ordinary conception of history, which we have cited, says so plainly enough. But with the thesis that 'Dasein is historical', one has in view not just the ontical fact that in man we are presented with a more or less important 'atom' in the workings of world-history, and that we remains the plaything of circumstances and events. This thesis raises the problem: to what extent and on the basis of what ontological conditions, does historicality belong, as an essential constitutive state, to the subjectivity of the 'historical' subject?

The easy way out would be to say that in this post-property Internet dimension, nothing belongs to anyone any more. Not even history; not even historicality. Historiology, the province of entrepreneurial metaphysicians, is now open territory to anyone. But, this is not really the answer to the question. Historicality does belong to someone; it has to, if it is something distinctly historical. You can't have a phenomenological reduction without someone to observe the phenomena. But I think what has changed is, what it means to 'belong'. We are not really atoms in the structure of world-history, nor amino acids, nor even electrons. We are fully conscious and individual animals, capable of independent worldly life and thought, that never the less choose to plug in and share with each other, creating new dimensions of time, space, and being where there were not before, and leaving old ones behind in the recesses and gutters of our collective memory. And that, when you start thinking about it, is really much more complicated.

Glad to Mutate

Chris Nakashima-Brown has a piece on Strange Horizons called, "Nomadology". I could describe it, but maybe it would be better if I just let you read an exerpt:

"At the Royal Brisbane Country Club, the lower level of the clubhouse has been converted into interrogation facilities. Portions of the men's grill and locker room allowed to realize their immanent potential when the Homeland Guard recaptured the western suburbs and set up a beautifully landscaped gulag here, a mile or two outside the area under the control of the insurrection.

I am strapped to a banquet chair with hard plastic ties. On the wall opposite, the elusive face of Tiger Woods watches over his shoulder as my interrogator attaches the electrodes to my testicles. Is that a Mona Lisa smile the golfer wears, or some darker aspect? The predatory seduction of the child star.

The empty swimming pool through the window is a detention area surrounded by concertina. A thousand putative rebels rounded up at night from the surrounding municipalities shamble in the shallow rain puddles of the deep end, watched by black-uniformed sentries perched atop the lifeguard towers with assault rifles that intermittently glisten in the light of late dusk.

As the current starts to run through me, I hear the battery of lawn sprinklers kick in. The cascading shook-shook of watery machined spurts ejecting over the greener-than-real turf, unexpectedly synchronized with the waves of high-voltage spasms as they seize my corpus in a rictus of new pain."

Actually, I totally can describe it. It kind of reads like a soft-core "Roosevelt After Inauguration", by William Burroughs. This doesn't appear to be quotable online, but you can read an exerpt of it via a Burroughs Reader on Google Books here.

I like Nakashima-Brown's piece. I'm not the biggest fan of the enviable Burroughs; perhaps better to say that for me he has his moments, and then he also does not. Nor am I a really big supporter of topical subject matter in fiction. It's the atemporality thing--I personally stray away from anything that could date a piece of fictional prose. Like a friend of mine mentioned about rap songs and videos, you can tell instantly when they were outdated by the cell phones that cameo in the song. Fiction shouldn't strive to be universal necessarily, but it certainly shouldn't be looking for the thong-covered ass crack niche that is "current".

But "Nomadology" on the other hand, already feels dated, but in a powerful way, not one of obsolesce. It imparts the brittleness of history in the same way as these current events did when we first learned of them. It's all stuff that happened elsewhere to Americans, in another time and place. Maybe even a different world. Sure, we heard a lot about Darfur for a while. But atrocities, in the United States, always happen in the past tense. Facts always come to light after the fact, and then we condemn, and resolve to have it never happen again. Until the next time that breaking news uncovers what someone else was living with for days, weeks, or years, up until only recently.

And I think this is the real connection to Burroughs, not the shock value. "Roosevelt After Inauguration"... what, people were pissed about Roosevelt? Which one? Why? The whole thing sounds like fictional history, like Burroughs delusions of current events only existed in some drug-addled alternative dimension. But the real drug-addled alternative nightmare is real life, and history is the delusion. We know now that Roosevelt was a good president, because it says so in the history books. We know that Abu Grahib was a bad place, because we are told it is not so anymore. The truth of history is defined by it's nonexistence, and its segmentation to a volume of time and space that are divorced from the present. Both Nakashima-Brown and Burroughs bring the past to life in a way that can never die, because it is too bizarre to be killed. It's been zombified, and given chainsaws for hands, and had a clown mask sewn to its skin, and been installed with a 10,000-year rated deux-ex-machina-brand atomic power-cell, making it impervious to the ravishings of age and nearly unkillable. This horror has been inaugurated, and is going for four more years. Or is it four less years? History never actually happened if it's too horrible. We simply deny it by dating it; or does it do this to us? The story doesn't say, but I have a feeling those terrorist parties happen ever weekend, and on Tuesdays for Service Industry Night. You just need a flyer to get in.

The new Internet world is a strange place, and perhaps what is strangest is that things like car bombings still happen all the time. I'm glad someone is willing to document the strangeness in a way that can deliver the magnitude of history, without falling prey to the glossiness of aqueous-coated magazines, or the tiny fascisms of time, space, and plot. This is the job of literature, if ever it had one. As Roosevelt said, and I quote, "I'll make the cocksuckers glad to mutate."

Auto-Tune Historicization

I know, I spend a lot of time yelling about things and what I think they mean.

This, I don't have any idea what it is or what it means. But I hope in ten years from now, when I think back to 2009, most of what I can remember looks a lot like this.



Better yet, this needs to be preserved in an uncorruptable medium, so when archeologists dig up this strange, warped period of history, this is all they can find. I think it pretty much gives them everything they'd need to know.

Please tell me that thing on the horizon is not what I think it is...

A blog of which I am fond is The Orwell Diaries. They blog George Orwell's diaries, some seventy years to the day after he originally wrote them. This is being put on in concert with the release of the diaries in print by the Orwell Estate.

When I told her about it, Megan thought this was fucked up. She is generally opposed to the publication of writer's private papers posthumously (the dreaded quadruple-P). She could make the argument better than I could, but generally she feels the integrity of the artist/author's message is violated when people start digging through things never meant to be read.

I can't say I disagree. As a writer myself, I know of plenty of notebooks, sentences, and even drawings of my own I would never want to be published, that is, included in the same general oureve as the stuff I have chosen to publish. Some of it I think would lessen the impact of my finished work; other items are just embarrassing because of the lack of quality. Others are things that should simply never be read, because they might actually be compromising to my public image. Yes, I am hardly one concerned with the integrity of what most people would refer to as "public image". I have a blog, for goodness sake. There are also many "embarrassing" photos in existence, which I really don't feel so bad about. I think I'm much more forthright about my private desires than most people--and yet, I still have feelings and thoughts that are my own, and no one else's, and have been committed to paper. Perhaps I should entrust someone with the act of destroying these particular artifacts. But this is precisely what Kafka did, and the conniving back-stabber Max Brod did not carry out these wishes (though Brod believed FK wanted him to contramand the order). Dora Diamant also betrayed his corpse and corpus in this way, but luckily for the dead Kafka, the Gestapo may have completed his last wishes when they confiscated these notebooks and manuscripts from her in 1933. One of histories greater ironies, to be sure.

This could lead us into a large-scale "do what I do, not what I say" question revolving around the role of the author, versus the role of performer, versus the role of public intellectual, and so on. I will avoid all this, simply because I think that regardless of what any one person might intend or wish, what happens happens, and cannot be said to be anything other than what it is. In other words, the fact that the Gestapo followed Kafka's wished more closely than his lover, is really not anything other than simply ironic. To try and make the argument that destruction of work already transpired was just or unjust, or good or bad, is silly. Are we missing possibly good works, caught in the threshers of history? Undoubtably. But how can we lament the lack of something we never knew of? I suppose humans are actually pretty good at this. Take it another way: the books that are burnt are never hurt; if copies remain, they either survived in the hands of protectors, or they simply fade from history as if they never existed. A book is only in history so far as it is known, read, and continues to be thought about. The classical works we know only by reference are only references. If we discover them, then they are texts again. If we destroy them and forget their existence, they will never exist. Anything else is a fantasy of some prime mover of literature.

Like how I avoided a discussion of the role of The Author by a discussion of Text in History? Yeah. Remember I did that. For later. (If you don't remember, then please delete this blog post).

Anyway, I enjoy the Orwell Diaries, regardless of whether or not I should. It's fun, although perhaps not so illuminating, to hear Orwell go on about the number of eggs his chickens have lain, or the newspapers in Marrakech, or the cool creatures he found. In the mix with other blogs I read, it is nice to hear about a man walking in mountains trying to improve his health, in addition to the tech-savants, debocherous writers, political agitators, and clean-cut economists I also read.

The fact that the blog moves in a time line seventy years in the past also adds an interesting, dare I say, time-traveling element. Orwell is writing his daily musings, albeit not intended for publication, just as we all do on our blogs. His form is similar (okay, his editors add the hyperlinks), but his day is one far in the past, in which I never lived. Will they repeat this RSS transmission in another fifty years, or another hundred? Will George Orwell's diary continue to echo throughout the Internet, in various epochal intervals?

My blog, unlike Orwell's diary, is meant to be published. But do I want it to echo through history? Do my posts about various Internet memes, current music and politics, and my own thoughts have any currency outside of the moment they were written? When subscribing to a new blog, who goes back and reads the posts from the first post? One reads maybe a week previous, if that, and then just goes with the flow from there. Of course, if one were an author of significance, like Kafka or Orwell, there might be a reason to do so. But my blog is mostly about me, anyway--I'm clearly not in it for the readership or the historical sketch of the man that is me.

So, rather than assigning someone the duty of deleting my blog upon my death, why don't I pre-empt history, by working out a program to re-post my blog on the fiftieth anniversary of its beginning? I can already set Blogger to post a post in the future. I couldn't be do hard to whip out a program to echo my Internet essence across eternity. I create multiple Networked Units of the post databases across the world, which do nothing for fifty-years except monitor each other, and set up a new database in case anything happens to one of them--you know, so there is always a backup. Then, on that appointed day, the Blog Ghost Network starts a new blog, and begins posting my posts until it is out of material, and then it goes dormant for another fifty years. Naturally, it wouldn't be assured immortality, but it would be pretty hard for the Gestapo to take down all the Networked Units. I would also pay to have a transmitting satellite put on a fifty-year orbit of earth, which upon coming into radio range would transmit a command to buy server space for a new Network Unit to the ground, planting a seed, keeping the BGN going. It's my damn legacy!

But there is one problem: Twitter. Yes, the ubiquitous micro-blog threatens the propegation of my Internet seed. Here is how:

It might be referred to as cyber-squatting, but I think we all know what it really is, in an age when one's Internet profile is equivalent to oneself. I'm talking about techno-zombies.

Numerous dead authors have mysteriously gained Twitter accounts. They don't post often--I assume because of the black magic required to gain enough zombie control to use a keyboard. Also, the posts are often mere charactures of the author's former selves, or just plain senseless in entirety. Clearly a lot of brain matter is lost in the zombification process, as the living-Twitter-corpse feasts on itself for sustenance. But while these Twitter zombies are rarely confused with the living author, it still something to worry about. It's just plain gross! Imagine someone perverting your dead Internet corpse for their own sick, selfish pleasure! I can't imagine a worse fate.

But I have determined how to prevent myself from being Twitter zombied. First--I will die in a pillar of flame. That should keep my real corpse secure. Second, my Blog Ghost Network will be equipped with Twitterized Molotov Cocktails, automatic 140-character shotguns, and naturally, Internet Chainsaws. They will monitor the Twitter API for any reports of brain-eating, grusome limb-missing flame wars, and bug-infested dreadlocks. If they find any hits, they will deploy the Warriors of Natural Death, who will quickly dispatch my zombified Internet Personality straight back to hell.

Remember--with a textualized consciousness of History and Internet Chain Saws, the living Internet will triumph over the forces of darkness.

Unless, of course, the one thing I've been praying never happens, happens...

Crazy looking buildings die every day...

Then: (the future)

Now: (the past)



It's the stubby part burning, not the arch, btw.

Spirit of the Age

I've written a bit about 9/11 conspiracy theories, but not for a long time. What I wrote before is on my log of old "Grinnell Plan" posts, here and here. Most of it has to do with the excellent site, Cooperative Research, and some talk about what actually makes a "conspiracy".

But, such an important topic we can hardly allow to lie dormant.

(let's just be clear, the topic is not whether or not the American government is complacent in the deaths that occurred on 9/11/2001, but to what extent they are responsible. The former is as close to fact as exists in this world.)

I've been watching a pretty excellently produced film today, entitled Zeitgeist.

It's range is pretty broad; it begins by discussing some theories about the origin of the myth of the messiah known as Jesus. Some of these are more interesting than others; some, like the basis of many religions on astrology and astronomy, are pretty interesting and cool. Others, like the assigning of blame for the rise of the belief in Jesus on an effort to manipulate the world, are a bit more directed towards the goal of the film.

(Sure, the messiah myth is not necessarily completely based on fact, but the messiah concept is nothing new, and Jesus just happened to be the one that stuck. I just think the rise of Christianity is a bit more nuanced than that.)

But, the point of beginning with this, is to show that there is a lot of history that is ignored (such as the similarities between the Jesus messiah and many other similar figures in cultures around the world) in the effort to maintain a consistent myth that just so happens to keep the big guys in charge.

Then, we start learning about more recent history, that those other than Religious Studies folk may be interesting. And so begins a great recounting of most of the facts that draw heavy suspicion to the "myth of 9/11", and in addition, recounts the history of the American economic and political system in manipulating public opinion in order to get what it wants.

Besides being the best produced video on the subject I have ever seen, it is also one of the best in content, depicted facts, and not falling into rhetoric about new world orders and brave new worlds. On the website, (contained in the link above), there is the promise of an interactive transcript, which will be posted "soon" that will contain links from the facts mentioned in the film to source materials and further readings, which I am very excited to see, because that level of detail and accuracy to sources in often by-passed in videos of this kind.

The video has been viewed on Google video over 3 million times since June, which I think is a testament to its watchability and its accessibility to those who are not typical conspiracy researchers. Actually, it reminded me a lot of the Koyaanisqatsi trilogy, in particular the last film of the three, for it's artful blending of music and images (especially the beginning overture). If only you added to the trilogy a good collection of narrative quotations and factual evidence, you would have this film.

Anyway, the film is two hours long, and I highly recommend it. Regardless of what you "believe" about the story of the world and our lives as told to us, you should do what the creators of the film suggest; look at the contradicting evidence that shows that the official story is anything but true, and then go out, and find out the truth for yourself.

A History of Violence

Just a short post today, linking to a much longer essay.

I got this link from Broshaq, who posted it on his blog, "Liquid Crack Repository." I'm just going to echo the link with a few comments of my own.

The link is to an article on Truthdig that is a quite long summation of a study conducted jointly with The Nation, entitled “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness,” about the horrible atrocities perpetrated by American troops upon Iraqi civilians.

It's quite horrible, as one might expect. The gist of it is, there are many horrible killings, tortures, and violences that go uninvestigated or unreported, and are pretty much status quo for American troops in Iraq.

It is easy to say things regarding this report. "The war is awful, lost, and needs to be stopped now." "War is hell." "We are alienating the civilians rather than helping them, and training terrorists." "Colonialism, Colonialism, Colonialism." All of which are important things to say.

But what I want to say, because it was the particular conclusion that struck me first after the initial horror wore off is about how history will look at this. America looks like an oppressive, occupying power, and no amount of apologizing about how were were fighting for freedom or against terrorism or for democracy can balance this out. This shit looks like fucking Kristalnacht, and it is impossible to see it any other way.

After recounting one of the more benign stories about property invasion and unwarranted arrest, one of the soldiers said, “I just remember thinking to myself, I just brought terror to someone else under the American flag, and that’s just not what I joined the Army to do.” This is what we are going to see from this whenever we look back on this war. Americans flew halfway around the globe to terrorize people, purportedly for their ideals. We are the fascists now, pure and simple, no metaphor, no compare and contrast. Our soldiers, under some misconceived notion of promoting security, break into houses at night, destroy property, shoot innocent people for effect, scare children, and carry their parents away to be lost in prison. How is this a tactic of fighting terrorism? It is terrorism.

I only hope that the people who argued that this war was a good thing (which includes a large amount of people who are now so against it) have a hell to go to worse than the one that they caused. But I know they don't.

Iran, so far away... (Part 1)

The current events involving Iran and Allied strategy in the Middle East have drawn my attention to the little-known history outside of these events. Iran has become the crux point of the future of American hegemony in world politics, and the direction that this crux could lead will spell out the future of the United States and also determine the epoch of what "post-cold war politics" will really be about. This is literally history in the making, and therefore I think it is important to tie some information together that is being completely missed by the media, otherwise these facts may go unnoticed until far in the future when the ability to take a political stance is gone, and a historical stance is all that is left.

Although the structure of my narrative may change as I tell it, I'm going to divide this topic into two parts, for the purposes of making my blogging easier, and perhaps also easing the reading and following of the threads (and hyperlinks) that I will weave. The first part will be a (very loose) background on some relevant parts of "near east" politics in the last decade and a half; the second will look more closely on the United States conduct toward Iran in the context of that history. Hopefully by depicting a closer, local picture in the context of the larger strategic picture, the fragments of truth that are available might fit a narrative of understanding.

A caveat: the mere digging into the unreported (or at least, unfocused) aspects of the United States' foreign policy almost automatically takes the appearance of what is popularly known as "conspiracy theory". If a conspiracy is a hidden plan, and a theory is a guess at the meaning of evidence that would lead to a theorization of the goals of such a plan, then obviously, speculating on secret military and diplomacy policies would qualify under the description. However, where such theorization differs from the popularly held notion of "conspiracy theory" is how far one must jump between points of evidence in order to connect the dots. In this day and age, there is so much information that the relevance of information becomes decreased to a infinite minimum by the sheer weight of the totality. For any one person to be a "witness" to the complete picture is highly doubtful. Thus bureaucracy obscures itself amid itself. But what we can do is catalog the facts that we do find noted by others, and beginning to observe trends and waves of events that can be linked together into a theory. This I what I will seek to do. I do not intend to show that there is someone "behind" what I will describe, or point blame. I think it is a given fact that a government will seek to act in interests that are meant to remain secret from the general population. But by looking at events, we can see the general direction of what is being attempted, and this is what we call history. I'm not going to say we have an ethical duty to compile history- but we do compile history, all the time, and at different levels. This is what is going to go on here.

Part 1: East and West

In 1996 there was the formation of a group known as the Shanghai Five, made up of the states China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In 2001 these states and Uzbekistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The claimed effect of the founding (from the SCO website) was that "It initiated new global vision with regards to security, containing principles of mutual trust, disarmament, cooperation and security, enriched new type of interstate relations started by Russia and China, with partnership, not union as a basic; provided model of regional cooperation with such distinctive features as joint initiative, priority on security, mutually beneficial interaction of big and small states. This new world vision has raised human society above cold war ideology and made an invaluable contribution to creation of a new model of international relations."
While the claimed principles sound very nice, some conservative theorists have looked upon this organization as a way to counter the influence of the West in southern Asia, an as an alternative to organizations like NATO or the EU. (Belarus was not considered for membership on the basis that it is a European and not an Asian country.) The resolution calling for American forces to be removed from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and the planned SCO joint military exercises are other factors that contribute to the military weight of the organization as an inter-national organization to consolidate Asian forces apart from Western forces.
Although there are no current announced plans to add additional member states to the SCO, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Iran have all applied to be members after being granted observer status in 2005. India, also an observer state, has not applied, and this could be India hasn't decided if this is the bloc for it to join. (The SCO opposed the enlargement of the UN Security Council permanent membership, while Japan, Brazil, Germany and India were for it. Perhaps China and Russia wanted to consolidate their power in that organization, while simultaneously forming a non-Western bloc under their own influence.)
It is not clear whether these observer states will be invited to join, but the fact that they express interest in joining belies precisely that; they are interested in this organization that has arisen as a counter to Western hegemony.

This is a general tide, or current, in international relations. Another current that has of late been whipped into a maelstrom is that of Islam in Asia. While this has been heavily reported, especially since the 2001 terrorist attacks in America, the reporting has often taken the stance of "Islam and the West" while ignoring the currents within Islamic countries that are often more political than their are polemical. Since the invasion of Iraq by the United States "Sunni" and "Shia" have entered the media vocabulary, but still the history of these relations among various countries and most importantly, the various political groups that actually constitute politics has been ignored in favor of general, ideologically understandable divisions. The fact is that different organizations from different countries with different iterations of ideological belief have been at odds and/or evens for years, creating a political climate that cannot be understood dualistically, despite the desire of the media to create an easy story. If only the weather was as simple as warm or cold weather, perhaps meteorologists could always predict the conditions.

I won't describe all the relevant conflicts in detail, but I will link to the wikipedia articles about them. They provide good synopses of the relevant parties involved, and also this list is an illustration of the size of the issue here. There is more than enough history involved to fill a semester-long class, and most media sources try to tell their stories in a few hundred words.

Middle Eastern Conflicts

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Involving all the countries of the Arab League, Israel, and numerous factions all of these countries and groups

Jordan-Syria tensions: Involving tensions between monarchist and socialist governments, pro-Western pro-Arab tensions, support and opposition to the PLO and its factions, the Muslim Brotherhood and its branches

The PLO Internal Conflicts: Fatah, As-Sa'iqa, and some ten other factions and their various periods of unity and division

Lebanon: from the Civil War to the ongoing issues with the recognized government and Hezbollah

Iraqi-Kuwaiti Wars: Involving long-standing border disputes, post-colonialism issues, nationalisms, and oil resource disputes

UN disputes with Iran and Iraq: sovereignty and international politics over nuclear and weapons proliferation issues

The Iran-Iraq War: Involving long-standing border disputes, religious nationalisms, racial nationalisms, oil resource disputes, and Western interference


While all of these issues and events are interrelated, I want to focus on the Iran-Iraq War as a prelude to what is occurring now along that border, although now the United States and Allies in a much more obviously involved position. Part 2 will begin with that analysis, and show how Iran figures into that local history, the larger global scene of Asia and Europe, and the currently unfolding events. In the mean time, do your homework! No one is going to learn about history for you, jerk! Not even me!