I don’t think that any Grand Unified Theory of physics could survive a person levitating.
RC
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Democracies Are Everywhere
From my point of view I don’t like any particular country or government, in that regard my compatriots here in Colombia can amply testify to that, as they constantly ask me: “Why are you here if you don’t like it?”
The answer to that is simple, I am in life, I am a change agent, I am not here to like what is here I am here to change it if I can. Futility is a possible consequence of my endeavor, probably the most likely scenario, but I will persist in attempting to change this place because it bothers me the way it is.
Now let me explain what my beef is with American democracy, in that it believes that at least it is some what more just or at least that it allows more freedom of expression, or more so than other systems.
The matter is that to me, a system is composed of the general assumptions of its peoples. All systems regardless of their morality or civic stance, are the product of the conduct, aspiration and self definition of their peoples.
As the self definitions cross each other over the social medium they are altered and reach a third party identity, a sort of objective composition of all the national subjectives - recombined to make a national psyche, that ought to satisfy no one in particular but is in the end result the most likely possible accord, or more precisely the most simmering point of agglomerated subjectivism.
That silent social accord is what generates the, or any, system, and with it the gamut of intolerances or tolerances that will define its institutions.
My friend Bob once recently found himself being helped from a treacherous excursion in Africa by a tribe that fed him milk and blood and offered him a virgin for a bride if he hunted down a lion. Bob was then living in a world very difficult for him to understand, specially because his potential bride had had her clitoris removed; Bob probably enjoys more satisfying a woman than being himself satisfied and so that certainly put a damper on the matter of killing the lion.
Now you would not know it from our understanding of culture but the girls and women of that tribe unite to serve up the practice of clitoris clipping. It is a right of passage, as I assume a circumcision is for Jews or even for the medical profession which for many decades approved and practically, through the auspices of hygiene, mandated the practice. Fortunately I escaped it unscathed.
To be an American you have to be many silent things, I was one for a time, I still hold many American values and I contributed to the national psyche of the country, my taxes paid, certainly bought bullets, my considerate amount of attention to National politics have contributed valuable energy to that system.
Upon my return to Colombia I attempted to transfer the American work ethic values to this country, my fellow compatriots won out on that one and today I am grateful that I have lost my ability to work efficiently and with much dedication.
My point is that what I was when I was in America, how I melted into that culture, was mandated not only by my circumstances but equally by what the system needed from me and how that triangulated with the contrived national psyche. At some point it became unbearable for me, the militancy of the national psyche was too much, I cowered under, I begun to fail at my work and in my personal relationships because I wasn’t synchronized to the professional discipline of the American national psyche.
Upon my move to Colombia I found all the inadequacies of a third world country frustrating but equally I realized that I was disengaged from the machine, that Colombia could not churn out anything efficiently, that there was plenty of indifference, and that complied, at least for now, with what I needed, I didn’t want the world staring at me as it does the United States, I didn’t want to be the center of attention, I didn’t want to improve myself every year, I didn’t want to take any more tests, I didn’t want to be defending my job from the litany of aspirants; the world slowed down, a lot, almost to a stand still.
Of course with being a Colombian come many terrible things, children are abused, people are shot, farmers are destitute, peoples lives are constantly in turmoil, there is no organization, there is little hope, no one is going to rescue anyone, everyone is out to protect the little self and by process our national psyche is small, little, insignificant, I don’t expect contributions from us to the greater world, I don’t think we are going to get out of our inner beings, we are still adolescents.
All societies have these sort of unwritten consequences, America consumes the world, 60 percent of its resources, and its politics are largely based on that horror, in some way America is always gobbling something, it has to, you cannot be so huge and powerful and not, it is that which makes it all so super-size for those of us that think little, that cannot muster the energies and concentrations to gobble things up. Colombians are self destructive, I prefer that, and that is a consequence of being in Colombia or a Colombian.
To me all nation-states are democratic, either silently or not, it is the mass aggregate will with its subconscious-simmering-psyche that makes it all happen, the final agreement that holds a nation together is that, a little bit of everyone represented as none of them in particular.
As such when you see the apparent horrors of any given government, it must also be obvious that the overall society is willing to pay that price, either to reinforce a national psyche or as a sad or fatal by product of the embroidery that is a civilization.
I admire the catholic church, 2006 year old institution, I am obviously not a Catholic but that is a supra-global psyche, the rituals seem so pointless, the priest so perverted, and yet the institution has lasted the times. There is something to be said for that.
America is a young country, as such a rouge state, so goes the book, and so has been the history of most world powers, Britain was an ass in its hay day and so we should not expect anything different of America. Unlike most I do believe that America is just a phase in human history, we are not going to be dominated by capitalism and democracy, the new world will perhaps be ruled by some metaphysical divination, a sort of -“I am aware and I comprehend…”- mind and heart set.
Of course when America fades into the sunset many things that come with it will fade too, the concept of “marketing” might go extinct, the idea that profit is a prerequisite for someone to act, might fade away as well. I expect the field of knowledge to be the first to suffer, knowledge will undoubtedly suffer, MIT and Harvard might fail as well it should be as these are institutions that have their basis on the American mind set.
Grant you none of these things were invented by America, nor is America the only one afflicted by them, it is simply that America has bought into them and perfected them unlike anyone else.
Marx did get one thing right, economy drives the essence of the thing, you look at Americas economic logistics and it is the only proper way to understand its behavior pattern.
Now I don’t blame America for being what it is, that is a world condition, America is just good at it, no more.
The problem is one of civilization and contribution to the world in general. America is still young enough, as far as countries are concerned that we don’t know what its actual contribution to humanity will be in the end, for all we know, and I rather think it so, Wall Street and Silicon Valley and Hollywood could be a blink in human history. The terracotta soldiers are 2300 years old, Chinese civilization was going through a Jade age 6000 years ago, Indian society has well over 5000 years behind it, that in itself is a very amazing thing, but see I admire things that last a long time, that establish continuity, that form foundations that linger throughout the ages.
America to me seems more like a fad, something based on spontaneity, capriciousness, a desire to be in a sort of hedonistic postponement, that is to say America is always working on the next nearest thing, and is always planning for the next event and dully postponing its enjoyment while absorbing a child like happiness of the moment.
There have been plenty of 300 year old countries that never lasted the ages. They are in fact the norm. One only needs to go back to the 19th century to see that the map makers have been busy. America’s immediate necessity is to live for the moment, and I will argue that that is why it is so able in the here and now!
This is because most people are living a cultural event, most of India is, they are not living for the immediacy of the moment, that is why they don’t see the transgressions that we witness in India. By an large they are living a movement, most of India is not living the current love affair with Western ways, most of India is like Iran when America imposed their dictator of choice the Shah; but Iran’s cultural clock ticks slowly but eventually it strikes an hour of regressive change, boom!
Culture as atomic bomb.
People that live in culture take a while to realize what’s happening, because the beauty of culture is that you don’t have to think all the time and be on the alert, that is the beauty of culture, it is also why American political strategists have so little patience with it, and equally why they think they can change it all within a year. Those people in Iraq don’t look very smart from afar, they don’t look very complicated, they look largely like savages with their contradictory and illogical ways; but what the Harvard and Chicago schools don’t measure is how those societies have clicked throughout the centuries, and that is no small accomplishment and as such it isn’t going to be undone unless it is annihilated.
The problem is that America’s youth, the lack of its own predefined culture is also what makes it appear superior, light on its feet, able to change at a moments notice, Americans can change jobs, homes, cars, friendships and location on a moments notice, just show them where the opportune horizon stretches and they will head in that direction; that real time adjustment to world events makes them winners, first to get there types; equally such looseness does not favor culture because culture is based on the locking-down of traditions. Culture doesn’t change overnight it changes over the centuries and flowery horizons are mistrusted.
If you look at all of civilization as a singular entity, and I do, then you can imagine that we needed our impetuous child explorer, America, to go out there and find out what else could be out there, in a way it had to be an isolationist, few could brave the rub that change would imply to those living in culture, America went at it alone, and perhaps it found something, only history will tell; that India and China and Russia are finally listening makes an interesting case, but then we must hope it is not the fringes of those societies, the aggressive types that are making their adoptions of the American way. Because if it is only them, then it will not last, somehow those cultures must emblematize and absorb the work ethic, the professionalism, the delusion that a career defines self, the mastery of the moment, all those things with logistical precision must be adopted wholly, else they will only reek and the clock of tradition will reach yet another hour of boom.
India, what is India to me? Nothing, I don’t know it, I am reading the Buddhist bible, it’s a translation, it was written by a man with Western values, I slept with an Indian girl once, her name was Rita, I doubt that that was her name in India, but I do think that sleeping with someone from that culture brings you all the energies that have harbored her essence, and that could be a lot. Beyond that is the cuisine which shows an amazing level of gorgeousness and essence at the same time, or maybe is the fact that they have 1700 or so plus Gods, you have to be very spiritual to have all those gods, the West is practical it only likes to maintain monotheism, but India I would guess has a lot of devout to maintain that colossal religiosity. Maybe too it is the mystics, the transcendentalists that somehow offer a different path that doesn’t seem caught up in the Tarot and the Zodiac. Or maybe it is the fact that cows are sacred and can roam free, why one of them could be the next Dali Lama.
But I really don’t know what India signifies to me except that it has lasted 5000 years and this even as their main religions are anointing inaction, the nothingness and indifference to the self.
When my nephew went to New York city, he didn’t like it. I love New York, it amply demonstrates that we can live in purely artificial environments and relationships, and that loneliness can be ignored indefinitely through fatigueless entertainment. When we go to conquer the other planets, we will need that kind of indifference to tolerate the more indifferent environment; I just love New York!
RC
The answer to that is simple, I am in life, I am a change agent, I am not here to like what is here I am here to change it if I can. Futility is a possible consequence of my endeavor, probably the most likely scenario, but I will persist in attempting to change this place because it bothers me the way it is.
Now let me explain what my beef is with American democracy, in that it believes that at least it is some what more just or at least that it allows more freedom of expression, or more so than other systems.
The matter is that to me, a system is composed of the general assumptions of its peoples. All systems regardless of their morality or civic stance, are the product of the conduct, aspiration and self definition of their peoples.
As the self definitions cross each other over the social medium they are altered and reach a third party identity, a sort of objective composition of all the national subjectives - recombined to make a national psyche, that ought to satisfy no one in particular but is in the end result the most likely possible accord, or more precisely the most simmering point of agglomerated subjectivism.
That silent social accord is what generates the, or any, system, and with it the gamut of intolerances or tolerances that will define its institutions.
My friend Bob once recently found himself being helped from a treacherous excursion in Africa by a tribe that fed him milk and blood and offered him a virgin for a bride if he hunted down a lion. Bob was then living in a world very difficult for him to understand, specially because his potential bride had had her clitoris removed; Bob probably enjoys more satisfying a woman than being himself satisfied and so that certainly put a damper on the matter of killing the lion.
Now you would not know it from our understanding of culture but the girls and women of that tribe unite to serve up the practice of clitoris clipping. It is a right of passage, as I assume a circumcision is for Jews or even for the medical profession which for many decades approved and practically, through the auspices of hygiene, mandated the practice. Fortunately I escaped it unscathed.
To be an American you have to be many silent things, I was one for a time, I still hold many American values and I contributed to the national psyche of the country, my taxes paid, certainly bought bullets, my considerate amount of attention to National politics have contributed valuable energy to that system.
Upon my return to Colombia I attempted to transfer the American work ethic values to this country, my fellow compatriots won out on that one and today I am grateful that I have lost my ability to work efficiently and with much dedication.
My point is that what I was when I was in America, how I melted into that culture, was mandated not only by my circumstances but equally by what the system needed from me and how that triangulated with the contrived national psyche. At some point it became unbearable for me, the militancy of the national psyche was too much, I cowered under, I begun to fail at my work and in my personal relationships because I wasn’t synchronized to the professional discipline of the American national psyche.
Upon my move to Colombia I found all the inadequacies of a third world country frustrating but equally I realized that I was disengaged from the machine, that Colombia could not churn out anything efficiently, that there was plenty of indifference, and that complied, at least for now, with what I needed, I didn’t want the world staring at me as it does the United States, I didn’t want to be the center of attention, I didn’t want to improve myself every year, I didn’t want to take any more tests, I didn’t want to be defending my job from the litany of aspirants; the world slowed down, a lot, almost to a stand still.
Of course with being a Colombian come many terrible things, children are abused, people are shot, farmers are destitute, peoples lives are constantly in turmoil, there is no organization, there is little hope, no one is going to rescue anyone, everyone is out to protect the little self and by process our national psyche is small, little, insignificant, I don’t expect contributions from us to the greater world, I don’t think we are going to get out of our inner beings, we are still adolescents.
All societies have these sort of unwritten consequences, America consumes the world, 60 percent of its resources, and its politics are largely based on that horror, in some way America is always gobbling something, it has to, you cannot be so huge and powerful and not, it is that which makes it all so super-size for those of us that think little, that cannot muster the energies and concentrations to gobble things up. Colombians are self destructive, I prefer that, and that is a consequence of being in Colombia or a Colombian.
To me all nation-states are democratic, either silently or not, it is the mass aggregate will with its subconscious-simmering-psyche that makes it all happen, the final agreement that holds a nation together is that, a little bit of everyone represented as none of them in particular.
As such when you see the apparent horrors of any given government, it must also be obvious that the overall society is willing to pay that price, either to reinforce a national psyche or as a sad or fatal by product of the embroidery that is a civilization.
I admire the catholic church, 2006 year old institution, I am obviously not a Catholic but that is a supra-global psyche, the rituals seem so pointless, the priest so perverted, and yet the institution has lasted the times. There is something to be said for that.
America is a young country, as such a rouge state, so goes the book, and so has been the history of most world powers, Britain was an ass in its hay day and so we should not expect anything different of America. Unlike most I do believe that America is just a phase in human history, we are not going to be dominated by capitalism and democracy, the new world will perhaps be ruled by some metaphysical divination, a sort of -“I am aware and I comprehend…”- mind and heart set.
Of course when America fades into the sunset many things that come with it will fade too, the concept of “marketing” might go extinct, the idea that profit is a prerequisite for someone to act, might fade away as well. I expect the field of knowledge to be the first to suffer, knowledge will undoubtedly suffer, MIT and Harvard might fail as well it should be as these are institutions that have their basis on the American mind set.
Grant you none of these things were invented by America, nor is America the only one afflicted by them, it is simply that America has bought into them and perfected them unlike anyone else.
Marx did get one thing right, economy drives the essence of the thing, you look at Americas economic logistics and it is the only proper way to understand its behavior pattern.
Now I don’t blame America for being what it is, that is a world condition, America is just good at it, no more.
The problem is one of civilization and contribution to the world in general. America is still young enough, as far as countries are concerned that we don’t know what its actual contribution to humanity will be in the end, for all we know, and I rather think it so, Wall Street and Silicon Valley and Hollywood could be a blink in human history. The terracotta soldiers are 2300 years old, Chinese civilization was going through a Jade age 6000 years ago, Indian society has well over 5000 years behind it, that in itself is a very amazing thing, but see I admire things that last a long time, that establish continuity, that form foundations that linger throughout the ages.
America to me seems more like a fad, something based on spontaneity, capriciousness, a desire to be in a sort of hedonistic postponement, that is to say America is always working on the next nearest thing, and is always planning for the next event and dully postponing its enjoyment while absorbing a child like happiness of the moment.
There have been plenty of 300 year old countries that never lasted the ages. They are in fact the norm. One only needs to go back to the 19th century to see that the map makers have been busy. America’s immediate necessity is to live for the moment, and I will argue that that is why it is so able in the here and now!
This is because most people are living a cultural event, most of India is, they are not living for the immediacy of the moment, that is why they don’t see the transgressions that we witness in India. By an large they are living a movement, most of India is not living the current love affair with Western ways, most of India is like Iran when America imposed their dictator of choice the Shah; but Iran’s cultural clock ticks slowly but eventually it strikes an hour of regressive change, boom!
Culture as atomic bomb.
People that live in culture take a while to realize what’s happening, because the beauty of culture is that you don’t have to think all the time and be on the alert, that is the beauty of culture, it is also why American political strategists have so little patience with it, and equally why they think they can change it all within a year. Those people in Iraq don’t look very smart from afar, they don’t look very complicated, they look largely like savages with their contradictory and illogical ways; but what the Harvard and Chicago schools don’t measure is how those societies have clicked throughout the centuries, and that is no small accomplishment and as such it isn’t going to be undone unless it is annihilated.
The problem is that America’s youth, the lack of its own predefined culture is also what makes it appear superior, light on its feet, able to change at a moments notice, Americans can change jobs, homes, cars, friendships and location on a moments notice, just show them where the opportune horizon stretches and they will head in that direction; that real time adjustment to world events makes them winners, first to get there types; equally such looseness does not favor culture because culture is based on the locking-down of traditions. Culture doesn’t change overnight it changes over the centuries and flowery horizons are mistrusted.
If you look at all of civilization as a singular entity, and I do, then you can imagine that we needed our impetuous child explorer, America, to go out there and find out what else could be out there, in a way it had to be an isolationist, few could brave the rub that change would imply to those living in culture, America went at it alone, and perhaps it found something, only history will tell; that India and China and Russia are finally listening makes an interesting case, but then we must hope it is not the fringes of those societies, the aggressive types that are making their adoptions of the American way. Because if it is only them, then it will not last, somehow those cultures must emblematize and absorb the work ethic, the professionalism, the delusion that a career defines self, the mastery of the moment, all those things with logistical precision must be adopted wholly, else they will only reek and the clock of tradition will reach yet another hour of boom.
India, what is India to me? Nothing, I don’t know it, I am reading the Buddhist bible, it’s a translation, it was written by a man with Western values, I slept with an Indian girl once, her name was Rita, I doubt that that was her name in India, but I do think that sleeping with someone from that culture brings you all the energies that have harbored her essence, and that could be a lot. Beyond that is the cuisine which shows an amazing level of gorgeousness and essence at the same time, or maybe is the fact that they have 1700 or so plus Gods, you have to be very spiritual to have all those gods, the West is practical it only likes to maintain monotheism, but India I would guess has a lot of devout to maintain that colossal religiosity. Maybe too it is the mystics, the transcendentalists that somehow offer a different path that doesn’t seem caught up in the Tarot and the Zodiac. Or maybe it is the fact that cows are sacred and can roam free, why one of them could be the next Dali Lama.
But I really don’t know what India signifies to me except that it has lasted 5000 years and this even as their main religions are anointing inaction, the nothingness and indifference to the self.
When my nephew went to New York city, he didn’t like it. I love New York, it amply demonstrates that we can live in purely artificial environments and relationships, and that loneliness can be ignored indefinitely through fatigueless entertainment. When we go to conquer the other planets, we will need that kind of indifference to tolerate the more indifferent environment; I just love New York!
RC
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)