Time Server

For about half a year or so, I've been thinking about how we experience time.

I spent the first 30 years or so of my life in a typical westernized schedule. I went from primary school to secondary school to white collar 9-5ish work without any breaks. Starting at around age 13, my summers in school were spent with 9-5ish blue collar work, vineyard work and then, later, construction.

Within that structuring of labor and time, the construct of the work week became my primary sense of time. M-F with 2 days off to do whatever I wanted with my time, except when I had to work those 2 days anyway. Within the M-F days, each day had a recurring sub-meaning. Monday was Monday, Wednesday was Wednesday, and TGIF.

After a year living outside of this construction of time, my awareness of what felt like intrinsic meanings of experiential awareness tied to a day of the week became imposed, then broke down completely. There is and was a great sense of freedom that arose with this, each day became its own mini adventure. Many were similar, but none identical. If I needed a day or two of rest, I took it. If I felt like working a long day, I did so. If unplanned activities arose during the day, so be it. Many days were similar to those before it, but my perception of how my day is experienced is no longer defined first by what day of the week it is, I am often unaware of that.

From this context, I've begun considering more and more about the nature of time itself in the terms of quantum physics, flow and Zen Buddhism. Time is an illusion, a persistent one, but an illusion. Anyone who has experienced with chemicals that alter our perception of time knows what it is like to have a radically different experience of time. The insight I've been grappling with is understanding how many of our attachments, expectations, disappointments, beliefs, and rationalizations are tied to this illusion, and how constructed this illusion is. Its going to take awhile before I can boil this down to what I am perceiving, the words are not there yet.

Thai Democracy

It occurs to me that the crisis of meaning evident in the random and calculated acts of violence and the miserable psychological and emotional conditions of so many in the industrial nations of the world is one that strikes right to the foundations of our civilization.

The failure of democracy to address climate change or the consumption of energy in anyway besides ignoring and increasing respectively, whatever the consequences, and complete disregard for the growing consensus is one of those real world developments that renders the theory of institutional, global democracy a nice idea, but irrelevant to the real world. Ramming speed! The collective faith in humanity's ability to learnedly govern itself with representational electives is being proved unfounded by the institutions set up to implement these ideas. My guess is that most people have not consciously followed the point to the fullest extent, as there remains a lot of good old fashioned faith in the importance of believing the right things and that belief translating into 'support' for some or another change that is affected in the real world based on that support and consensus that the broken institutions of our time can be 'fixed' with a bit of legislative tinkering. Well, who watches the watchmen?

Some may predict at this juncture that when the bills come due and people begin understanding that their faith in the foundational premises of western civilization's institutions is, ah, misplaced, that these institutions will come unraveled in a leveled off fit of razing awareness. I don't think so, my guess is that the institutions will endure. Violence is what rules the world, semantics allows delusion  otherwise. (We who can afford to be deluded do love our semantics about human rights, rule of law, paper and ink, and on.) In reality, if one were to receive a parking ticket and refuse to pay for it and ignore summons, one would shortly receive visitation from a uniformed law enforcement officer serving a warrant for arrest. If one were to resist this arrest, they would likely be beaten, electrocuted, or if the resistance were fierce enough, shot and killed. If one lived through the arrest, one would be imprisoned and lose their home, job, and social life. A parking ticket is inconsequential, the logic applies across the board. This is reality and I am not complaining, only clarifying. My guess is that democratic institutions will endure the dawning realization that a representative that represents a number of people a bit above Dunbar's number is no representative at all and will, instead, show the mailed fist a bit more forcefully. Violence will continue to rule the world as the industrial world charges full steam ahead into climate change and the downslope of peak oil, the big difference I that fewer people will be able to afford to pretend otherwise. Not to mention that at some point, Americans are going to face another crisis - when America's hegemony ends. Though the American empire is a barely recognized fact in America, one has to wonder how people will recognize if/when the empire ends. My guess is that the consequences will get noticed, but the explanation will splinter into a myriad of already existing narratives. (See the video at the head of this post for the dominant boomer narrative.)
 
So what is a poor boy to do? That is wholly dependent upon individual circumstances.

These are some of mine.

I don't put much stock into medical classification and diagnostic as a real thing, my take is that all classification is metaphysics. In my professional work, I've found this to be true of physical disease, that is no two instances of a disease look exactly alike with sufficient resolution at the functional level of cellular function in protein pathways and lifecycle. Symptoms exist, categorizations exist, and those symptoms and categorizations only exist within a subjective cultural context. Having said that, I am diagnosable as a high functioning autistic. This was a relatively recent discovery, but one that explained much. In the real world, social interactions and subtlety are beyond me. I have a difficult time with non-literal and exact meaning, especially where I am deficient. I've done very well in academic settings, where there are no stupid questions, but in the real world, I've struggled in the face of 'no one can be that stupid to ask that question' reactions to some of my plaintive queries. Unfortunately, sarcasm and exasperation are not answers and I've been left behind in some things. There are a lot of aspects of socializing that I do not understand. When I ask questions, even if I get answers, I often feel like the question has just been repeated back to me. The explanation is a question. I don't get why people are stirred by insults, either the premise is false, and can thusly be ignored, or the premise is true, and if it can be addressed, should be handled, else ignored and accepted.

In the past few years, I've become aware at how developed in metaphysical disciplines I am at the expense of physical ones. I am a computer programmer, I write, and I paint. Painting requires some manipulation of physical matter, but is still mostly a discipline of the mind. The other two are wholly mental activities, not counting the trivial typing and mouse work. I am unskilled and accident prone in most other physical activities. I tend to break or wear tools out. I make rough cuts. I am an expensive learner and I've got a lot to learn. I've begun addressing these deficiencies, but the gains I've made are mainly of the sort that only reveal how little I can do unassisted. I've begun to know how little I know. There was a tremendous arrogance embedded in my former lack of awareness. Virtually everything in the structure of the physical world is only there thanks to the abilities and labors of others. The structure of my reality is a cumulative, collective gift from others, this structural reality is so immersive that I didn't notice for a long time.

I believe in the future to come, we are going to be far more locally and socially interdependent. The arrogance of the oblivious is fast becoming maladaptive. I believe there is going to be a growing need to manipulate physical reality and a diminishing need to manipulate metaphysical reality. I, indoctrinated in higher education, once thought 'bearing witness' and discussion on some subjects mattered in a consequential sense. I've realized that my understanding of how the world works and the institutions we serve yield very little actionable information to me in practice, my interest in discussing or understanding them has evaporated almost at once. I recognize that it took me years and hundreds of thousands of words (mostly expressed here and at a few stand alone projects) to work through the fundamental insight, the world does not turn on the collective beliefs of chattel. Belief otherwise is a persistent delusion, especially among the better educated, striving and relatively privileged, but in any case, dwelling on the matter is a waste of time and a distraction. Opportunity costs cost opportunity.

This blog is a workshop of the mind. I often go back and edit, revise old pieces. Sometimes I delete them. I've discovered that as these thoughts are recorded in real time and revised as time passes, I am able to structure my thoughts. The acts of creating, rewriting, revising and deleting recorded thought has lasting effects on patterns of thought and belief. The words here are vocalizations, rationalizations, they are semantics, but they reveal the verbal expression of the structure of my consciousness. I see a need to continue tinkering with this structure for as long as I am alive, but we'll see how that goes.

Absorb, Reflect

I've been here for almost five months now. The pace is slow, progress, suspect.

At times, I've been afflicted mentally, emotionally and physically. A bout of homesickness has been a slow drain, I've approached that soreness with a steady, just keep going mentality.

As far as physical work done, I've managed to make some rough cuts here. There are several huge compost piles, I've begun burying dead trees. We had 15 chickens until a bird flu wiped out all but 4. We've had to make repairs to the house. It all feels like groundwork.

I've lost my desire to paint or write, which at first was an existential soreness. Like so many obsessions I've had, the endeavors have suddenly and with a sort of implicit finality dropped out of my head. Painting and art do not hold my interest at all anymore. I've known plenty of people that had a detached, that's nice, but I don't give a shit attitude toward art before. I've always been perplexed by them, now I am one.

For a couple of months, the lack of this interest ate at me, I felt incomplete in a sense. Then I realized the folly of defining oneself and deriving validation from hobbies. I look back at my work, (including the hundred or so paintings posted here) with an observed sadness. I mean, I know the reality of what went on behind the pieces. In physical reality, they were created in the kitchens of modest apartments, half finished basements, and warehouse turned art studio. These were grey plaster and concrete environments. I wonder how much expression went into this narcissism. In that sense, I don't miss it at all, which is likely why the desire to create anything has evaporated. I'm in an absorptive state.

AAReview 0023 - Mohawk Valley Forgeworks

 

Mohawk Valley Forgeworks Video

 

American Apprentice Session: Mohawk Valley Forgeworks (MVF)
Location/Contact: Mohawk Valley, NY. USAmes
Reviewer: Justin AmericanA
Review:
Mohawk Valley Forgeworks (MVF) (Web site, Google+) is an industrial design and production facility/studio located in the Mohawk Valley, New York. Facilities include smelter, machine shop, forges, wood shop, painting/sculpture studios. 1-5 employees. 1-2 openings for apprentices. Shop Factor is Michael Patric McCarthy (Facebook, Blogger)

American Apprentice Review of live-work apprenticeship under working tradesman, Blacksmith Michael McCarthy of the Mohawk Valley. Apprenticeship review period lasted 6 months, summer-winter 2012.

Work training included soldering, blacksmithing, welding, design, wood cutting, carving, heavy equipment operation. Self-directed study a must. Housing options. Community Garden.

Recommended.

Comments: Good food, company, rural, live-work, near NYC, Mohawk valley, GTFO Friendly, vibrant local arts scene, blacksmithing, fabrication, wood cutting, farming, Buddhist colony nearby.

Feedback:
Affordable housing in region. Interdisciplinary trade skilling; wood, metal, glass, canvas, etc. Listening skills and attention to detail musts.

Disclosure:
Reviewer kin
****
Credits Roll Down.

Follow-up: Reviewer found employment.

***** END OF REVIEW **********

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***** PLUGGERS WANTED *******

* Limited time. *

"Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person."

Try something different?
Hone latent skills.
Work with hands.
Share experience.

Releasing the "American Apprentice" open source knowledge project for the post petroleum tribe. Recommend initial post AAReview must have experience. Highly content should must be application of practical purpose demonstration.

Want to be an AAReviewer and contributor? Anyone can do it! Apply now.

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 ---- 'Friends of Ishmael' -----

Another can't miss opportunity.
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Subject: A friend of I.
Body:

"Elders and dignitaries are the head,
Pofits who teach lies are its tail."

 

Lucid Dreams

(Installment 22 of the autobiographical series, "Liters to the Black Bone.")

The mirror to this autobiological series 'Liters to the Black Bone' is 'Black to the Backbone', a concept album of hip hop lyrics I wrote as a context piece for a longer piece of fiction I am still writing.

The lyrics are on their own. I initially thought about learning how to rap, but, frankly, the madness has to stop somewhere. Art being an indulgence in the context of a life that still needs to make money to live, I can only go so far, taking up a physical discipline that requires a lot of practice just for a set piece that no one gives a shit about is beyond even my pretensions. I also thought about making it into a karaoke album, supplying beats rendered through a cheesy synthesizer with the lyrics, but that turned out to be way more effort than the project merited and I read horrifying stories of multi-million dollar lawsuits on top of that idea. (An additional consideration is the onset of a mystery fatigue syndrome that sometimes makes a five minute walk feel like a half marathon of exertion.)

The album/poem is a 19 part piece featuring two MC personas; MC Siah and Jan Wad, that are actually one person existing in multiple realities and carrying different expressions of that person within their contexts. The idea is loosely based on a book an unknown and unheralded physicist published that I read in college that posited time was really an infinite series of snapshots and reality as we experience it is one of an infinite number of realities.

To accompany the tendered piece, an explanation about the mirrors. I've had these ideas brewing for a long while about our culture and its artistic product. This is the second project that is an expression of the ideas, the first was No Direction Home, and why the hell not just give the explanation.

Presidents

Someone asked me the other day about the bombings in Boston. They were somewhat surprised to hear that mass killings are fairly common occurrence in the US.

So there's been much ado about the martial law shutdown of Boston in pursuit of one 19 year old, wounded suspected bomber on the loose. Is this the precedent we want to sent? Is this response proportional? Etc. In the U.S., we have an undue value for precedent and what precedents are set and what that means. Its a legal term, and certainly within the framework of law, precedent is actionable. Prior interpretations of the law stand until they are knocked down.

The conceit of the conspiratorial theory about the Boston bombings is that the government wants to manufacture martial law. In terms of operational capacity and ability within the executive branch in the miscellaneous wars, precedent means nothing. Capacity and potential are far more important in understanding the reality we are in. It is to the capacity and expected near term capacity that the government draws up planning and game theory exercises. The government already has the ability to put drones in the sky and has paramilitary police forces at its disposal in every urban center. It has the ability to impose martial law, to lock down a city. It has the ability (and is using) to function as a panoptic surveillance state. The contingency planning, that is forward looking mindset, already reflects these capabilities.

This gets to the heart of the 'false flag' commentary that sprung up almost immediately. There is a belief that the government needs to manufacture events to put these plans into action in order to set a precedent. Well, I don't think so. Precedent is meaningless except as a real world example of what is already present in theory. The only precedent that matters is that the state can and will do what is necessary to shore up and expand its power, it will do what is necessary to protect the interests of whatever interest groups have currently taken control of the process. When push comes to shove, a bit of paper and some writing on it will not stand up to that. What can be done will be done.

Having said that, the most plausible scenario in my mind is not a conspiracy to implement martial law in a test run, but that the two brothers were FBI targets and their plans got out of control. The FBI and other law enforcement have been creating terror threats and then stopping them, taking credit for preventing terrorism, for years. Its conceivable that one of the plots got away from them, this happens from time to time (see ATF Gun walking scandal that saw the government handing over guns to Mexican drug cartels.)

The state exists, and it acts to perpetuate that existence. The U.S. is both the world's leading war making state and its biggest arms dealer. The government creates arbitrary laws that it can then enforce. Its in the business of manufacturing its credibility, and in the war on terror, the government has time and again arrested people by ensnaring them in plots that had no chance of being carried out to tout its ability to keep the citizens safe.

Such an analysis might make sense when police leverage one criminal to gain information about more-serious criminal conspiracies—in other words, to catch a real “devil.” But Aaronson’s research reveals that the targets in most of these sting operations posed little real threat. They may have had a history of angry anti-government rhetoric, but they took no steps toward terrorist acts until they received encouragement and resources from government agents.

Aaronson describes the case of an unemployed and practically homeless 22-year-old named Derrick Shareef, befriended by an FBI informant with an armed robbery conviction who gave him a place to live. When Shareef couldn’t (or wouldn’t) raise the money to buy weapons needed for a plot suggested by the informant, he was introduced to a faux weapons dealer who was willing to trade four hand grenades and a pistol for Shareef’s used stereo speakers. The fact that Shareef believed a real weapons dealer would accept such a barter provides a clue as to his criminal experience.

-Source

Its possible that a stage managed publicity stunt got away here and went off script. Its possible that it was something else entirely. Its also possible that the official story is the real story.

As for the actions themselves, I can't figure these outbursts, we tell stories to make sense of them, but they are just stories. The dynamics in mass perception are recurrent, shock, outrage, find/kill those responsible, make sense of it. None of that is very compelling to me, I don't find the explanations from the mouths of the killers or from the members of their social network compelling. I can't figure it out, but I am of the mind that there is nothing to figure out. I don't take the state motivations of the perpetrators for much, nor do I take the speculation worth much. Humans are great at rationalizing actions, delusion is our greatest and most natural talent. Whatever happened, these events are a crisis of meaning.

Synthetic Zero

Physicists say they may have evidence that the universe is a computer simulation.

How? They made a computer simulation of the universe. And it looks sort of like us.



A long-proposed thought experiment, put forward by both philosophers and popular culture, points out that any civilisation of sufficient size and intelligence would eventually create a simulation universe if such a thing were possible.

Physicists May Have Evidence Universe is Simulation

"I think we're at the birth of this technology," said David Crump, a professor at the Houston University Law Center. "It's true that it's exploding; it's a very fast growing baby," he said, "But we wouldn't want to tell Alexander Graham Bell at the birth of the telephone" to stop development because of privacy concerns.

Congress likes Drones

(Installment 21 of the autobiographical series, "Liters to the Black Bone.")
I dreamed I was into NYC the other week, riding the train on down to 7th station. I walked up to Central Park, over to Chelsea, and back down toward Greenwich Village. The city felt like a large, open air prison to me. The gridlike, cell block design lends itself to an easy to police and patrol environment. People are free to move about, of course, provided they put in enough labor to gain access to their neighborhood. The poor corrall in decrepit and broke down, maximum security sections and are easily identifiable by their appearances.

It is no exaggeration to say that are slaves to the logic of machines and technology. Our cognitive faculties are so overloaded with not seeing what is around us, that we don't have enough bandwidth stop and look around at what is going on. If we did, they would throw up a glowing, digital billboard as tall as a building to overwhelm us (that actually has already happened.) What we are working for is the continuation of mindless one plus one logic, searching for the infinite resolution. In time immemorial, some idiot got the idea to start counting numbers. One led to two and three to another without end. This probably led to hysteria and insanity until someone invented zero, temporarily ending the forever chase into mental abstraction. Syntax upped the ante, starting the whole thing anew, until people bought into the idea of authoritative texts. Of the making of books, there is no end. The abstraction game has kept going back and forth, and technology is the latest iteration of our tendency to fall into a psychotic state of fitting two parts that look like they should go together and into another into destruction.
...
Absent a cyclical pattern of recurring extant physical reality, 5 days on, 2 days home except Saturdays, reality begins to take on the memory of a dream. Every day's on its own. One time I dreamed scientists found evidence the entire universe is a computer simulation in a game written by a no-name man by the face of Jon Sims.

Science is no religion.

0. Kinetic Biology in a Cartesian Science

(Installment 20 of the autobiographical series, "Liters to the Black Bone.")
The following is the excerpted introduction to a working paper titled,

Three Pillars Plus One in Context:

Medical Science, Patients and the Interface of Technology
  

0. Introduction: Biology in a Cartesian Science


Figure 0. George Mandelbrot, Mandelbrot Set Fractal

Is Medical Science built on Shaky Foundations?, the New Scientist asks, explaining the concern, “More than half of biomedical findings cannot be reproduced...” In recent years, the industry of biotechnology has produced a trend of stories regarding laboratory results and data synthesis commonly characterized as inexplicable, error or fraud. Even with very tightly controlled conditions, there is a high and unexplainable rate of irreproducibility in labratory results. There has also been, in public perception and some truth, a spate of fraud in the massaging or manipulation of science and source data to reach a desired conclusion.*
* Wall Street Journal. Scientists Elusive Goal: Reproducing Results

What if the failure of reproducibility is a failure to capture the correct set of changing conditions, is the effect of of static instrumentation taking snapshots of dynamic conditions?

The hard sciences are all converging on stochastic models of reality from deterministic, Cartesian origins, but only generally and by degrees.

A stochastic model of reality is one that models observations in uncertainties, dualities, and probabilities in appearance and function. There are conditions and dynamics in stochastic reality. A Cartesian model of reality implies a single, underlying order; there are causes and effects.

In physical science, atomic physics depicts reality as a hazy, metaphorical construct of function and contextual purpose, with probabilities and dual existences such as waves and particles being what is the reality beyond what we can imagine or directly perceive except by catching a snapshot(s) of the effect. Reality folds in on itself in multidimensional space-time.

Figure 0.1 Two Slit Experiment Flying Electrons showing probabilistic reality in wave transmission, Wiki Commons

In mathematics, the discipline is bounded by numerical abstraction. The previous era of growth found answers to questions that had convergent or discrete answers, no matter how imaginary, complex, or coefficient those answers may have been. The terminus was calculus, which captured discrete answers that had implications in their character that pointed toward more interesting questions. Velocity, trajectory and acceleration all have various relationships in calculus as derivatives of a derivative of speed and teasing those out uses calculus in math and physics.

The newer research is an emerging discipline of divergent mathematical problems; statistics, discrete mathematics, and computational science. From within those are emerging interests in fuzzy logic, dual natured answers that are beginning to contemplate answers n-dimensionally as waves or fields of certainties as discrete answers.
 
Computer Science is largely built atop a foundation of fuzzy and boolean logical constructs. Boolean logic rules the hardware circuitry and electricity, fuzzy logic permeates the software and its underlying language of object or concept oriented design. Use of radar and wireless technology is likely to begin a reconception of some hardware implementations in terms of waves or signalling rather than 0 or 1 wire circuitry. Before wireless reception, sending and interpreting a software signal was technologically coupled with electrical pulse.

In any abstract or formal system of thought, scientists look for unifying principles that relate to other systems or properties found in the real world or in other abstract systems, these concepts can be termed design patterns. Design patterns are indicative of underlying truths from which abstract systems are derived by observation of reality via different tests and refinement of theory through development of theory with practice.
Figure 0.2 Fractal appearance of human vascular system. source: Bodies

Some patterns are recognized numerically across contexts, such as the fibonacci sequence and fractals from mathematics appearing in the biological science through numerical clustering and position of leaves, trees, rabbit gestation. Other patterns are visual or perceptually recognizable in biological appearance. The means of creating fractal patterns in mathematics requires an infinite recursion function called a Lorenz Attractor, which is a mathematical oddity that is neither discrete, divergent nor convergent.

In the early 20th century, the logician Goedel published an Incompleteness Theorem of Formal Systems. The theorem rendered a qualitative judgment on abstract systems of thought, no matter how tightly formalized, they were all definitionally informal. They all, including mathematics, rest on unprovable assumptions that had to be accepted externally from the logic of the system for the system to have internally coherent logic.

In the 20th century, several branches of science have converged on a stochastic, non-deterministic model of reality. This is a design pattern that bridges computational, statistical, mathematical and physical sciences. Physics began this process with Einstein. Mathematics began with Newton’s calculus. Computational Science started late, but Moore’s Law implies that it has mostly caught up. Biological science is only now beginning that change in consideration from a deterministic, predictive model of biological cause, effect, life cycle and function to a stochastic, non-deterministic understanding of feedback loops and signalling within the biology. This change is being propelled along by new, so called ‘kinetic’, technology that enables the real time study of biochemistry and genetics in action with living tissue.


Modern kinetic technologies are beginning to reveal that medical science is investigating a confluence of conditions and timing in cellular biology and environmental conditions that precipitates change. The nature of that change is probabalistic rather than fixed. The nature of study in biological science is less analogous to chemical science with very controllable, predictable chemical reactions and more similar to system dynamics sciences that study the interfaces of various complex systems, like climate, information or physical science. The establishment of medical science is mostly built on deterministic experiments and observational study, similar to chemistry. Medical Science, in other words, may be poised for an ontological jump enabled by technological advancement.

David Parkinson, former CEO and clinical doctor, remarked that no two patients diagnosed with Acute Myeoloid Leukemia (AML) had the same disease based on observed distinctions in biological function using a cytometer, that is, no two patient with the clinically diagnosed disease really had the same exact biological disease. Every patient’s biology under study behaved and reacted a little differently and meaningfully in terms of treatment, though they all had the same clinical disease. Imagine that everyone who has ever had Lou Gehrig's disease really had their own eponymous disease, this may be a more defensible system of disease classification based on what can be physically observed in terms of function and appearance using kinetic technologies. Every patient has their own disease tailor made for them if the symptoms and biological mechanics are investigated with enough rigor. To argue against specificity and detail in favor of maintaining previously held categorical delineations would place ideology before inquiry.
In any belief system, whether scientific or otherwise, the assumptions are inexorably followed to their logical conclusions. Understanding biology is sometimes more like understanding the weather than a chemical reaction.

What if medical science is chasing a thunderstorm with a radar gun?

References

As synchronicity would have it, today I stumble upon an excerpt from David Graeber's latest that is the much longer and much better version of the post I put up yesterday.

One challenge we face in the present is that the past is always written as a narrative. That narrative is a continuation of assumptions and values from narratives of its past and so on unto time immemorial. Graeber traces the historical lineage of revolution and remarks that the consequences of these movements are not so easily bounded by historical understanding as a discrete set of aims, objectives, and failures in a circumscribed time and place. Changes in thought and belief, once demonstrated, radiate influence and cause and effect in indirect and imprecise fashion.

The preemptive attitude toward social movements is clearly a part of it; under no conditions can alternatives, or anyone proposing alternatives, be seen to experience success. This helps explain the almost unimaginable investment in “security systems” of one sort or another: the fact that the United States, which lacks any major rival, spends more on its military and intelligence than it did during the Cold War, along with the almost dazzling accumulation of private security agencies, intelligence agencies, militarized police, guards, and mercenaries. Then there are the propaganda organs, including a massive media industry that did not even exist before the sixties, celebrating police. Mostly these systems do not so much attack dissidents directly as contribute to a pervasive climate of fear, jingoistic conformity, life insecurity, and simple despair that makes any thought of changing the world seem an idle fantasy. Yet these security systems are also extremely expensive. Some economists estimate that a quarter of the American population is now engaged in “guard labor” of one sort or another—defending property, supervising work, or otherwise keeping their fellow Americans in line...

In fact, most of the economic innovations of the last thirty years make more sense politically than economically. Eliminating guaranteed life employment for precarious contracts doesn’t really create a more effective workforce, but it is extraordinarily effective in destroying unions and otherwise depoliticizing labor. The same can be said of endlessly increasing working hours. No one has much time for political activity if they’re working sixty-hour weeks.

'Prison guard' culture is one of many indications that the current order is brittle. Graeber goes on to touch upon the meaning of work, the coupling of morality to labor and debt, and so on. He also references technology, one difficulty we face in imagining alternatives to the current system is to realize that the collective design and implementation decisions of our material culture for well over a hundred years have, at every point, favored mass production over anything else. Very little of what exists in our everyday lives could continue to exist in its current form absent the industrial assembly line. Its designed and built of and for that system.

Self Actualization in the Land of the Living

Its a curious facet of our society that creating jobs is hailed with such vigor and enthusiasm. This enthusiasm is perfectly understandable within the context of our culture, and there is no quarrel with that from within. Politicians and business alike champion their cause on the promise to create jobs, any jobs, and any quarrel with said policies or ventures can often break upon the promise of jobs. It is the trump card of economic thinking. (My favorite detail in a study on the Shale Gas bubble currently set to pop had to do with the promise oil industry made about jobs, the study's author looked at the work behind their estimate and found they included prostitutes. That is, the prostitutes that would presumably service the men working pipelines and rigs were included as part of the number of jobs created. See Deborah Rogers, Shale and Wall Street)

Another way of putting the promise to create jobs is to say that it is a promise to make our society more labor intensive. Nothing is cheered quite so lustily as the pledge to make the system more labor intensive, allocating more labor hours to work rather than alternatives; family, leisure, creativity, recreation or other. People revere the politician who promises and delivers to make society more labor intensive through policy and pan the one that fails.

I'll show my hand to make the point; I believe the point of having a civilization, of having an economy, a society, or whatever is to maximize the capacity and potential for individual self-actualization. It seems to me that our system is implicitly wired to minimize self-actualization, in much of our thinking we're trained to redefine our own actualization as embodied within career and work. There is some kernel of truth to the idea, but in practice within our system this is often a non-starter for all but the most subsumed of us.

What if we had a guaranteed income where every citizen could collect a paycheck from the government pegged to some cost of living indices to cover housing and food? It would have to be available without qualification, otherwise there would be no reason for anyone to work at the margins. It would probably require abolishing the practice of usury and the end of fast food. It would require a completely different set of economic ideas based on equilibrium rather than sustained exponential growth, not least of which would be government controlled currency inflation pegged to population. It would also require a wholly different mindset, as one thing Americans by and large are fixated on is making sure that its difficult and humiliating to be poor, and to ensure that anyone receiving public subsidy is not using assistance in any way that offends their personal calculus of moral judgment on what the subsidy can or should be spent on. In other words, we are, by and large, geared toward subverting and sabotaging self actualized citizens in policy and mindset.

What if all this took place tomorrow. I'm sure some people would run with it and have much different and more fulfilling lives, some would continue on in their current living and working arrangement, and some would do nothing for days, weeks, months, maybe years before figuring out what they want to do. And some would never do anything. I'm fine with that as the cost of having a humane and human oriented civilization, but in a nation of 300 million I am probably the only one that thinks this way. The point is not to create policies that lead people to their fulfillment (and if they are led by the nose, the point is lost), the idea is maximize the probability that people will achieve actualization by creating a context that ensures security of basic needs for food and shelter.

This is not an idea for this time, but lots of radical, relatively unthinkable ideas become normalized in relative short timelines. It took all of about 50 years for the ideas of neo-capitalist economists to move from insane, radical ideas in England to operating paradigm in the 17 century. (Graeber, Debt: 500 Years) The idea is not new, I'm borrowing from MLK, and as I've outlined it, it may not even be that good. I do believe we are in an inflection point. The end of cheap fossil fuel energy is going to turn all our assumptions inside out, things will change and become thinkable that, in retrospect, are unthinkable today. I'd be happy if we started with the observation, should we trust the ideas of progress if those ideas lead us to the conclusion that we should desire and cheer on a more labor intensive economy at every turn? Is maximizing self actualization an appropriate value.