The internet loves to have fights over which intellectual, religious, artistic, or political views are discredited by the sins of its people. We have to police all kinds of things lest the youth get the wrong impression.
If you dig into any serious gathering of humans you will be shocked by human nature. You shouldn’t be but Americans have it pretty good so we often are. This despite us living in a Woody Allen panopticon where we cannot separate the man from the work. We are forced to look at others sins constantly.
And it’s upsetting I won’t lie. Way more people than you’d like fall into the pederast camp. I didn’t even know that was a word till I met some Italians. Blessedly free of this knowledge in lived experience. Woody Allen, Michel Foucault (he gave us the panopticon) and Socrates were all committing sins against children. I’d argue you can skip Annie Hall but you shouldn’t skip Plato or Foucault.
Depending on whose authority you crave you the real danger to watch out for is different historical flavors of Marxists and fascists and where they settled.
Plenty of academics and journalists dislike understanding humans for who they were in their time and judging them in context of their output.
That’s dangerous according to more than a few scolds in the media and the academy. Drop the term Straussian and see how it goes over at a dinner party. Dangerous truths ahhh!
There are lots of little shibboleths for discerning which Hegelians took a turn with the Italian futurists. Have you heard of Russian Cosmism?Also dangerous. Don’t even get me started on what it means that JD Vance may or may not be an Ulster Scott and what that does or doesn’t mean to certain sects of reactionaries.
I honestly can’t keep up despite being as relatively close as one can come to being expert weird future fixated movements while not being a historian or a journalist.
Guilt by association in the process of living through history is both a horrifying and sticky business if we look too closely. I have a shelf full of Modernist Marxists which I’m certain wouldn’t have allowed me to survive the Red Scare despite my intense dislike for communism. So beware the Woody Allen panopticon. It comes for everyone. But also leave them kids alone.
We get regular reminders of how chaotic things are in our new hypersphere networked world that we have entire memes categories and full influence campaigns dedicated to blackpilling people into nihilism.
No blackpilling meme
The fatalism and determinism expressed on the internet is the experiences reality for plenty of people and it’s probably not limited to a few radicals. The presumption that any of these pills are limited to incels misogynists racist cranks is comforting but incorrect.
She thought something had gone wrong with us physically too. “Endocrine systems get fried. There’s too much cortisol, you’ve been running on adrenaline, eventually you tap out. Everyone feels nuts right now,” she said, “because what on earth are we supposed to do with the fact that we’ve had this incredible rate of change for so long. We think we’re keeping up with it, but our bodies are like, ‘Oh, actually no. We have no idea what’s going on.’ ”
I also believe it’s a deliberate strategy by virtually every player in the great games of power and influence to make us feel nuts. Everything is a conspiracy. Everyone is a villain except your in-group. Except it’s not.
In a past life I worked in marketing for the luxury gym Equinox I could go on about the fascinating complexities involved in selling a future that actually requires you to do more work than most just buying it. But I digress.
Some businesses are seasonal and fitness an easy example of this phenomena with its January resolution sales.
The lesser appreciated but no less important bump was always May. People believe this is the summer where they really get into their bodies.
You’d think people would join gyms at non prime-times but they don’t. Humans like that change is possible at every seasonal juncture.
And we are not wrong to have those aspirations. It’s beautiful to think this is the time I’ll really do it. This turn of the wheel will be the one.
As part of the unfortunate adjustment to constant chaos, I find myself considering the balance of assets and skills we have at our disposal and how best to deploy it.
I increasingly feel the limiting factor being time, which makes one reconsider the investment one makes into your body. If we have green fields of possibility as information automation begins its march across the first world what should we be doing? If the Industrial Revolution knows less change than the Intelligence Revolution I’d be surprised.
I continue to think it’s mostly a game of energy, compute and property rights with a sprinkling of physical safety (this will get weird). How many people gain power is up for grabs. I think we’ve got the potential for a great elevating of talent.
I personally feel empowered as someone who has contributed to the training data. The internet was built by me and my kind.
The weirdos who write wikis. The experts who give away their insights on Twitter like pearls before swine. Bloggers who write on WordPress have a taxonomy advantage as a standard of the open web.
Having written so much of ourselves into artificial intelligence I shudder to think what we’ve done it wrong but I see the good people bring to virtual communities and I think people being people has always been this way. Those opportunities are perennial.
It can be really hard to know if you are doing the right thing on any given issue. American politics is fraught. Technology is changing faster than our culture is able to metabolize it.
And we have to make choices without false the security of safetyism. We are building the infrastructure of a future that isn’t yet entirely clear.
My husband and I had a moment last night where we lamented that if was hard to know if we were doing any good. We try to be considered and support policies that enable us to live amicably even if we don’t share the same beliefs. Especially then!
Libertarians catch a lot of flack but in a pluralistic democracy it’s best what we’ve got. Watching the battles for who can debase themselves most with populism is a great advertisement for small government.
But in any large system it’s hubris to think any one thing can set us right or wrong. We are the accumulation of our decisions and America has made a few bad ones. But if you can contribute in anyway you might be the extra nudge that pushes the system in a better equilibrium. Civilization is made of decades and not days.
I read some Charles Dickens today. No this isn’t a Great Expectations joke. Rather, I read the first seven paragraphs of his 900 page novel Bleak House.
[They were asked to] read the first seven paragraphs of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House out loud to a facilitator and then translate each sentence into plain English
If you are a knowledge professional you better hope you are a four but social media comments suggest most of us are not.
This methodology doesn’t even try articulate level 5. And as someone who occasionally sees what a real 1% outlier looks like I don’t disagree. Our best are in a league of their own.
So obviously as American funded “college for all” it was clear not all college attendees would on the right side of average. And as it turns out, the English majors at highly subsidized state universities (mostly white girls incidentally) had a lot of trouble understanding Dickens’s British family court tragedy.
I also don’t want to read that many pages of fog metaphors, and I have an entire tag dedicated to forced metaphors.
I took the test (speaking my answer into my phone) and it was harder than you think to simplify but I had the vocabulary.
Like those other white girls I am unlikely to be in the 1% of literacy when it comes 19th century British literature. Surely in my own skill stack (and it’s overlapping areas of expertise) I can approach 2SD on things. I suspect this blog and my general internet presence suggests I can do Level 4 reading. We think around what we can.
That seems adequate given I contribute what I like and communicate what is enjoyable on my own spaces. Here I am plodding along contributing sixteen hundred days of writing to the public discourse which is its own proof of literacy. It’s several novels worth of training data for our artificial intelligences.
I think about how much I do or don’t want to contribute to the maw of publicly indexed Internet because I believe we get better if we all contribute to this public good.
Our future is a shared coordination problem requiring we can comprehend and contribute to our commons. Maybe I understand enough Dickens to get by. He maybe has a dimmer view of legalistic thinking than I do. But I’m sure he’d see plenty of wretches in our times too.
I would love to have something to say today. I have a migraine. My circulation seems odd. I’ve got on 2 pairs of wool socks on, two layers on top and I’m underneath two down blanks. And I’m still cold.
Complaining about one’s body is such an unappealing habit and yet when the pain comes for your attention it has the gravity of a black hole.
I don’t want to be a bore. I fear every time I am trapped in a bad bodily cycle I am boring myself and others. It’s been six years since I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition and so much of it has been chronicled here.
And yet no matter how much I throw at health and wellness I still find myself cold, sad, hurting and without any kind of cure.
We had a rainy couple of days in Montana which is naturally all anyone can talk about. On our side of the continental divide it’s dry and sunny more than not. We are used to fluffy snow and full sun and screw the in-between. Mud season sucks.
Weather is of course the common ground of embodied society. People who live in their heads that don’t notice the weather must live someplace without seasons or manage to live somehow beyond its effects. Which isn’t how I want to live. I enjoy some of friction of seasons. More of winter than summer but it’s nice to have variance.
Pop songs have a lot to say about love being heaven on earth. I also happen to think heaven is definitely is a place on earth at the right time. For me it is full winter and full summer in the Rocky Mountains. A little mud is a fine tradeoff.
Nevertheless we have seasons such that outdoor furniture takes quite a beating so best to not put out fragile stuff till the season changes. It’s just not meant for the in-between.
Today was a fine sunny day and Alex brought out a new piece of furniture acquired from Costco. It is a giant umbrella that required sandbag filling and water and was a giant production requiring a second man in good shape to get it set up. But it was worth it.
Being outside and doing some reading and some internet (I’m online it’s a material condition) while underneath a very sturdy umbrella is a lovely afternoon. We had sun and a sudden thunderstorm that left us so quickly we had rain shine. Best to enjoy the high fidelity version of reality when you can.
I’m not sure where my mother picked up the slang “God willing and the creek don’t rise” but I had it regularly to suggest a thing shall come to pass a “if nature and God” are willing.
It’s it’s got a hint of Appalachia in its origin story and then tumbles over into a Johnny Cash cover of a Jerry Reed country tune (probably where my mother learned it as she loves Cash) before settling into a Spike Lee documentary about the water engineering challenges that have brought such misery to New Orleans.
It’s been pouring in Gallatin County all day. Our already high rivers are looking like they may cause troubles. Friends who fish were concerned the muddy headwaters weeks ago when I was caught in other unexpected spring showers in Colorado.
I am afraid the moisture is kicking up mold in our house. We’ve spent months remediating the problem so it weighs on me to consider the possibility. I woke up covered in hives and eczema.
I took antibiotics and Benadryl and it kept getting worse. I showered with nothing but unscented Castile soap hoping to mitigate the outbreak. That did more.
I have an event I’d like to attend this evening along with a houseguest who I very enjoy much enjoy so it frustrates me when the creek sees fit to rise against the banks that contain the river of my life.
I’m not sure exactly how to characterize Doomer Optimism other than a kind of social club for Internet denizens that wish to retain their optimism in the face of chaos and change. It’s a very human group and I’ve enjoyed their company for years.
I’m one of the odder congregants in this group which includes a diverse array of characters from all classes and walks of life. I say I’m the odd man out only because I’ve seen them as a generally regenerative self sufficient localist group that in another era would have been back to the land hippies, unionists, environmentalists and anarchists. Generally left wing coded but skeptical of state and corporate power.
That I’m one of a handful of practicing technologists that participates, and a libertarian, means I argue for the liberatory power of open source software and its range of applications for individuals to enable a life that can provide means and meaning without being in the jaws of the Machine.
Decentralizing technologies lets us all participate. More individuals are interested in thinking how they engage with industrial processes. 3D printing enables many types of freedom and is crucial to the right to repair movement. Which gives power back to the owner of property and not the corporation from which it was purchased. I unabashedly support the freedom to compute as a human who wishes to find a harmony with the machine in all its forms. Be not controlled by your tools or their makers. Make your own future.
If none of this strikes you as particularly right wing, reactionary or otherwise populist, or even statist; I’d agree with you. I am a libertarian.
And yet there are those who are still enthralled by old narratives of political poles that this individual, and choice centered, politics is one grounded in real people with real problems not financial or social abstractions.
Paul is a neighbor, a friend, and a gentleman in the most noble possible sense. He does not traffic in status or social cachet. He is a free thinking and curious American man who is dedicated to hearing a large swathe of perspectives. He wrote a response and included the email screenshot below. I am certain Paul really does mean his hospitality genuinely.
Dear @awinston
Thank you for your email (below). Of course its intent was not in good faith nor was it evidence of genuine curiosity, but it did cause me to reflect on the scope of @thewagonbox project and the growing constellation of characters around it. And I had to think about you, and Mr. Wilson, and how one should respond to the sort of witch hunts for political wrong-think that have become your cottage industry (one that I’m afraid is dying.)
To your first point: an interesting aspect of the Wagon Box, and particularly our Doomer Optimism events, is the breadth of the politics represented. Seneca Scott is a ‘90s democrat who wants a safe community for his family and goats. James Pogue, like me (and Jesus), has anarchist sensibilities, cares about the habitat for the trout he fishes and is leery of the global hegemonic machine. Ashley Fitzgerald is a suburban mom who likes regenerative agriculture and healthy neighborhoods. The event has largely focused on a suspicion of “The Machine” and ways to live humanely and harmoniously with the natural world. The idea that it is some hotbed of “hard/far right” ideology, or that we are promoting “corporate governance” is laughable.
To the question of the “ties” I have to Ryan Payne, or Jonathan Keeperman, or D. C. Miller, or any other person you may see as a “smoking gun” evidence of nefarious ideology, I have a few comments. First of all, you have left out other characters who have graced the Wagon Box, some of whom you might even consider even worse! And of course there are others hard to place politically, like Walter Kirn, Patrick Deneen, Paul Kingsnorth, or Max Foley. All these characters differ quite widely, have deep disagreements, but all have something in common: I find them interesting and care about what they have to say, and they see enough in me to take me up on my invitation.
You ever get to talking to someone and you see their eyes glaze over? They do not care what you have to say, they are not listening. It’s no fun. It is death. What’s the point? Good faith curiosity is the lifeblood of any relationship, of any conversation, of journalism, and of self governance. There are swaths of folks who have had good faith curiosity driven from them, and it has been done largely by people like you, who paint in caricatures and come to stories with an agenda, who live on fear and suspicion. You send a guy like me some sort of hostage note instead of an invitation to a real conversation. It’s sad.
At the root of the Wagon Box project is my personal curiosity in people, and at the root of that is a conviction that we will all be together eventually at a large table in a conversation that will never end. Our enemy is no person, but the stale impulse of death that preys on love, on connection, on community. It thrives in the Machine of mass delusion of which, regrettably, The Guardian is a mouthpiece. It has forced you to have a narrower view of people, a static view, and one that lacks curiosity. But I really do care about you, as you too are on a journey and I’d love to hear about it. Let’s grab coffee and talk sometime. No deadline.
I brought up the context of there being technologists as part of this conversation as another reporter who shares a similarly slanted lens who seems to have quite a problem with Silicon Valley while not really understanding the core values that technologists share that are not compatible with a controlled statist or even corporatist view of power.
We are going through a huge cultural change that will sweep many of us up its cascading consequences. We will have materially different conditions as artificial intelligence changes day to day life.
Do you want to trust those who insist on control to prevent horrors? Or do you want to trust yourself and your fellow man to engage with one another as human? I’ve chosen optimism. I believe we can build freely.
