Illusion of Individuality pt. 5

Pt. 5 THE SUMMER OF OIL

It was a gorgeous day out and on this 420 you had spent the bulk of the day smoking grass, biking around town, and occasionally popping into a pub to get out of the sun and have a beer and cool off. You had to swing home and let out the dogs and take a minute before you headed back out in search of a show to catch later that night.

The rabbit ears hooked up to the TV had been working fairly well lately and having a seat and watching the evening news sounded like a perfect way to kill a little time, smoke a little more, and see if anything had happened that the news deemed worthy of reporting. And there was, a few shootings in town and another accident on one of those oilrigs in the gulf. 

The fire on the rig was pretty bad as these things go; the rig was listing and might be a total loss as well as the ten or so deaths from the explosion. You just had to shake your head, somehow this would be written off as business as usual… a disruption in productivity, a lawsuit by the families of the deceased followed by a hefty settlement and maybe a footnote addressing the negligible impact of a giant oil rig being scuttled to the ocean floor followed by some P.R. propaganda about how it will ultimately be beneficial as it will turn into a coral reef or some other nonsense like that. Enh, screw it. Nothing you can do to change it now. You talk a toke and make a mental note to toast a shot to the sea creatures.

Three months later, there is yet another full color photo of either the wellhead still gushing oil, shrimp boats laden with that ghastly orange boom, or dead & dying critters and tar balls covering some stretch of the thousands of miles of coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. After 90 straight days of total media inundation about the regional environmental apocalypse it was hard to get out of bed in the morning many days. It had been two or three weeks since the last time you were able to small the chemical odor wafting from the south but that was no real comfort. The millions of gallons of crude and chemical dispersants were already making some fishermen-turned-clean-up-crew sick. 

And that was just from immediate contact from working on the water. It might be years before some of the really nasty effects started to show. Even the Times Picayune was keen on the science that forecast potentially horrifying consequences of dumping that quantity of harmful chemicals into the Gulf. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico support the base of life systems for an entire corner of the globe and the long-term ramifications of this even boggled your mind. Add to that the economic power the oil and gas industries have in region, and not only will the environmental effects be downplayed, but any meaningful accountability will most likely go unassigned, plus any meaningful change or litigation will undoubtedly never happen. And the fisheries are still closed and the well is still leaking.

This great and unstoppable threat of a poisonous soup bleeding up the food chain for years to come will continue to haunt your soul, for no matter where you run from this point on the specter of industrial waste will follow. Whether it be run-off from farms, or mining operations, or the cancerous goo used in fracking or deep-well injection all of it finds its way into the water, where it never goes away only to be consumed by life’s more basic critters so it can make its way to your dinner plate. The stress from knowing that you are unable to avoid poisoning yourself had really hit home this summer and there wasn’t enough weed in the world to make that reality palatable.

Illusion of Individuality Pt. 4

Pt 4 I’M LOOKING THROUGH YOU

The general consensus seems to be that an individual is both a single human body and the mind linked with it.[i] Clearly both of these exist in a way, but they cannot be removed from the dynamic network they are part of. Thus the idea that somewhere deep inside the individual that there is a free will that by its very nature is able to operate free from the chains of cause and is without influence from the world is a dangerous misunderstanding.[ii]

To begin, let’s examine how the concept of the body as an individual is flawed. From the time I have spent learning about the nature of what food is as well as the environment and the systems within it that make human life possible it seems to me there are many obvious contradictions in traditional concepts of the individual as a physical entity that is separate from other physical entities. For starters, the body is totally dependent on things otherwise considered separate from it. The obvious example is water and food; minerals, vitamins, calories that form the building blocks of a living human. Less so are the many single celled organisms on our skin or in our stomachs that the body is as equally dependant upon.[iii] Much less intimate, but still valid is the entire biosphere – can’t very well live without atmosphere, and that food “stuff,” i.e. plants and animals. Therefore if one is to consider the body in terms of either its construction or its function, it is only an individual as far as a “body count.” Beyond that, since the body cannot survive without all of these external inputs and assistances how is it constructively or functionally separate from them? Quite simply, it’s not.

This discourse between what is commonly perceived and how integrated life systems are partially stems from the misconception that both the mind and its body are somehow separate from the rest of existence. But in the past few decades humans have begun to discover that the body is fundamentally just a tiny organ in planet sized living creature that we can both illustrate and prove.[iv] One of my favorite processes that reinforce this idea is that of biomagnification. 

Biomagnification is the process of and element or compound (e.g., Mercury in building up in Tuna) working its way up the food chain while increase in toxicity.[v] Energy and materials circulate through the entire biosphere in ways remarkably similar to those of the human body. It would behoove the human race as well as the rest of the biosphere if we would start to see bodies not as individual and separate from the environment, rather as a nub or a capillary on a much larger fractal that is all life on this planet.

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[i] Howard Robinson, "Dualism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/ (accessed April 16, 2013).

[ii] “Free Will,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free%20will (accessed April 16, 2013).

[iii] American Society for Microbiology, “Humans Have Ten Times More Bacteria Than Human Cells: How Do Microbial Communities Affect Human Health?.” ScienceDaily, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm (accessed April 16, 2013).

[iv] Mathis Wackernagel, and William E. Rees, Our Ecological Footprint (Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 1996), 4.

[v] “Toxic Substances Hydrology Program,” USGS, http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/biomagnification.html (accessed April 16, 2013).

Democracy Now. No.... NOW... alright, wait for it.......

We should probably stop voting in America.

The process seems to do more harm than good. Election years are painful. Political ads are awful. Media coverage of government is anything but objective. Many millions are spent to elect people who for the most part are more focused on consolidating personal power, influence, and a private pension rather than representing the concerns and interests of the citizens they supposedly represent. Remember that gun control legislation that ¾ of people polled supported that politicians killed? How about the 11-year war against Saddam’s Weapons of mass destruction/ the Mujahideen we trained and armed back in the 1980’s who now go by the name the Taliban? Or perhaps the deregulation of the financial markets cuz in that one and only sector rules are bad? Maybe even the handling of the financial mess that resulted from deregulation? Or maybe that it's considered a victory that in only 1/4 of this country its legal for people to marry whoever they want? I would argue that the majority of people probably were never really gun-ho about how politicians handles those issues. And we call ourselves free. 

Once upon there was this group of colonies that sorta-kinda got together to protest that this group of old, rich, entitled white dudes a quarter around the globe away was imposing laws and taxation which these colonies thought were unjust as they had no representation in the creation and enforcement of these rules. Their battle-cry was “No taxation without representation!” and as they had no army of their own the formed militias and partook in acts of terrorism in order to achieve their desired ends.

Could we try that again? Something of a coup maybe? A revolution?

The business of democratic elections is out of control. Time to declare bankruptcy, sell off any remaining assets, scrap the rest and move on. We gots the internets now, it’s cheap & easy, just like a good date, so let’s get busy already.

Illusion of Individuality pt. 3

Pt. 3: INDIVIDUAL INTRODUCTION

There is a general misconception that led us to the state we are in, that of the individual. In the decade after the attacks in September 2001, the murky details of the long brewing political and financial strife between two distinct pockets of the human race has been partially revealed to a much larger civilian audience. And from that, we have been reminded how interconnected we are to a global network of cultural and military influence, despite how alone or as individual as we would like to believe. While at the same time, we have begun to understand that regardless of how much one tries and rebel against the culture or society that one is part of, one is controlled in many passive and direct influences.  I propose going much farther than considering just cultural and political ties in how we all view ourselves in relation to the rest of the world, for the workings of the world and beyond function in terms of particles and waves. This is not to say that the individual flatly does not exist, but the level of priority given to it is suicidal. 

For the longest time I honestly believed what I many had always told me. Everyone had always assured me that, just for being me, I was special, a unique snowflake.[i] And it was in my power to create for myself any kind of life I wanted. I could change the world. I mattered. This was a dangerous perspective to implant on a young boy. It was a quaint notion of my parents’ youth, but even they knew it was not true. They too had tried and failed. Who am I to reengage my father’s failed war[ii] with such illusions of imminent victory despite most of my cellmates not even suspecting their own incarceration?[iii] [iv] All of us were swept up in the big machine of progress, of production, rarely seeming to ever pause to consider the path or the ultimate direction.[v]  Now, for many, they are sure of the correctness of decisions they were never actually given the chance to make with each successive generation inheriting the expanding disconnect.

That growing rift between what we imagine our relationship with the rest of the world to be and what that relationship actually is will ravage us.  It already has. This concept of being separate is a ridiculous notion to cling to given what reason and true sciences have revealed to us about existence. The bastardization of a two thousand year old provincial allegory (who’s original message I believe to be one of unity) in conjunction with the insatiable lust for some sense of control has resulted in this rejection of gains from the sciences; which would otherwise have already steered humanity away from its harmful obsession with the individual.                      

At this point, you usually see that the eyes of whomever the audience might be have an unfocused and glazed-over quality about them, or they are darting around the room looking for anyway to disengage from the conversation with the clearly unstable person ranting at them from his perch on the next bar stool over. Yet, it is not a simple feat to explain an orb of web-like connections linearly nor do people like to hear the preconceived notions they hold explained away.

One has to start somewhere though, and a trying to pinpoint what the individual actually is seems like a decent place to begin. Once there is a sensible and functional concept of what an individual is or isn’t, an analysis of what the impact of our historical concept of the individual has been can be initiated. Then, only after an assessment of the failings of our antiquated ideas can one offer an alternative set of priorities, based on a more accurate understanding of the world.

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[i] Fight Club, DVD, directed by David Fincher (1999; Los Angeles, CA: 20^th Century Fox, 2001).

[ii] Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, DVD, directed by Terry Gilliam (1998; Universal City, CA: Universal Pictures, 2000).

[iii] The Matrix, DVD directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski (1999; Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2001).

[iv] Plato “Allegory of the Cave”

[v] Brazil, DVD, directed by Terry Gilliam (1985; Universal City, CA: Universal Studios, 2001).

Illusion of Individuality pt. 2

Pt 2: A NOT-SO-FRESH AWAKENING 

uhh, just a mess. always have been.

you rub the crud from your eyes, stuff the book & cd player into the backpack at your feet and wait to unboard.

as you step from the plane the blast of hot dry air whips through the lips of the gangway. the terminal isn’t packed, but there is that bustle of mid-day, mid-week major airport – very professional. after the baggage claim, the search for the car begins. a hand shoots up accompanied by a “woooo-hoo!” you wave back and begin carting the three black suitcases over to grandpa’s car.

bags are loaded and a brief hug is exchanged woven with the typical “how are you’s?” and “are you ready champ?” the crisp cut of the a/c is as a dramatic shift from the oppressive heat from the radiant concrete as exiting the dark garage into the blinding Phoenix sun.

the bleached-out buildings, patterned palm trees, and sprawling superhighways are a far cry from the dense pines of southern Maine you had left in order to catch that predawn flight out of Logan International this morning…

a map led us to a small little parking lot on the west side of campus. there were signs directing you into a squat little building across the wide sidewalk, so you propose to grandpa that he stay there while you run over and make sure it’s the right spot.  

the entranceway opened up to a sizeable square courtyard. neon poster-board glitter glue signs pointed to the “office” on the opposite side of the dorm. paperwork in hand, you cross over amidst the wandering milieu of students parents and aids. at the front desk your name is on the list, a key & another packet of paperwork & fliers is handed over. with your bundle you scurry back to grandpa, still waiting in his car. the two of you lug the bags up to your new room. some luggage is already inside, its owner is not.

with only some “welcome to campus!” coom-bye-ya orientation scheduled for that evening, you were down with the prospect of dinner. having only visited the city as a kid, it was shocking to realize that the familiar restaurant grandpa drove to was less than a mile up the main drag, Mill Ave. steaks and warm soft bread stinging with rosemary consumed under conversation that could otherwise be described as a pleasant and heartfelt chat. sun still hanging just above the horizon, grandpa rolls back into the exact same parking spot as before. he walks you as far as the brick square of the dorm’s entrance, another hug and some redundant questions intended as reassurances and as soon as his car is out of the lot and up the road you pull out a cigarette, sitting down on the slab of a bench out front.

fall asleep in one life one day to wake up in another.

what the hell?

the campus was big. it was a grid of wide pedestrian avenues filled with flat grassy lawns and square buildings of pinkish/grey/kaki brick, glass and concrete sprawling over a square mile into the bleak & alien desert suburbia.[i] and it was hot. everything the sun could hit was warm to the touch.                                                                                                             

the first days would filter through stunned daze shock. the landscape, the odd new pace, the born-again for a roommate, having a roommate, not having a home, living out of suitcases, being a new kind of alone… all of it so sharp as to not even feel anything as it sunk in.

within a week two kids from your dorm had already been arrested for smoking weed. what you came to learn is that even though there were two headshops and a stoner version of Quizno’s named Cheba Hut within blocks of campus, it was a felony to possess even a stem or single seed of grass. looking back, it’s really quite funny and sad that you considered the ridiculous situation akin to a police state. little did you know that the fun hadn’t even started yet.

there were rush parties, late mornings and even later nights crammed into tiny dorm rooms passing around bottles of candy flavored vodka and piss beer. class was of little concern, it was even easier than that crap in high school but what was amusing to you was that the divide between the studious and aloof had actually widened and intensified, and come Friday night everyone cut loose(er).

your generally pleasant nature, fair appearance, and social colorblindness had resulted in the usual situation of mostly everyone being amiable towards you but at the same time not being one thing or enough of another to be scooped up by any one of the rapidly forming cliques within the life of your dorm. the small handful of others that weren’t attached to anyone group or another would ultimately become your closer friends, mostly this group was composed of the ‘businessmen’ of the building. one in particular you would rarely hang-out with for any one length of time but he came to admire your confidentiality and criminal honesty very quickly. as he was not a consumer of his wares, which changed in color and composition with every shipment, he found that you were more than willing to sample the broken pills from the bottom of the baggie in exchange for a description of the effects phrased in the format of a sales pitch he could then use later. ecstasy was already a long-time favorite of yours, so a cheap and limitless supply a few doors down suited you just fine.

a few weeks into the semester you found yourself in what would become an all too predictably familiar set up; hunched over a canvass or drawing, spun half out of your mind listening to the electronic music of raves that had come to define most of your high-school years. it was a Tuesday or Wednesday so nothing much else seemed to be going on outside your immediate bubble, a bong hit here and there with the occasional trip to the bench out front to chain smoke a few Camel Lights and maybe chat with whoever else was out there. then back up to paint some more. a typical night.

that next morning the alarm went off to wake you for that 7:20 a.m. English class you never made it too with any regularity. you were awake with plenty of time to make it but an iced latte and a bike ride off campus was way more appealing. Thus, after pulling on pants and shoes and shirt, and after rolling a couple joints you headed out and down the mall for coffee beverage. it was really quite a gorgeous morning which only strengthened your resolve to skip class.

biking through a the residential blocks just to the west of campus you followed a now all to familiar path to the railroad overpass that served as a great vantage point for your illicit activities. in all six directions of egress you could see approaching others a minimum of one city block away, plenty of time to get rid of anything incriminating.

with coffee and the din of traffic and birds, morning sun beating down on your arms and face, you felt great nursing away the unpleasantness from last night’s creative session. after a time it was time to return to campus and grab a bit to eat. you had to be stoned to eat campus food. good and stoned. it struck you as odd that the best and brightest of that generation was expected to nourish themselves on slop trough eggs, sugary cereals, Burger King & Chick-fil-A. boundless contradiction was nothing new to you.

upon re-entering the campus grounds it was eerily quiet for eight o’clock. whatever though, it was in the middle of morning classes so people were either still in bed or where they were otherwise supposed to be. as you locked up your bike in the courtyard of your dorm, the silence continued. one of the cute girls from across the way was seated at the picnic table weeping and you had to giggle to yourself, “that’s what you get for trying to date those fraternity jock douchebags.” then as you made your way up to your room you noticed there were actually lots of kids wandering around or glued to TV’s with faces of tear streaked vacant disbelief. passing your room you headed down the hall to another dorm where a couple drama and music major friends of yours lived, plus they had a TV.

their door was open and there were half a dozen kids in there, “what the hell is going on?” you asked. everyone turned to stare at you in a kind of frozen drone like way. “haven’t you heard?” Drew asked in wonder.

just then, the TV cut away mid-commercial to show a plane slamming into the second tower. and you knew things were about to get very strange… an attack of this magnitude on a day where the date strikes you as odd because terrorists (at least in the movies) always attack on dates that are in some way significant to them and their cause, instead of on dates that hold some historical or cultural meaning to the those they are attacking such as this day which is numerically identical to our national # for emergency, 9-1-1.

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[i] “ASU at the Tempe Campus,” http://www.asu.edu/map/pdf/asu_map_tempe_2008.pdf (Accessed April 16, 2013).

illusion of individuality pt. 1

Part 1: WTF IS GOING ON HERE?

Civilization is broken.

It served its purpose and got us out of the trees, damp caves, and wandering tribes but now it appears to be aimed at returning us to a disjointed and aimless hardscrabble existence.

A global situation has arisen where my very existence is dire peril, and do to the structure of this society, its priorities, and its values I am helpless to intervene on my behalf. My great dilemma is that I am stuck at a period of time when my species is choosing to ignore what little it understands about the workings of the universe. A premium has been placed on immediate and fleeting forms of self-gratification, with no legitimate nor comprehensive concern for much beyond the current day’s horizon line to the great detriment of all life on Earth.

It would seem that nothing I could do would change anything in a productive manner. Sure I could try and influence humanity and steer it towards making positive changes, but I’ve never been able to satisfyingly “get through to” more than five or six people over the past fifteen years. I don’t plan to fool myself with delusions of grandeur that I will ever reach a larger audience who will not only understand but who will also partake in some meaningful action to the same tune as my message.

Conversely, I could attempt to impact humanity in a “negative” manner in order to try and save the rest of life on Earth from the self-and-all-devouring scourge that is the human race. Theoretically this could be achieved via extreme eco-terrorism such as attempting to cover Antarctic ice with dark soil with the intent to accelerate melting in order to flood coastal cities, or detonate a nuclear device at the upriver base of any one of the world’s great damns such as the Aswan, Atatürk Dam, Three Gorges, Sanmenxia, or Grand Coulie, creating a wall of radioactive water that could flatten any communities downstream. In this way there is nothing short of targeting and reducing the human race and all of its industries that could potentially starve off the likes of an ecological disaster as dramatic as the Crimean Extinction…

I am a refugee from that crisis that is humanity.  Along the years I have endeavored in schools, locations, employments, relationships, deviances, chemicals and the arts. All these actions serve the common goal of relieving the debilitating sensation of “I’m on the outside, looking in.”[i]

So, “Shall I begin like David Copperfield; I was born, I grew up... or should I began with when I was born into darkness?”[ii] That painful and degrading baptism consisting of the series of events in life when one notices how in most institutions of civilization there is something that just doesn’t add up.  So to mimic the path of insight traveling through memory, let’s do this like the plot of a Tarantino flick or a tale tailored around time travel that begins in the middle, then jumps around to piece together and reveal a larger picture.

[i] Dave Specter, “I'm On The Outside Looking In” Disc 2: Midnight Blues, Various - The Blues Box. 1994.

[ii] Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, VHS, directed by Neil Jordan (1994; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 1996.).

health care for the intelligentsia

Why does it seem that the best and the brightest have no functional recourse for their woes? Free wheelers and thinkers who feel nothing but dissatisfaction with the status quo are left with the singular option to retreat to that which they attempt to change and escape from for assistance in dealing with the depression it wroughts upon them?

should there not be a care network for those that have our long term benefit in mind? Deviance is the only option for the norm is the curse. Did Kinsey not turn to deviant sex in order to seek freedom? Did Ginsburg not subject himself to electro-shock? Did Burroughs not find solice in smack? Did Hunter and Brukoski not find comfort in the bubble at the bottom of a bottle? Wells in boys? and LeTreck in Absinthe? Van Gogh in self mutilation and wine?  Let me save myself from the list of musicians. Krunk.

It begs the age old question of "why should i care?"any aspect of forethought can be described as rational thought, any response - emotion. a culmination of the two - a rationalization, aka an excuse. it begs many questions does it not?