Tag: Religion

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Politics

Day 1555 and Machiavellian Modernist

I finally decided to read James Burnham’s The Machiavellians this week. It felt appropriate what with all the tariff excitement and “Liberation Day” wish casting around mercantilism. As markets reacted and the chattering classes raised the volume it seemed like it was time to circle back on some core issues of power, realism, idealism and modernity.

The thesis of The Machiavellians, a term often associated with James Burnham’s book, revolves around the analysis of political power as inherently driven by elite rule and self-interest. The focus is on the practical dynamics of power, emphasizing realism over idealism. – Perplexity

As the Trump 2.0’s 5D chess defenders debate with the “tariffs are fucking retarded” economist and technocrat crowd it’s a good moment to contemplate if we’ve forgotten to care about the aims of a polis and whether it’s pursuing the people’s highest good.

Leo Strauss was the first critic of modernity I encountered with any weight. He saw Machiavelli as the first wave of modernity. Politics became practical tool as we lost our ambition for achieving justice, purpose and moral grounding through politics.

What good is an excellent technocracy if we only produce policies that send us careening towards charts with obscure symbolic meaning inscrutable to your average citizen? Meaning is stubbornly hard to measure.

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Culture

Day 1553 and Omens

A friend recently texted excitedly about seeing spotted owl near their urban home. In cities it’s rare to spot these birds. Just a few days later we got our own visitor. A pair of owls hooting and calling to each other over the barn.

An owl above the eves

Owls have a fairly diverse set of meanings depending on your cultural setting. Classical western cultures associate owls with knowledge, learning and inner light.

The Japanese associate them with good fortune. Similarly in Hinduism owls are associated with Lakshmi and her abundance and wealth.

But the nocturnal predator has other meanings that are darker. In China they are omens of evil or misfortune. In Africa the undercurrent is more mysticism as the birds fly between worlds. Babylonians similarly associate them with Lilith and dark magic. We revere and fear what we don’t know.

I just learned that a group of owls is called a “parliament” which is seems balanced between good fortune and death. Government can go either way. Maybe it brings good fortune. Maybe it is death. Maybe it is both? Modern finance will bring back all kinds of divinations as we go forward.

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Aesthetics Media

Day 1527 and Wayback Machine

I just finished watching the 8th season of Netflix’s mega reality TV hit Love is Blind.

It feels as if they produce a new America version every quarter but if that’s not enough content for you there are spinoffs in Sweden, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Argentina.

They shoot them roughly a year ahead of time. Which, in any other era in my lifetime, would have been fast turn around time. You could figure basic values would hold from year to year. But culture changes very rapidly now.

So reality tv that was shot even a year ago now makes for some very odd viewing as America’s politics and “current thing” are in constant flux.

February and March of 2024 did not have the vibe shift we are in now. I won’t spoiler it should you be considering the show but I will say it’s fascinating to see how much politics played into the women’s decisions.

Now maybe it’s because it’s the Minnesota season they felt they had to address certain topics in race relations after the summer of 2020.

But they also went to places on queer issues, religion and national politics that did absolutely nothing to make any situation better.

Looking back on one’s previous view of the world is not always pleasant. That we have a way back thanks to media makes for a strange continuity of views that probably do little to do with stuff of a happy love filled life. Perhaps a good reminder to not look too much to the past to decide your future. Or a reminder to focus on what never changes.

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Emotional Work Politics

Day 1507 and Apocalypse Narcissism

I’ve been very wrapped up in my own problems of late. I have plenty of good reasons to be focused inward. When you feel as if you are fighting for survival, physical or otherwise, you can’t see anything else.

As I’ve looked up from my issues, I am seeing countless others caught in their own reactive spirals. Many of them are even directionally correct in their diagnosis of the problems facing them and the world as we know it.

The apocalyptic bent is especially strong in America at the moment. From politics to artificial intelligence to cultural wars, Americans are on the edge of change.

If your world is ending you probably can’t see beyond the horizon of the issues bringing about its end. Your view is myopic. Let’s call this phenomenon “apocalypse narcissism.”

It’s understandable to be wrapped up in fear when faced with all kinds of mortality. Your life, your nation, your culture, your planet and even your species all face world ending questions at some point. Sometimes change is so great we can’t see it as anything but death. Even if something better rises from the ashes.

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Culture Media

Day 1505 and Warping Reality

We are all avoiding reality to some measure. Be grateful that our egos can cushion the horrors of the world at all. I’m unsure how removed one can be from reality anymore but as an American I’ll probably one of the last to find out.

Rationalist and all-around Twitter in-group personality Aella went on a podcast called “whatever” which I’d wrongly believed was a marketing funnel for OnlyFans creators.

It turns out the host is some sort of debater Christian and this is a popular podcast for feeling better about the state of the gender wars. In some of the ensuing debate Kim Ono (I’ve lost the link) said something very insightful.

The whole business model is warping reality to comfort the fearful

Whether it is dim men dunking on sex workers, panicked liberal women on MSNBC, or Fox Blondes screaming at Boomers, our entire media environment is about making sure you can’t see what’s real while simultaneously pandering that your fear is justified. Nervous systems be damned!

I find reality to be plenty terrifying but I try to avoid needing my own version of reality to cope with it. Not to say I don’t have my own biases and priors (and I’ve written about them at left) but the world is such a jumble at the moment I very much need to confidently act in the face of warped realities.

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Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 1500 and Counting The Days

Somewhere in this blog there is a date error. It’s probably easy to find. I noticed the day I did it (I believe I was ill and got confused) and then time streamed on and now it barely matters.

Oddly I only care to mention it because I notice more when things are done in day by day format. We have 10 day retreats, month long sprints, quarterly focuses, if you are large enough to have yearly plans good luck to you.

We asked for acceleration and we got it. Timelines are so preposterously fast we can count them in shorter bursts. The Wall Street Journal has an administration day count for Trump. Today is day 21. Which is a light day involving golf with Tiger Woods and going to the Super Bowl.

I’m not inclined to dramatic pronouncements about the future (ok maybe a little). Humans don’t change too quickly their hard learned ways. But we are getting so much more information at such rapid pace right now that if you are inclined to count the days maybe set some goals for them.

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Internet Culture Media Medical

Day 1499 and Not Up to Speed

I enjoy my daily writing as it forces me to put my sensory apparatus to work at summarizing the inputs on my systems for the day. Being a human, my processing is laggy.

I came across this graphic from Hinterland’s Twitter. They created it show compression of the our body’s sensory inputs. A lot hits our mind and very little of it gets to conscious thought.

The human body sends 11 million bits per second to the brain for processing, yet the conscious mind seems to be able to process only 50 bits per second. – Britannica “Information Theory”

It seems to me we are not prepared for this moment of unprecedented complexity given the hardware we are working with.

Some of us may have slightly different software so it’s not all hopeless. It just seems like as a species the complexity of our environment relative to our baseline physiology is looking a little iffy.

I have a kind of optimism that we will find a way to meet the moment. Right up until we can’t?

I’m am looking to do whatever upgrades I can to hear the signal in the noise. But maybe a booming voice from the sky is easy to hear than the endless chatter of our world. Or maybe we have to find another way to achieve resonance and hear.

Categories
Media Politics

Day 1498 and Reformation

When things get noisy on our global commons it’s good to step back. I live in elder millennial neighborhood that is American Twitter which is a bustling place. I still manage that “by hand” as it were.

I spend time on forums and Discords but increasingly my interactions within the commons has some kind of artificial intelligence layer between me and “the noise” as the slop drowns out. What to believe and how to keep it updated to reality?

An informational reformation is part of what you could see as a wider political elite power struggle. The uni-party of Washington Consensus and prestige media are not containing the rebel information hordes at bay. Consensus is at risk. Zoomers are learning the Treasury doesn’t control the Fed. Welcome to the audit kids.

The centralized narrative window of a top editorial page or an interview on Bloomberg remains the bounds of propriety for now.

But it’s going to get weirder. Many a teenage hacker with fighting words on Discord servers is likely to be sacrificed in this war of elites as permanent Washington fends off the populist revolt. It just happens to be that some hackers under the banner of Musk are in this coalition. Crusades probably always involve baroque racism.

With all of that as background I started watching Wolf Hall which is a BBC Drama with Damien Lewis as Henry VIII and Claire Foy as Ann Boleyn. What could be more relevant than a time when an elite decided he should decide his own fate and not the Holy Roman Emperor.

Categories
Culture

Day 1455 and Holy Nights

I used to have a habit of extended fasting during the Holy Nights. I would fast for ten days between Christmas and New Years though never all the way through to Epiphany.

I have no special Christmas traditions beyond worship as my own family does not do gifts or gatherings. I prefer it this way. Quiet suits me now.

Advent is a season for reflection on the cycles of life. For me the time between Christmas and Epiphany is a rare season. Some consider it a liminal time or still point where the veil between physical and other realities are thin.

Holy Nights can be thought of as a still-point in earthly rhythms as we transition from Christ’s Birth to Epiphany. Northern European cultures call it this time the Raunächte or “rough nights” similarly it represents the thin point between worlds.

There are many traditions associated with this time. Cleaning and cleansing and warding off bad or unwanted energy, the paying off of debts and reconciliation as well as rituals of burning, cleansing and smudging. It’s a time for introspection and reflection.

I’ll likely meditate and journal as normal perhaps with some divination exercises. I enjoy any excuse to pull tarot cards and toss a Nordic rune.

Categories
Culture Politics

Day 1454 and The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth

I’m so unsure of how the next decade or two will play out. Anyone with a firm degree of certainty on the matter is suspect in my mind.

History is alive and material progress rests on the intelligent coordination of resources. We are in the middle of an explosion of intelligence. Will we rise to the challenge as a species?

I’ve had a wild year. I suspect many others feel similarly. The global year of elections exposed many tensions even as it resolved some questions of who has the power and how it will be used.

I’m more optimistic than I expected to be at the start of the year. We are living inside William Gibson’s Jackpot. As intelligence explodes and my own capacity to coordinate with others improves I am hopeful.

It’s Christmas Eve which puts me in a reflective mood. Changes in human nature are rare. If we change at all, it happens over generations of incorporating cultural change as it is combined with significant changes in technical and material circumstance.

Christ’s birth represents a significant cultural change for humans. From low circumstances arose a new way of living. The mighty see the grace of the meekest among us.

As we meditate on the values our ancestors worked to build into civilization, do we have the capacity to set aside our pride in the face of change? May we humbly seek redemption in the mysteries of time.