These dreams

December 23, 2022

I.
What is nominal about our system of government, and perhaps this will change, is that it is a mess. There are three major subgroups whose flaws have proved unmatched to the challenges of the day. There are instigators who love to start controversies, detenteists who want us all to stop and talk about their observations of the process, and subversives who want everyone to check all their actions against their first principles. And this hot mess is from whence comes these matriarchal dreams. 

The current age is full of the uncloistered, unrepetent masculine joy of play unrestricted by the collapse of technique (of the how) against personal limits (and especially not by social norms). In this madness, some have come to desire some sacred mothering energy to tell the kids, as it were, to play nicely with each other. 

As much as we are haunted by the ghost of the matriarchal feminine, we are also haunted by this thought: When we form a community of mind, will we lose the freedom to do what makes us especially ourselves? And will there be the emergence of a fourth subgroup of the permanently revolutionary, or the reformers, and what will its effect be on the process? 

II.
We are not missing the sacred but some kind of matriarchal feminine energy that the sixties energy captured so well. In the beginning of the modern era, this sacred feminine was placed in the assured hands of science with its connection to agriculture, then in the sphere of the trades with its connection to labor, and finally in the guild structure with its connections to liminal spaces. 

This is not a religious tone but is the sort of dark energy called yin that Asians understand so well. It's far from the concept of the void, and it is feminine, but not female, of a sort of spirit found in agriculture and cultivation, tradecraft, and the guild structure's liminal spaces. I say spirit as opposed to and distinct from the soul. 

Western civilization has always been very careless about where its yin was placed, but when you put the matter in terms of spirit as opposed to soul, it is a clearer picture. 

The problem is that the Internet has shattered the previous paradigm into an uneven field, orality losing ground, being appportioned less; soul trying to make up the difference in the quiet places where spirit used to dwell. 

Spirit seeks out soul in the proper order, and thus soul encroaching on the realm of spirit throws the system out of balance, hence the disordered, unbalanced preoccupation with matriarchal energy. 

III.
We are not missing the sublime because the sublime is all around us. We are not missing something malefic, nor is it heaven or hell. But in the subtle distinction between utopia and progress, where utopia is the soul and progress is the spirit, there is some room for proper explication, such that it could be said that progress is the proper home of the spirit; utopia: the soul. Conditions of life in the current governmental style are such that the self has to be considered whole but society is infinitely fragmented. And hence we are plagued by unchecked selfishness. The entrance of the soul-concept into the rhythm of progress and the home of the spirit brings untimely thoughts of utopia into the work of progress, and gums up the works. We do not live in a perfect society, or a perfect moment, even a perfect technological era. But try explaining that to those that only want a taste. 

We should not have to explain that idealism does not have to mean utopian dreams, but now suddenly we do seem to have to. These matriarchal dreams have to do with the confusion of the soul, utopianism, and dream as it tends to want access, now, to progress and the work of the spirit.

Educating the Silicon Citizen

December 19, 2022

I came across an article recently with an interesting name. It was called "Educating the Silicon Citizen." This raised all kinds of questions for me. We now exist in a digital society where half-hearted answers are everywhere. At millisecond speed one interpretation of the world can become de facto truth for a moment, and if the moment is right, perhaps it's authoritative news can linger much longer. It's not so much that we are agnostic to truth now so much as it is that our senses are not honed to it as sharply. 

I wonder, in this historical moment of quick answers, what have we sacrificed to this irony of total efficiency? It's hard to blame those of us who have to swim in the current in which we find ourself. But it can't be denied that it is not only young tech entrepreneurs-to-be that are "Silicon Citizens" now. We are all fit to that category now just because we have to navigate the modern world in order to cultivate ourselves. And yet what have we sacrificed to this paradigm in order to find the total efficiency of always having an answer? Have we compromised some efficiency of mind? 

It is true that the practice of being human has always had to adjust to the practical realities of the labor paradigm. We live in a moment, though, where the dominant mode of creative labor in the economy is simply rearranging informational priorities. At some point we have to take a step back and, taking the wide view, admit that for us to consider technical degrees as the new liberal arts, is a stretch. Holistically, our current and very real economic and knowledge paradigm is stretching all knowledge toward the technical, and this is bad for some deeper human purpose in life that we can honestly reflect on. 

I think that before we conclude yet another death of the humanities has come, we should casually observe that in all this frantic new tech economy there is a central and overwhelming secular concern, and this, and our general unpreparedness to deal with this, is what is causing the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Perhaps old spiritualisms are gone, but all the same, doesn't this great striving to make the new technological things betray a deep yearning to connect to a higher secular purpose? I think it does. Are we ready to treat of this new moment in terms of issues vital to politics and the state as the connection to a higher purpose in all this mad technological frenzy?

Distrust and Anti-Trust

December 16, 2022

A fully rational understanding of the American food system would have to begin by acknowledging that the modern system has produced a new role, the secretive managers of the farm apparatus. The corporatization of the agricultural inputs and refining systems, along with New Deal programs, have nearly-totally restructured the landscape of the food system in America. Corporate action has directly contributed to the financialization of the farm and the precarious existence many farmers currently live. The largest seed manufacturers have a near-monopoly and the largest beef-packers have a near-monopsony. A majority of livestock farming is done on a contract system where the farmers lose almost all of their effective right of property. Although many New Deal era farming ideas had their origins in giving farmers collective bargaining power, many have evolved into corporate control over farmers that goes hand-in-glove to Big Agribusiness. I'm writing again about the American farm because few other parts of society have been left more behind since the 1980's. 

At issue in American agrarian politics since the New Deal is not control over the means of production but control of the residuals essential to the refining and processing of production. 

There is too little public memory of a time when federal anti-trust actions protected the small farmer, by giving him (or her) more options of where to sell. More confusion still could be said to exist over seed monopolies. What the still-current furor over GMO crops misses is that the main incentive to produce GMO seed is not increased quality per se, but because of fairly recent laws allowing corporations to patent lifeforms. Thus large seed companies can exert total control over seed types, and through a vicious circle, control more of the market for seeds to farmers. GMO crops give large seed companies intellectual property rights over seed types in addition to the market monopolies they already had, reducing farmers' freedom and the choice consumers once had more of: and that's why they're bad. At issue with the seed companies is control of the residuals ancillary to production. 

It's fair to say that the regulatory apparatus overseeing American agriculture is in shambles. But what needs to be said is why it is. And it starts with anti-trust enforcement, which is not what it once was. Although we are taking the first steps to reinvigorating anti-trust, many people at many different levels in the system are reticent to take action. It goes back to at least the Reagan years. Prioritization of consumer benefits in anti-trust actions has resulted in the preference for mercantilism leaking into the anti-trust regulatory apparatus for the farm, replacing the physiocracy that protects farmers. Farmers' wages have been falling since Bork and the Reagan era. 

What non-enforcement of anti-trust also did was egg capitalists on to do what capitalists do. Financializing the food system and making anti-competitive trades to the detriment of farmers' wages and food prices was a consequence of Bork. 

The spirit of revolt animating rural areas right now describes the existing problem but misplaces the blame. The Obama administration gave the most extra attention to the farm that the farm had gotten in decades, but Republicans sold out those reforms, sacrificing farmers to usher in the Tea Party reaction in 2010. Since then, the rural economy has been a place to harvest political resentment. As a generation of younger farmers is taking the reins, the most solid hope is to capture the imagination of the public about climate change and how the farm can play a major role in counter-acting it.

A structural irony

December 15, 2022

I'll tell you what: it's certainly ironic that in terms of a persona, Internet users seem classic and old-fashioned while TV users seem new and modern.  In certain ways, we are returning to an old aesthetic, but in other ways, it couldn't be more new.  Conflating the classic elements of the Internet and the new elements might be producing a structural dilemma. 

The good press

December 11, 2022

The good press

Ironically, right about now, in this Trump moment, it may be people that are most plugged into mainstream press, such as traditional broadcast, that notice that many people in the mainstream press, especially those that have moved into digital spaces, are very surprised when they mention how good the reporting by the left-wing press has been for a long time.  Those who know, we roll our eyes.  The left-wing press is usually the first to report on anything of massive import to society, things often so massive that these events, and critical scandals, are only mentioned by the mainstream press in retrospectives.  My favorite example is the early biography of Trump by Wayne Barrett that concernedly did not influence the discourse around Trump nearly enough, in either the first campaign or the second, and definitely not enough during the presidency.  Maybe those who know, we shouldn't scoff when we hear the surprise when mainstream press people mention the good reporting done by the left-wing press.  We're scoffing at the surprise in their tone more than anything.