Grateful Dead: Brown-Eyed Women (3/14/93)

 

Dec. 19, 2007

 

My final Project:

 

597e1.pdf

 

 

 

*Many thanks and I am glad you enjoyed them.  I could not stop laughing at the SOC/A Manual.  Is Osama Bin Laden holding a ray gun?  -thepanamaslider

 

 

Dec. 12, 2007

 

Last night my roommates (all nine of em), some friends and I watched the documentary "The Paper" on the Daily Collegian staff of three years ago. The documentary was aired on PBS, which is national TV, which is pretty cool. My roommate is now its editor-in-chief, but at the time of the video she was no more than a lowly freshman candidate (we drank every time her face appeared in the background, or we caught a glimpse of her sweater). 

 

She agreed that the film sort of made the Collegian staff kind of look like they were "kids playing at a job," when really all the staff members do provide a  service for the student body and help keep us informed on issues on campus and in the world. They aren't necessarily doing this for their own benefit (although the experience certainly looks great on a resume). At the time of filming, the paper was doing really badly and the Black Caucus especially had it out for them. In her blog, she writes "Matthews was able to capture a little reality in our Burrowes Street newsroom -- especially the one thing that so many others seem to overlook: how bad we care. Here, circulation is more than a number. Feedback is more than a letter to the editor. And stories and sources make up more than 15 inches of newsprint."

 

Having been a columnist, and being surrounded by staff reporters and editors and journalists my entire time here at PSU, I can vouch for them when they say they really do care. Reporters jump at 2 am to cover stories, dragging themselves from parties and social lives and their college experience to stand outside of a shop fire to question an old lady and her dog.  Editors sometimes stay at the office till 5 am to make sure that each paper, each day, is as close to perfect as possible. The staff is as tight knit as it gets, but no one is afraid to correct or redress each other when anyone else is out of line. These young adults are covering rape, murder, theft, sexual assault- issues that are not only difficult for people my age to read and comprehend, but for someone to have to report it in a fair and accurate, all the while balancing the victim, the rights of the defendant, the safety of the student body, and the delicate balance of race and religious relations on campus. No matter what, though, they're going to be condemned. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. As a corporation, they've got to make circulation numbers rise. As a student-run, student-center organization, they have to appeal to the students and try to act in their best interests. As college students, they've got to get educated and graduate somehow, balancing their job at the paper with classes, exams, jobs. These are not kids playing at a job- these are journalists at work.

 

I have great respect for the staff and my experiences with them has made me rethink all of my previous notions of media corruption and bias. I just hope that Collegian staff, once out in the workplace and at national papers and reporting on nationwide issues, remember that people are not just affected by the news, but by the way it is reported. And bias may be unjournliastic, or whatever, but I'm not sure how anyone can write without bias anyway. As Hunter S. Thompson once said, "So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms... Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the objetive rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful."

 

I think this is very much applicable to today's political climate. Regardless, congrats, Collegian- keep up the dedicated work.

 

 

Dec. 4, 2007

 

Shit. I didn't realize how long I'd been away from the Wiki. Long time, no blog. I guess I've been caught up in a recent upsurge of 60s/70s rock-and-roll, during which time I'm trying to get back to my roots and shake off postmodern pop music drabble that I somehow fell into while partying at frats and house parties early in my college experience. More recently, after spending many a Sunday afternoon/evening getting stoned with my roommates and watching epic music-mentaries like No Direction Home (Bob Dylan) or Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who,  I've become absolutely re-obsessed with the lives of pioneers like Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez, rockers like Keith Moon, frontmen Robert Plant,Jim Morrison or Roger Daltrey, and guitarists like Jimmy Page. I don't only love the music- I love what they stood for.

 

Throwback column to when I wrote for the Collegian:

 

 

[ Monday, Nov. 20, 2006 ]

 

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2006/11/11-20-06tdc/11-20-06dops-column-02.asp

 

 

I'd like to review my final project ideas, to get them down and maybe to add onto them in later posts. I appreciated the in-class feedback on it, as well as the discussion on the subtle, or maybe not-so-subtle inflitration, of workplace drug regulations.

 

Nov. 13, 2007

 

Cosmis Trigger is indeed blowing my mind. I'm not quite at the end, so I don't want to post any ruminations yet, but I would like to comment on Wilson's 23-enigma experience. I, too, have always have the experience of somehow having the number "9" follow me around or be associated with me and my life in some way, particularly in combination with the numbers 1 and 6 (I guess as the upside-down nine). I was also very surprised to see that the I-ching is made of patterns and the placement of 9 and 6. The more I thought about it, the more evident it became. Here's a list of how 9 (1, and 6) seem to pop-up:

 

- I was born on September (09) 16, 1986

- My lucky number in sports has always been the number 9

- My social security number is made up of 11, 99, 666, and two other numbers.

- My parents live at 900 Wooded Pond

- Our shore house is at 9th and Ocean in Ocean City (9 letters) NJ

- I had my first psychedelic experience at age 19

- I was 9 years old in 1996, and I've lived through 9/9/99, and the palindrome year 1991 (though I wish I had lived through 9/9/69); in 2009 I'll be 23

- My mother was born in Bethlehem (9 letters), Palestine (9 letters); interestingly, there are 99 names for God in Arabic;

- If I married my boyfriend, my first and last name would equal nine letters. As it is, my first and middle name make up 9 letters.

- I live in a house with 9 girls and my room # is room 6

- 3 ^ 2nd power (23-enigma) equals 9

 

Other interesting stuff:

 

"The ancient Mayans spoke of the Nine Lords of Time. The Greeks told of the 9 Muses, the daughters of Zeus who presided over the arts of music and poetry. Occult traditions speak of the Nine Unknown Men and the celestial Council of Nine. Norse mythology tells of the god, Odin, the ruler of the nine worlds. In the Catholic practice of Novenas, prayer services last nine nights. Mythologist, Joseph Campbell, tells us the number 9 is traditionally associated with the Goddess Mother of the World."

 

- Yeats met Ezra Pound in 1911; the Easter Rising in Dublin happened in 1916 and his poem "Easter 1916" was written in 9/1916; in A Vision, he describes 9 important elements: the four Faculties, the four Principles, and the Daimon; when I mapped myself out on The Wheel, I found I was most likely part of the 9-21-23-7 group/configuration

- Joyce's Portrait of the Artist was published in the U.S. in 1916 (the family name of grandmother on my father's side is Joyce)

- In Crowley's The Book of the Law, the maxim "Do What Thou Wilt" occurs on page 9 (he said it was penned in Cairo; when I last visited Cairo, I went to a Papyrus factory and had my name painted on a papyrus scroll with decorations already on it- the scroll I chose had a large eye of Horus on it, as I later discovered)

-Father hidalgo started his revolution on September 16, which is now Mexican Independence Day

-Mary's feast day is in September; the 9th appearance of our Lady of Lourdes (Our Lady of Space) to Bernadette when she commanded her to drink from the stream and eat the plants of the earth occurred on 2/25 (2+2+5); Bernadette's first name was Marie (which is my middle name)

 

“The Number "9"

 

This number 9 has some very curious properties. It is the only number in calculation that, multiplied by any number, always reproduces itself, as for example 9 times 2 is 18, and 8 plus I becomes again the 9, and so on with every number it is multiplied by. The number 9 is an emblem of matter that can never be destroyed, so the number 9 when multiplied by any number always reproduces itself, no matter what the extent of the number is that has been employed.

 

John Lennon + The Number Nine

 

* new and stranger development: i was toward the end of reading cosmic trigger, and i stopped to look up something about leary + wilson's 8 neurological circuits. when i looked back down at the book, i realized that the next page/chapter dealt exactly with the circuits and wilson's explanation for them- exactly what i had on the webpage in front of me. what page had i been on previously? p. 196. *

I guess syncronicity is everywhere if you only start looking!

 

 

The Second Coming

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

- W.B. Yeats

(this poem was written in 01/1919)

 

 

Nov. 12, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

I got hustled by Derek Trucks this weekend.

 

Well, maybe not hustled, but we did hang out (yes, I hung out with the legendary, child prodigy slide-guitarist; nephew of Brothers drummer Butch Trucks; who has sat in with greats such as Joe Walsh, Bob Dylan, and of course members of the Allman Brothers; and who told me I had beautiful hands and should become a hand model.) He and members of his band were so gracious and friendly, I can honestly say I had the best weekend I've ever had in college thus far.

 

The night started out at his show at the State Theatre this past Saturday night, which was fantastic. After the show and a couple Yagerbombs, my friends and I headed out to the bars. I noticed a couple of tour buses and a truck with sound equipment parked on Frasier Street, and I recognised one of the guys hanging around as a dude who had been running around backstage at the show. My friend Ashley and I departed from our group to go talk to him. With slight alcohol bravado, I approached and asked where Derek was. He said, "I don't know- but let me find out for you," and proceeded to call Derek, who was then at Mad Mex. He told him we were coming, and we took off down Beaver. Entering Mad Mex, I thought "okay, I've got about a 5% chance he's actually here, and a 1% chane I'll actually talk to him." And there he was at the bar. Walking up behind him, I approached and complimented him and his lead singer Mike on their show. Derek said "Thanks- hey, you girls want a drink?" and bought us two margaritas. He then asked if we wanted to join him, MIke, and their friend Nicole at a table, and with no hesitation we walked over and sat down with them. I had called my boyfriend who actually got me into Derek and the Allman Brothers, who promptly sprinted to Mad Mex and could absolutely not believe that I had managed to talk to him, let alone was sitting down with him and conversing at a table. After another round of tequila shots, compliments of Derek, and the arrival of Derek's father and other crew members, the group took off for Zola's and invited us along. We waited behind at Mad Mex, in an attempt to not appear like total stalkers, but couldn't hold it any longer and after 10 minutes took off once more after the group. We had a few drinks at Zola's with more crew members and members of the band's opening act, who were with singer Ryan Shaw.

 

Then, somehow, I convinced them all to come back to my house to play beer pong, old school college style (I live right down West College, a block from where we were). They laughed and agreed!! So I sprinted away to purchase as much beer as I could drag (relay-race style from the bar to the street due to the bullshit liquor laws of PA) outside Sports Cafe. (Turns out that while I was gone Derek suggested partying on the tour bus, but alas I showed up with the beer in 2 minutes so his crew told him, Fuck it let's go to her place.) Derek saw me staggering down College with 12-packs and in a very gentlemanly manner ran to get them off my hands. The crew followed me to my house and we set up the game. So there I was, playing beer pong against Mike Mattison and Derek Trucks, who claimed that they had never "heard of this game before." We explained the rules, poured the Yuengling, and shot away at a game that, after five years of playing nearly four nights a week, I can honestly say I am a champion at.

 

And they kicked our asses. We couldn't believe it. My pong partner Devon and I were reigning champs; we hadn't lost on our own pong table in months, and two guys who claim they've never played before straight up hustled (or rather, won fair and square) us at pong. Now I am a competitive person and I hate losing, but hey it was fucking Derek Trucks, so we all shook hands and said "good game" and hung out more and some other people from his group got on the table and played with my friends. They left at 3 am because they had a show to get to in Rochester, but there were hugs all around and I of course begged them to come back anytime. I sincerely hope that they return to State College so I can see his amazing band again, and so we can go for round two, double or nothing.

 

Moral of the story: turns out slide guitar is not the only thing Derek Trucks totally dominates.

 

 

 

Derek: "What can I say, I'm the man."

 

 

Nov. 5, 2007

 

When I hear the words, "cosmic self-awareness," I think of LSD. I mean, how can anyone even attempt to imagine imagining the endless possibilities and dimensions of the world and the mind and of humanity without taking psychadelics? I don't see how it could be possible. Travelling on acid or shrooms or whatever your psychadelic of choice happens to be (I like to use the verb "travelling" versus "tripping" because tripping paints an image of someone competely fucked out of their mind falling down and slurring their words and being unable to grab onto stuff, which is not uncommong during a trip and truly categorizes the experience of one guy I saw literally tripping down Calder Way one night this summer--- but it is not the heart of the experience, which is a voyage through consciousness and space and time and consciousness and the like) is way more effective than simply reading about this stuff and trying to image what the hell it is like at all.

 

I share GutenOrgan's paranoia of the Utopian feeling the end of the Transhumanism essay presents. When I read about Transhumanism, I thought, oh this is pretty cool, this is a way to escape the sexless, drab, totally assbackward or maybe assforward institutionalization that modernism and organized religion has inflicted upon mankind, and a new way of viewing the power of human energy and human potential. But when I read the fine print, aka the stuff printed on World Transhumanism's website, as well as portions of the Huxley's essay, I started to get skeptical.

 

"It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolu­tion —appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation."

 

 

Really? I don't think so. Whether it comes out of my Catholic upbringing or certain quasi-spiritual drug-induced experiences, I definitely get the feeling that there is something greater out there than the human race, and something deeper and more powerful is controlling our future. Not to say that everything is predetermined, but I find it hard to believe that simply making a conscious effort to evolve will actually change our biological and mental composition. Something else is behind the scenes- in our subconscious, in our cells, beyond our world or universe, I don't know where- that is a major factor in the equation.

 

"For instance, that beauty (some­thing to enjoy and something to be proud of) is indispensable, and therefore that ugly or depressing towns are immoral; that quality of people, not mere quantity, is what we must aim at..." This sentence screams Brave New World. Imperfection is not an abhorrence on our society; it is a blessing. Ugly things are not always depressing, stupid people are necessary, and beauty is in the fucking eye of the beholder. Again, who exactly will be making these qualitative judgment calls?

 

"We are beginning to realize that even the most fortunate people are living far below capacity, and that most human beings develop not more than a small fraction of their potential mental and spiritual efficiency. The human race, in fact, is surrounded by a large area of unrealized possibilities, a challenge to the spirit of exploration."

 

Now that's something that I can agree with. Human potential probably has far greater capacities than we can even begin to dream about, but something seems to be holding us back. I can also understand when Huxley discusses the "unrest" amongst modern man as a manisfestation of unsatisfaction, of the expectations of above-normal standards of health and material living. With all the technological progress we've made since the Industrial Revolution, it is not hard to see why man demands more and more from corporeality; more goods, faster and better, longer lives, better healthcare, abolishment of diseases.

 

But that, I believe, is exactly where I disagree the most. Transhumanism, as I understand it, seems to laud technology and evolution as having the ability (coralled by some sort of moral or ethical considerations) to enable man to grow increasingly closer to having all material and emotional demands satisfied instantly, as well as some higher understanding and knowledge of the human experience, culminating in the creation of the "homo perfectus" out of the Common Man. Yet this sense of unrest will not be quelled by making more shit or creating faster and newer scientific processes to make more shit or to absorb an enormous quantity of knowledge to find out how to make even faster processes--- "the zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities and of the techniques for realizing them." We need to figure out how to understand that there are certain things that are, was, and always will be beyond our comprehension. Satisfaction will not come from more. Human evolution seems to be tripping (yes, tripping) over itself in its speedy hurtle toward some metaphysical finish line. Maybe we can't slow it down, cause it's already set in motion, but at least we can try and re-channel the energy.

 

 

A major convention in science fiction and fictional literature is the cautionary tale of mankind getting too far ahead of itself. We can reason, think, write, drive, and fly, but we are, after all, still animals. Progress is a double-edged sword. I guarantee that even after all kinds of technological advances, aesthetically-unsatisfied people who go under the knife will suffer Georginana's fate and will either drive themselves mad correcting every little imperfection or die in the process, or when posthuman Rappaccini's play God and experiment with life and death and at the end of it all we're wondering what the point was, or after the discovery of the pseudo-fountain of youth everyone will go nuts and kill each other in war anyway and Dr. Heidigger will be there to say, "I told you so."

 

I don't want to sound overly pessimistic about Transhumanism, or come off like a cranky old man damning those kids and their confagled contraptions when "the one I used in my day worked just as well." I like how Transhumanists seem to recognize that the world in which we exist is a very strange and mysterious place and the more we understand it, the stranger and more mysterious it seems to get. It also seems logical that humans are a species with great potential, and that we should take advantage of our environment and our cognitive and rational abilities. Humans do indeed matter, and it is really not our phsyical bodies, but the spiritual or metaphysical elements of the individual that distinguish us from the rest of living things. But I am still wary. I don't think science or technology is the answer for our spiritual unrest, or our moral imperfetions as a society. We need more things that take our attention away from the material, from any sort of "plan" or "schedule" for the future, cause no matter what we do Nature is just going to come and fuck with it anyway. So bascially we should all keep taking LSD and eating mushrooms and just see where we end up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oct. 31, 2007

 

Happy Halloween!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oct. 29, 2007

 

I discovered some trivia about A Scanner Darkly on Wikipedia: "Originally, Richard Linklater toyed with adapting the Philip K. Dick novel ''Ubik but stopped early on because he was unable to obtain the rights and he "couldn't quite crack it."² He began thinking about ''Scanner Darkly, another Dick novel while talking to producer Tommy Pallotta during the making of Waking Life."

 

A Scanner Darkly had its funny parts (Woody Harrleson was hilarious) but overall I found it to be a pretty depressing movie. For a while though, I couldn't really put my finger on why it was so depressing. At first, I thought, maybe because of the whole theme of using drugs to program Arctor against his will, or perhaps the whole discovery of the hypocritical cycle of the drug growing/distributing and simultaneous rehab center New Path. I think though that the most depressing part was that half the movie, like the scenes in the diner or at Arctor's house while all of them were on Substance D, made me feel like I was experiencing a really bad psychadelic trip. Like when Baris would start his tangents of paranoia or when Freck would randomly start bugging out (except for the time where he tried to kill himself and had to lie in bed and listen to all of his sins read to him by some alien, which was pretty amusing). The film would then switch into the scenes in the police station or at Artor's security/surveillance desk which for some reason felt calming to me, like "safe zones" (even though, while on psilocybin mushrooms, I doubt a police station would feel like a "safe zone"). This feeling reminded me of a time when my friends and I downed some peanut butter mushroom goodness one evening and, though we had a pretty good time, at one point in the night my friend J started to freak out; the only person who could calm her down was my friend Meg who was sober. J later said that when she touched or talked to Meg she felt that she was in a "normal" or "safe" zone; it is weird how, while on drugs, an individual (depending on the drug itself) really is in a completely different universe or level, which seems to suggest that, if a chemical substance can accomplish this, then a majority of our "sober" reality might in fact be one great big mindfuck after all.

 

 

Oct. 24, 2007

 

Peter Gibbons: Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you'd do if you had a million dollars and you didn't have to work. And invariably what you'd say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you're supposed to be an auto mechanic.

Samir: So what did you say?

Peter Gibbons: I never had an answer. I guess that's why I'm working at Initech.

Michael Bolton: No, you're working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there'd be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.

Samir: You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...

Michael Bolton: Samir, you're missing the point. The point of the exercise is that you're supposed to figure out what you would want to do if...

[printer starts beeping]

Michael Bolton: "PC Load Letter"? What the fuck does that mean?

 

 

It's funny because it's true. So I am in the middle of law school applications. Yes, I know, I can hear the groans from all you MA/PhD candidates decrying professional school in favor of studying 17th century literature or postructuralism or whatnot. Believe me, if I had all the time and money in the world, grad school in English or Rhetoric would be for me. There's nothing I like better than sipping good beer, having a nice toke and debating politics, literary theory, pop culture with brilliant coversationalists and better friends, spending all day in the library reading the greats and writing some fabulously long, intricate dissertation that will get everybody thinking on a whole new level... (Well, I know that is not what grad school is but I like to think so anyway.) Who knows- I might still get rejected from all the law schools I apply to, because I somehow bombed (well not necesarrily bombed, but got a significantly lower score than one that should match my GPA range,- and I took the test twice) the evil, retarded, and god-forsaken LSAT. If I don't get in, I'll probably wind up getting some boring job at Initech to save money and then applying to grad school down the road.

 

I know it doesn't have to be that way. But with no money, poor credit (I too worked in the recovery department of a business credit card company for years and I still managed to have shitty credit... before I even turned 18. An anomoly, I know), an English BA and no relatives or friends on the other side of the country, it is hard for me to think of another way out. I'm succumbing to the bullshit of the society of control- get the degree, get the job, pay the taxes, play the game, give the money to your political party, and overall be a nice good citizen who will have kids who will just do the same thing all over again. But I just can't think of another way. I'd join the Peace Corps but I have absolutely no history of community service involvement whatsoever. And living back at home is not an option (my parents are nice and I love them but co-existing just doesn't work out). So, looks like all I'm left with is basically going to law school for the benefit of having an apartment paid for (the parentals will pay for me to live somewhere while in law school as well as foot most of the tuition bill, but if I'm working or going to grad school to study English, I'm totally on my own- go figure), being in a new location, getting a good education that will hopefully prove useful somehow, and try not to become a giant douche/bloodthirsty shark along the way.

 

In the words of Samir, "This is a... fuck!"

 

 

Oct. 21, 2007

 

I share Robodemic's newfound appreciation for Philip K. Dick. I can't believe that I haven't read any of his books until now. I am eager to get my hands on The Man in the High Castle and Valis, then proceed onto the rest of his work. I've seen movies based on his stuff, like Minority Report and Total Recall (which is arguably the most kick-ass movie ever made. "See you at the party, Richter!")

 

I like Nugan's inference on the book's expression of the control society's desire/need for immortality, as well as the representations of the control society in Runciter and Jory. Runciter seems to have an underlying morality to him, but unlike Joe, his character has a certain lack of imagination and creativity, as if he is far too grounded in his "reality" to think that there might be another "way". Runciter plays the game- through his prudence organization, he subscribes to the status quo, maintaining the fear of privacy invasions through the work he does and especially through advertisements: "Terminate axiety; contacting your nearest prudence organization will first ttell you if in fact you are the victim of unauthorized intrusions, and then, on your instructions, nullify these intrusions- at moderate cost to you." Naturally someone who had never thought that they might fall victim to telepathic invasions of privacy might think twice at the mere suggestion of the chance of such a privacy invasion. As long as the public has something to fear, they will turn to the most prudent and available source of ease, or at least the one source that advertises the most, even if there is nothing to fear at all. Half-life might also be a function of the control society, and perhaps Herbert von Vogelsang is also to blame, but he is also the only one to outright question the authority of the prudence organizations: "Could THEY be rackets? Claiming a need for their services when sometimes no need actually exists?"

 

 

Well, the bomb explosion on Luna and the presences of seemingly evil psis suggests that there is something tangible to fear (it's eerie how he predicted the rhetoric of terrorism we hear so often today). But then again, when is there not? Maybe the only way to un-paralyze yourself of fear and accept the forces around you, as mobius talked about in class the other day, is to assume the worst, and go from there. So what if there are psi's invading my privacy and reading my thoughts? I have nothing to hide. Then again, not everyone might agree- as Captain Donald Cragen would say, people are weird. It seems that, if striking paranoia about privacy issues can function as such an enormous fear tactic, then most of the population must really be doing or thinking things that they truly don't want anyone to know about, and if such thoughts/actions (besides those like murder, rape, child abuse- I'm talking about smoking pot, having sex in weird positions, personal vices and such) are common among the majority, then maybe the status quo/legislation is really behind the eight ball. Like in the criminalization of marijuana- most people smoke or have smoked it, including politicians, but no one wants to come out and really back decriminalization or speak against prohibition for fear of being decried as soft-on-crime, or worse, a "hippie". Hypocrites, all of em, perpetuating the cycle of hypocrisy that ensnares everyone who was too much of a pussy to speak out on it in the first place. (For more on the Drug War, I suggest reading Ethan Nadelmann's National Review article An end to marijuana prohibition. One of my favorite parts is his conclusion: What support there is for marijuana prohibition would likely end quickly absent the billions of dollars spent annually by federal and other governments to prop it up. All those anti-marijuana ads pretend to be about reducing drug abuse, but in fact their basic purpose is sustaining popular support for the war on marijuana. What's needed now are conservative politicians willing to say enough is enough: Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars down the drain each year. People losing their jobs, their property, and their freedom for nothing more than possessing a joint or growing a few marijuana plants. And all for what? To send a message? To keep pretending that we're protecting our children? Alcohol Prohibition made a lot more sense than marijuana prohibition does today--and it, too, was a disaster.)

 

 

Okay, enough of the marijuana decriminalization tangent. Back to Ubik. I liked it because I couldn't shake this feeling of awe when reading this book- where the hell does Dick get this stuff? One thing that particularly creeped me out (in a cool way) was the explanation for Pat's talent: how she didn't encessarily go into the past, but rather started a counter-process that uncovered prior stages inherent in configurations of matter. One of my ex-boyfriends (who has never read Dick) had this theory that if there was some kind of computer or process that could map and categorize the path of quantum particles as they operate today, and if the computer could reverse their activity, one could not so much travel into but instead simulate the past and see what happened all the way up until the Big Bang. If this worked, then maybe the reverse would work- speed up the path of the particles to see into the future. Of course, with theories of causality and the deterministic or probablistic properties of quantum mechanics, there would be too much wiggle room for particles to have randomly decided to do something else. But his theory got me thinking.

 

 

 

http://www.nineroses.com/pkd/images/canbegwti.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.nineroses.com/pkd/ubikword.html&h=280&w=171&sz=14&hl=en&start=2&sig2=ogeXRo2p4Po_v_i5aZ3C_Q&um=1&tbnid=Qt56G-a0qAV1dM:&tbnh=114&tbnw=70&ei=l-0bR5rbBI6QeYqOkMwH&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dubik%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN">

 

 

P.S.- I discovered this article while researching for my BBH143 class, Drugs + Me. The title: Psychedelic toad licking dog in rehab.

Laura Mirsch said: "We couldn't keep our dog's addiction a secret any longer. The neighbours all knew that Lady was a drug addict, and soon the other dogs weren't allowed to play with her." Hilarious.

 

 

Oct. 16, 2007

 

From The Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita Sutra:

 

The Buddha said to Subhuti, "This is how the bodhisattva mahasattvas rnaster their thinking. 'However many species of living beings there are--whether born from eggs, from the womb, from moisture, or spontaneously; whether they have form or do not have form; whether they have perceptions or do not have perceptions; or whether it cannot be said of them that they have perceptions or that they do not have perceptions, we must lead all these beings to the ultimate nirvana so that they can be liberated. And when this innumerable, immeasurable, infinite number of beings has become liberated, we do not, in truth, think that a single being has been liberated,'

"Why is this so? If, Subhuti, a bodhisattva holds on to the idea that a self, a person, a living being, or a life span exists, that person is not an authentic bodhisattva."

 

Buddha calls this sutra The Diamond That Cuts Through the Illusion because of the adherant's ability to "reach the shores of liberation" and obtain the highest, most transcendant understanding (that is not, in fact, not the highest most transcendant understanding). I do not know much about Buddhism, but I infer that this idea of liberation is striving to reach enlightenment, the freeing of the mind from the physical realm, to not get caught up in the ideas (or any ideas at all) of the self, the mind, the body, etc. as existing at all. Words as viruses, things, labels, all dragging us down into focusing solely on this tangible world. I looked up the word "dharma" on wikipedia:

 

 

IN HINDUISM: It dharma is, so to speak, the essential nature of a being, comprising the sum of its particular qualities or characteristics, and determining, by virtue of the tendencies or dispositions it implies, the manner in which this being will conduct itself, either in a general way or in relation to each particular circumstance. The same idea may be applied, not only to a single being, but also to an organized collectivity, to a species, to all the beings included in a cosmic cycle or state of existence, or even to the whole order of the Universe; it then, at one level or another, signifies conformity with the essential nature of beings… (from Guenon's "Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines").''IN BUDDHISM: the teachings of the Buddha which lead to enlightenment; the constituent factors of the experienced world

Then I looked up Tathgata: "one who has thus gone" - ''tathā-gata; "one who has thus come" - ''tathā-āgata; or " one who has gone to That", a deliberately ambiguous term to reflect the inability to fully pinpoint the ontology of a being.

 

 

So let me get this straight. Everything that exists really does not exist, and everything, tangible or intangible, does not have an identity/ontology other than that of having an identity that lacks ontology, or really it just lacks anything at all because the concept of ontology does not exist either. Almost like all things are defined by their status of not being either things or non-things, or rather by being both things and non-things at the same time? I like the concept of the literal self-lessness. Why bother trying to deliberately pinpoint yourself into a box of "personality" or "character" or "identity" when you're not really here at all; you have no individualized self to begin with. Of course, on the surface this seems foolish- of course I am myself- you are not me, and I am not you. Then again, What, or who, am I at all? What are you, or, who are you? Nothing and no one? Or are we all part of the same nothingness that is in fact everything? How are you supposed to liberate the self if the self does not exist? Maybe when a person truly reaches this level of understanding of the lack of self and liberates their mind then liberation is not necessary to begin with because there was nothing intitially that needed to be liberated.

 

Upon further research, I came upon the Dharmacakra, the Wheel. I still find difficulty interpreting these multiple turnings of the wheel, but I think I get the general concept- teaching plus experience plus internalization all over time equals understanding?

 

Maybe Buddhism is like poetry- you're supposed to interact closely with it but you begin so very far away from it, you have to connect with the subject matter, to reflect and meditate on it, but never to try and fully understand it or to treat it as a solid thing, becuse it is pliant, flexible, subjective and objective, and there is no ultimate understanding of it tobegin with; it is a separate entity and yet part of you and everything all around you at the same time; it describes a universal experience but at the same time is about one thing, all to simply help you try and understand the world around you, or to perhaps realize that you can never understand it- you can only live in it, with it, inside it, outside it... ? Does this also mean that any rhetoric of hyperindividualism is bullshit, and the only true way in which we should view things is through solidarity?

Who knows. Not me. Buddhism is awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oct. 9, 2007

 

 

I have started Programming and metaprogramming the biocomputer, and gotten only through a bit of it so far. I am kind of dismayed, but not really surprised, that the three groups of people who Lilly desribes as being most able to handle this kind of theory and information are scientists, computer programmers, and psychoanalysts. There is certainly a lot of technical wording in the text and math-oriented ideas. However, as I was reading, the ideas did not make me think of Darwin or Freud... I immediately thought of W.B. Yeats. The puzzle of how to relate the self to the brain, the brain to other selves, the self to the "surpaself", etc, was something he (and pretty much everyone I know) struggled with throughout his life. He had this like internal dichotemy, or a an image of a "bifurcated self as both dreamer and activist," and really got into Neoplatonism, probably because neoplatonism is all about united the self with the One and having to break down identities before they can be recreated and so on. Yeats was fascinated by the spiritual realm, turned to all sorts of mysticism and automatic writing exercises, and even created his own 'system' for figuring out who he and who everyone else was. He was overcome with the idea of unification of the self.

 

Objective realities, reprogramming, self-integration... it seems out of grasp, like too much to handle by an individual just trying to live day-to-day and not be driven mad by awareness or the desire to have awareness of one's self and others in 'reality'. But it seems that this concept of "reprogramming" the biocomputer that is a human is a very grounded and do-able task if it can be done step-by-step and in some sort of constant state self-awareness. The theory, or practice, of self analysis, is described as critical to this metaprogramming of the self. I'd like to figure out how to metaprogram myself; then maybe I could elimate some self-doubt and uncertainty and fear and all that and really start doing some cool things in my life.

 

"Most of us have several controllers, selves, selfmetaprograms which divide control among them, either in time parallel or in time series in sequences of control. As I will give in detail later, one path for selfdevelopment is to centralize control of one's biocomputer in one selfmetaprogrammer, making the others into conscious executives subordinate to the single administrator, the single superconscient selfmetaprogrammer."

 

It's what hundreds of shamans, priests, writers, artists, philosophers, thinkers... throughout human history have all been saying-- As we think, so we become. Science and religion are not so different... well, maybe in their methods, but not in their outcomes. Something from Waking Life also comes to mind:

 

"Inevitably, science and philosophy are all striving for the same ends. For instance, scientific progress enables us to further understand our bodies as complex arrangements of molecules that answer to basic physical laws. However, the discovery of quantum mechanics reinforces a probabilistic theory that is not deterministic- bringing us back to the question of free will and self-determination once again."

 

hella sweet \"metaprogramming\" image search results

 

 

 

 

 

Oct. 3, 2007

 

I think Nugan's post this week said it all. I've also been feeling kind of shitty recently- probably another sinus infection, which I get every three weeks or so- but I've also been putting off posting to the Wiki (which I normally look forward to doing if only for the sole purpose of looking back on past posts and critiquing my thought processes and my writing). I think I am still in the state of mental lethargy that I was in last week's class. I felt that I struggled with something valuable to contribute to the discussion, and in response to everyone's comments/posts as well as the readings, all I could think to say was something along the lines of, "Yeah- totally." As far as reflecting on the deeper philosophy of the course, well, I definitely see where it is headed (or I think I see where it is headed), but mostly I can't wait for the final project cause I feel that the individual research and contemplation needed for the project will definitely tie everything together. The closest thing I've had to a graduate-level seminar have been the three 300M courses that the honors English program requires, and two were pretty structured around Yeats and Milton, respectively, so the only one that was really discussion-based and that drew from the most varied texts and sources was with Paul Youngquist. And throughout the entire course, I couldn't help but think, "How the hell does this all relate?" not to mention that the only student who seemed to really get it was super freaking smart and was already on his way to grad school at Yale or Harvard or some shit and said big words which none of us would ever use even in papers. But when it came down to the final project, it all came together, and I loved the topic so much I chose to pursue it further for my honors undergraduate thesis.

 

Which brings me to this week's reading, Society Against the State. Again, I feel like it turned my previous notions of culture and society on its head. I like Clastres' critique of too-much work and the complete uselessness of the creation of the surplus except for political reasons. "That surplus, obtained without surplus labor, is consumed, consummated, for political purposes properly so called, on festive occasions, when invitations are extended, during visits by outsiders, and so forth."

 

In my anthropology of the Near East class, we are studying Neolithic civilizations in the Mediterranean right around 6500 BC. The development of smoking techniques were originally intended to preserve meat for times when hunting was unavailable, but eventually what happened was the civilizations who had the ability to create large surpluses would stock-pile their goods, invite their neighbors over for a feast or a "potlatch", and then burn huge piles of food and skins and other valuables just because they could. And the neighbors would turn their backs on the piles and complain of being "chilly", because acknowledging their surplus meant giving that community your respect and thus giving them all the power. This was wealth from hunting + gathering sources, not agriculture, but the notions of ownership and property first came about because of the labor or work inflicted on natural resources- like if you smoked the deer or raised it from birth, it was officially yours. By the same token, there was an experiment in modern times with a "non-civilized" population in Botswana who still used primitive hunter/gatherer techniques. John Yellen, the director of the Nat'll Science Foundation, approached a local man with two sons named Raduku. He made Raduku a proposition that would give him sheep and horses and experts would teach him to to raise them, all for free. Raduku succeeded and the animals bore new animals and he had a successful "business." But when it came time for his sons to marry, no man would give his daughter because Raduku had developed a reputation for being stingy, as in when guests would come to the house he would not slaughter calves or his precious animals for them. So Raduku gave up his animals, because his social ties to his community were more important.

 

Now, when I heard this anecdote, I coudn't help think two things: 1.) why didn't he just keep his animals because he worked so hard with them but try not to be such a stingy bastard?, and 2.) that his neighbors were more than put-off by his attitude; they were also jealous of his "wealth." But after reading Clastres, I feel that the natives may not have been jealous but wary, as in having all those animals for the purpose of creating new animals without eating or using them for clothing or tools was just... unnatural. And yet, look at the evolution of the \"American Dream\", which without really thinking about it becomes natural to us: more crap = more happiness. No wonder the Indians were so relaxed- they did what needed to be done, amassed what needed to be amassed, "devoted relatively little time to what is called work," and then sat in their hammocks and smoked their pipes. That, to me, is the Dream. But no- the Europeans had to come and shit on them and work them to death.

 

 

"As a matter of fact, two axioms seem to have guided the advance of Western civilization from the outset: the first maintains that true societies unfold in the protective shadow oft he State; the second states a categorical imperative: man must work." Must he?

 

 

 

Oops gotta go- the phighting phils are on! NL East champs- finally!

 

 

Sept. 26, 2007

 

Wow. Burroughs's Electronic Revolution is some pretty heady stuff. I can't even begin to grasp his finale. End of THE war game? I am not sure. I do love his suggestion of a new language, the deletion of the viruses of our very much lacking Western dialect, the viruses of "IS of identity", "THE", and "EITHER/OR", which imply a "precoded message of damage, categorical imperative of a permanent condition". The deletion of these words creates the problem of specific identification of a person place or thing (then again, even if one does say, "THE bookstore", "THE earth", "THE coffee-pot", does the same image pop up in your head as in mine? Of course not, and perhaps it is foolish to even have a word that implies that it does) but simultanesouly enables a broader freedom of speech. I can see how a definite language can strangle society in its clutches; after all, hope and change comes from knowledge of the impermanence of the human condition- that nothing is final, and anything can happen. "This, too, shall pass." The proposed heiroglyphic language entails an even broader freedom- a picture is worth a 1,000 words after all. Pictorial language, like Chinese, could foster a more individualized interpretation of communication, one that allows you to take what you want out of it, like an I-ching to infinity. Speech indeed doesn't have to be consciously understood to cause an effect. Even the written word can be scramble and still retain meaning. "Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.\"

 

 

I buy into the notion of words as spells, having incantatory powers or the ability to elicit associations of memory or experience. After all, words only have importance because of the images or things that we associate with them. Why are words so addictive? Because of the power that can come from them, the control that one can exhibit over another because of a utterance, like the Mayan priests who become Gods? It is here that the human voice become a weapon, or a mechanism for domination (kind of like guerilla-rhetoric?) But can words themselves work if there is no image or memory tied to them? How can a threat function successfully without the victim's awareness that some harm can indeed come? Then again, what if words or messages are scrambled, released, then rescrambled on the other side, regardless of where, or maybe especially without knowledge of where, the message came from, like a message from God, tape recorder 3? Are they more or less powerful? Burroughs seems to suggest that they are more powerful, like if you happened upon an idea yourself you are more likely to buy into it. I like Burroughs' s experimentations with taping and scrambling everyday conversations- it was interesting how he noted that, although the word or sentences were unclear, the tone and emotions of the person speaking were still evident, reinforcing the idea that human consciousness or at least human beings are necessary elements in getting something out of the recording and registration process of information.

 

 

 

 

Sept. 24, 2007

 

I floated on Friday!

 

The experience was less intense than expected, but was still pretty cool. I admit that before I got into the tank, I was afraid. Well, before I got in I was maybe more apprehensive than afraid, because I didn't know what to expect or what would happen. Erin said that I could float with the door open or closed, and so I gave it a shot with the hatch closed because I figured it was make the experience more mystical or eerie. But when I shut it and laid in the water for a few seconds I got scared and sort of claustrophobic. I fumbled around for the lid and when I couldn't find it I got a little freaked out, even though I knew that all I would have to do was call out. No worries-I soon found it. Once the lights were shut off, I felt I could relax a little more, but I definitely had to force myself to slow my breathing and just calm down in order get something out of the experience. It took me a while to get used to just lying there- maybe it was the Caramel Macchiatto I drank right before- and I couldn't help being a little restless. After a few more seconds of just flaoting there, I started thinking, This is pretty boring, and I began wondering about what I was going to do after the float, what I was going to do that night, if there was any work I should be doing at the moment, if I left the oven on, etc. Soon, thankfully, my thoughts started drifting aimlessly, and I found myself thinking about more abstract things, even zoning out at some points. I failed to take Dalton's advice and sqeegee the top, so of course a drop of salty water hit me square in the eye, and once I had to scratch my nose and inhaled a few very harsh, salty droplets. And toward the end, I got a little chilly. But these were the only negative parts of the experience. Once my thoughts started drfiting and I entered into a more trance-like state, time passed more quickly and I was actually enjoying just lying there, thinking things, and doing nothing physically (except using my hands as mini-flippers to occassionally control the direction of where I was drifting, just for fun). When Erin called, "Time's up!" I could have sworn only a half hour had gone by, instead of the full hour.

 

I really enjoyed myself, and left truly feeling like a small weight had been lifted. All in all, I think I got out of it what I wanted to get out of it: time to just relax, to stop making to-do lists in my head and frantically running through all the things I should be doing at the moment, and to just sit and make myself think about pleasant things, or to try and not think at all. This is much harder than it sounds, especially hard for me, but somehow I felt that it was important that I do it, like if I don't prioritize relaxation or some sort of meditation or self-reflection and take a break from the bullshit, I'll never get into the habit of doing it, and I'll forget how to relax at all (I'm sound like a frazzled middle-aged working mom when I'm barely 21, which I guess is precisely part of the problem). Now I see how important it is to just RELAX, and I am going to make it a point to do so at least 1/2 an hour a day.

 

P.S. Despite PSU's heartbreaking loss, Eagles kicked ass yesterday! They should bring out those throwbacks more often. Though I prefer the new emerald green /white/black scheme, I like the original colors too. I'm thinking of investing in a jersey (number 36 of course).

 

 

Wow, we had some pretty similar first-float experiences. Not everything's exactly the same, but it seems like some of the initial sensations (water in the eyes, nose itching) were similar. Though I didn't mention it in my wiki post, I also felt like my hour-long float was about half as long. -Unfinished

 

 

 

 

Sept. 20, 2007

 

I'd like to respond to Nugan's post on the Manchurian Candidate: "It would be one thing to control someone's actions through Pavlovian conditioning, and another, more profound, thing entirely to infiltrate and reinvent one's unconcious mind, completely remaking his or her identity."

 

Outside of the concept of "brainwashing," or unwilling conditioning as the soldiers were subjected to, the notion of making/remaking identity strikes me as being typically associated with conscious decisions or conscious behaviors/thoughts. Personality and character are largely comprised of the waking choices and decisions we make, and are the only ones we are held accountable for. Of course, our subconsious affects our conscious state, but when the manipulation of the subconscious under unwilling circumstances comes into play, I feel that it is hard to categorize a change of identity as being authentic. This brings me back to the Psy-ops manual, where guerillas are playing mind-games and invoking rhetorical strategies to sway their allegiances and thus sway their opinions of either side. (I think it was highly ironic that the candidate's political rhetoric was the cue for Shaw to start shooting.)

 

Shaw kills a lot of people, but we get the impression that it is "not really his fault". Marco seems to be the hero throughout, but what if he was still just following orders, yet another result of conditioning? If this is the case, then Marco loses some of his redeeming qualities because he wasn't voluntarily choosing to help Shaw. I suppose that, in film or in 'real life', heroes and villians are determined by the free conscious choices they make, and we praise or condemn them as a result. But again, what necessarily determines whether or not any of the concious decisions we make are totally independent of conditioning. Students and soldiers alike are subjected to mild conditioning routines, and though education isn't necessarily deemed "brainwashing", doesn't it have lasting affects on how we think and the choices that result from those thoughts? Of course, our professors aren't calling us at 1 am, suggesting a quick game of solitaire, and then sending us to Starbucks to bring a grande non-fat latte to their office.

 

Nugan also posts: "the film seems to suggest, manipulating and controlling the unconcious desires and needs of individuals, as they are percieved by psychoanalysis, would really be the deepest, most total form of brainwashing." Perhaps tapping into the unconscious is the surest way to change an individual's identity and decision-making; at the intial demonstration, Yen-Lo insists that the conditioning is so successful that it can induce the subject to performing behaviors that are contrary to one's nature or morals, like the murder of a friend. Yet, Shaw eventually breaks through his conditioning. What I wondered most about was whether or not Marco played a role in this through his re-conditioning with the 52 queens. If he did, then it seems that Shaw's re-conditioning is just as artificial as that of the Communist's, and his actions just as unimpressive. However, Shaw doesn't call Marco at the designated time, and takes it upon himself to assasinate his father-in-law and mother. For me, this independent decision seemed to redeem Shaw of all of his previous atrocities, even though the others were not necessarily premeditated or chosen by him- he was not in control of his actions. And, although it was rather pervertedly satisfying seeing Mr. and Mrs. Iselin shot through the forehead, I cheered more for Shaw's victory over the Pinko-Commie bastards' infiltration of his mind. So the film doesn't really answer the question as to whether infiltration of identity is possible and lasting; perhaps it was left this way to give the populace hope in case one day we are all captured by Communists and brainwashed into becoming sleeper agents.

 

Speaking of the unconsious, I am going to float for the first time on Friday. REST made the front cover of the Collegian, and I have to say that I am partly to blame (my best friend/roommate is the editor-in-chief, and when I told her I was thinking about floating, she thought it was the coolest, and insisted the paper do a special on it. I am sorry if I "blew up" the lab's "spot", but I couldn't resist sharing.) I am excited and yet apprehensive for the experience. I am also slightly hoping to reach some sort of subconscious revelation or a state of heightened awareness, or at least be able to relax for an hour; I'll be sure and post on the epxerience after I float.

 

 

Sept. 18, 2007

 

This weekend- Saturday night, to be exact- was my 21st birthday. It was a pretty standard 21st celebration, commencing with kegs and pizza and wings around 8 pm, rounds of beer pong and shots of Jack and Jameson throughout the evening, and of course a kegstand at midnight, followed by a large procession to the Phyrst... at which point my memories begin to fade. I can recall standing on a picnic table, getting shut down at the bar, and later enveloping the bouncer in a big bear hug, completely oblivious to the fact that he was vehemently motioning to my friends to "get her the hell out of here." Somewhere along the way someone gave me a 2nd place medal ("1st place loser!" I proudly cried) that I wore for the rest of the night, and somehow I got my hands on a red Phillies batting helmet, which I also wore for the rest of the night and which really came in handy because I can remember falling on my head a lot. I was miraculously awake by 11 am the next morning, surprisingly not too hungover, and more importantly, still alive. Despite the cranial bruising and the copious amounts of embarassing photos and videos, I think the night was a real success.

 

Congratulations. I turned 21 almost a year ago, and about 2 months after the big two-one I stopped drinking. Ironic? But when I did drink, my favorite was Chivas Regal. - GoNZO

 

Congrats! My 21st started a lot like yours but ended a lot sooner. What I've learned is that I enjoy others' 21st birthdays more than I did my own. http://biotelemetrica.pbwiki.com/Realityor">Realityor

 

 

Sept. 14, 2007

 

Hmmm. I see that, in assuming a matter-of-fact tone of Foucault's work as a forcible authority presupposes him as Master/guru, and though I hold his work in high regard, perhaps his response to reverent questioning on his writings might mirror those of Derrida's response to mobius. I guess I ironically played the part of Foucault's critic, by treating the author as Creator, treating his discourse as a statement of all-encompassing, historical truth. His analyses, like mine or like anyone else's, are contigent and, after reading the conclusion summary of the Archaeology of Knowledge, it appears that they should be taken with a grain of salt, or at the very least, analyzed themselves in light of post-structuralism, before cited as transcendental revelation.

 

I have trouble understanding the translation, "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face." I guess I can see how, in the realm of cyberspace and wiki, anonymity of discourse can (to an extent) be preserved, but the traditional relationship of rhetoric between author and reader still sticks with me. Does this refer to the notion of authorship removed from the author itself once a text is released into the public sphere? Death-of-the-author as birth-of-the-reader type thing? Does it mean that Foucault, or any author at all, merely channels some sort of universal knowledge that does not originate from their own consciousness, but rather from some universal (sub)consiousness? Maybe, in the complexity of the formation of self-identity, one should always question who is anyone at all. I sympathize with the critic in desiring a specific author or even Master, someone to take responsibility and/or a coherent source to be able to cite or refer back to.

 

Sept. 12, 2007

 

I have a few more thoughts on the CIA Psych Ops page. GutenOrgan wrote about the mission of the cadre or leader to instruct the people on arriving at the "correct opinions" yet somehow feeling that "it was their free and own decision", stating, "It is also interesting how the recognizable forms of education and discussion are used here to indoctrinate-- maybe this shouldn't be that surprising-- when (ideally) the goals of education seem to stand in such firm opposition to it."

 

True, the goals of education ideally seek to broaden minds and expand creativity of thought, but education can also be viewed, in light of Foucault's Discipline and Punish, as yet another discipline that creates docile bodies that conform to the objectives and needs of those in power- bodies that are controlled without forcible coercion that operate via self-surveillance. As the CIA operatives "educate" the populace on their reason for carrying weapons, their investment in freedom and in the lives of the people, they are really indoctrinating them into a subservient position within a hierarchical political institution. Foucault writes, "A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations." A school is like a prison (or Panopticon) in that "It is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of intervention of power."

 

In the case of psychological guerilla warfare, bodies (the guerillas or the people whom the CIA is attempting to sway to their cause or their modes of belief) aren't necessarily distributed in space, but rather are subjected to a delicate and subtle rhetorical disciplines; in this sense, "'Discipline' may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise... And it may be taken over either by 'specialized' institutions (the penitentiaries or 'houses of correction' of the nineteenth century), or by institutions that use it as an essential instrument for a particular end (schools, hospitals), or by pre-existing authorities that find in it a means of reinforcing or reorganizing their internal mechanisms of power."

 

Internal mechanisms of power is key. When CIA ops evacuate the area, job well-done and minds successfully breached, their intent is to leave lasting psychological traces so that the disciplines they have enforced and ideas they have introduced will perpetuate without their presence in the area. They have no need for physical institutions because in essence the people will be so mind-fucked that they will essentially enclose themselves. The same goes for schools and prisons- once released into the "real world", it is hoped that the cirriculum/rehabilitation ingrained from daily habit will manifest itself internally in the subjects.

 

"There are two images, then, of discipline. At one extreme, the discipline-blockade, the enclosed institution, established on the edges of society, turned inwards towards negative functions: arresting evil, breaking communications, suspending time. At the other extreme, with panopticism, is the discipline-mechanism: a functional mechanism that must improve the exercise of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion for a society to come.

 

I still can't decide which one is worse.

 

 

Sept. 11, 2007

 

I sympathize with OncoMouse's domestic troubles. I live in a house on West College with 9 females (including myself, that's 10 of us), so suffice it to say it's been 3 weeks and already things are heating up. Not amongst the roommates, surprisingly, but in fact the troubles come between the landlords, a married couple, and ourselves, regarding our house. It is going through a series of renovations (new hardwood flooring, repanelling of the kitchen, bathroom renovations, etc.), which we appreciate wholeheartedly- the problem is that it takes them their good old time (and child labor- we had a 14 year old do the repanelling alone the other day) to get around to doing anything. So, our bathroom is currently in pieces, our garbage disposal is broken and leaking everywhere, our third floor is ripped to shreds, and... we have mice. Yes, mice, creatures that started popping out of their tiny little holes around the fourth or fifth day after move-in. I never thought I feared mice, but standing at the kitchen sink and catching a furtive gray shape dart from one corner of the floor to the other out of the corner of my eye had me flying across the room and teetering on the edge of the nearest chair, screaming like a little girl. The landlord insists that it's not an infestation- just a few mice. We've caught 7 so far. We went out and bought some traps, which didn't really help the problem. Now, instead of encountering mice randomly but at a distance, we are forced to open the bathroom closet every morning and see two or three rodents, still alive, gnawing on peanut butter and squeaking incessantly (which still causes us to fly across the room screaming and clutching each other). But one morning we found three of them, and my rooommate's boyfriend drowned them and threw them away, insisting that if he let them go they would come right back in the house. I actually felt sorry for them- they are dirty but almost cute. We are thinking of investing in some poison traps. I wish that there was some humane way to get rid of them without killing them, or some way we could peacfeully co-exist without worrying about mice poop getting into our food or our clothing or beds.

 

 

 

Sept. 10, 2007

 

Before I post to the blog for the first time, I'd like to introduce myself- "brown-eyed woman". It took me some time to come up with my Wikiname. Originally, I thought, why not let someone else do it for me, and so I submitted my full name in various combinations (full name, full name with middle initial, first middle and last name) to the Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator.

I smacked the ol' dirty button, and it came up with the following:

 

foolish destroyer

drunken hunter

violent ninja

 

These were pretty good names, but none of which (by itself) I felt described me adequately enough. So, I went with the title of one Grateful Dead song (well, the inital title- "Willy Legate of the Grateful Dead Archives kindly informed us that although the title was copyrighted as Brown-eyed Woman (that's how it appears on the album and/or songbook), Robert Hunter actually wrote and intended it to be Brown-eyed Women, the way Jerry Garcia really sings it. This is a classic case of a typographical error"). It is one of my favorites. And, cause I have brown eyes, I guess the name is appropriate and personal, yet sufficiently indeterminate.

 

Anyway, I enjoyed this week's reading CIA Textbook on Psychological Operations In Guerrilla Warfare

and was left partly intrigued, partly amused, and partly paranoid, especially after reading the blatant discussions of implicit v. explicit terror and the detailed instructions on how to inculcate "spontaneous" Armed Propaganda Teams.

 

Some highlights:

The guerrillas should always be prepared with simple slogans in order to    
explain to the people, whether in an intentional form or by chance, the reason   
for the weapons.... "The weapons will be for winning freedom; the are for you." ... "With weapons we can impose demands such as hospitals, schools, better roads,   
and social services for the people, for you." ... "Our weapons are, in truth, the weapons of the people, yours"...

(This brought to mind a little J.S. Mill:"These are good reasons for remonstrating with any member of a civilized community, or reasoning with

him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise"...I guess this begs the question- is "armed propaganda" merely tactical rhetoric and/or calculated persuasion and/or coercion?)

 

...In the words of a leader of the Huk guerrilla movement of the Philippine

Islands: "The population is always impressed by weapons, not by the terror that

they cause, but rather by a sensation of strength/force. We must appear before

the people, giving them the message of the struggle." This is, then, in a few

words, the essence of armed propaganda....

 

Most particularly:

"The force of weapons is a necessity caused by the oppressive system, and will cease to exist when the "forces of justice" of our movement assume control." (I appreciated how they put "forces of justice" in quotation marks.)

 

And, I couldn't help but laugh at the following: "It is important to remember that we use oratory to make our people understand the reason for our struggle, and not to show off our knowledge."

 

I guess psychological manipulation is effective for winning a guerilla war, especially in a foreign country, but still- I can't shake the impression that such tactics are cowardly, and somehwat childish ("shame, ridicule and humiliate the "personal symbols" of the government of repression in the presence of the people and foster popular participation through guerrillas within the multitude, shouting slogans and jeers"''.) Do operatives get tested on this stuff, i.e. their ability to heckle at will?

 

 

Since this is my first post, and like any true PSU undergrad I'm still recovering from the PSU v. Notre Dame weekend bonanza, I want to keep it light, so I'd like to sign off with this clip, which I feel is somehow applicable: