Phatic Communion

—that’s it.

Lady Gaga has seemed to spring from nowhere, shooting right to the top.  OTOH, I may be behind the times.  She must be the love child of Madonna and Marylin Manson.

I really like this one though. Awesomely creative video.

No matter what else you might think or think you think about Adam Lambert, there should be no question that his is the greatest voice to come out of American Idol.  Occasionally he is “off” vocally; but not here:






UPDATED:  Found better video.

Recently, while in the midst of a swirl of thoughts arising from two blog posts (& their associated conversations) (& their inspiration, the act), I remembered two poems that somewhat aligned with my swirling thoughts and, as good poems will, deepened my consideration without offering any solid answers.

The two blog posts appeared on tdaxp:

• “A Question for Joseph Stack”
• ”New York Times: Joe Stack Was Right”

In the first, Dan tdaxp asked,

If Mr. Stack thought the right bomb, in the right place, at the right time could change the policies of the Treasury Department, why didn’t he fly that bomb into Mr. Geithner’s office?

I thought the question was a little off, since J.S. explained his actions rather explicitly in his e-manifesto.  He hoped the government/powers would react savagely, excessively, and thus inspire others to do what he had done, until, after enough of these reinforcing loops, the American people would rebel against the government.  This at least was his stated intention.

Within the comments under that blog post, a debate arose concerning whether Joe Stack approved/disapproved of communism; I thought that, yes, the parallelism he used to close his e-manifesto —

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

—plus so much else within his last letter seemed to place both communism and capitalism into a negative category:  that category used to describe systems within which wealth distribution occurs unfairly, accruing according to the wishes of the economically/politically powerful.

In the second of those posts, Dan once again attacks the Treasury Department, this time by more or less agreeing with Joe Stack’s assessment of the so-called “capitalist creed”:

In spite of the Treasury’s Department unjust actions here — actions so egregious they have provoked domestic terrorism — Tim Geithner has not called for the repeal of Section 1706, not said it will not be enforced — indeed, he has done nothing.

We need a Secretary of the Treasury who is tough on terrorism [and] tough on the causes of terrorism — not an enabler of terrorism, like Tim Geithner.

This is not to say that Dan attacks capitalism as broadly as J. Stack has attacked it within his e-manifesto; but it is to say that the general thrust of Joe Stack’s e-manifesto, that the powerful control the system of wealth distribution by controlling how wealth accrues, might have inspired Dan to see particular instances of this dynamic with respect to the Treasury Department and Tim Geithner.

Naturally, at least pursuant to the prevailing nature of contemporary debates concerning terrorism, there arose within that thread the mystified question/accusation:

But if we repeal Section 1706, the terrorists win!

Why are you trying to appease the terrorists?!

(Jeffrey James)

Here, J.J seems to be reacting from a sensitivity to past arguments; he is not very serious in that comment.  Before him, “Tim” had more or less asked the same question of Dan, i.e. whether there is a difference between Joe Stack and Islamist terrorists, inferring that Dan would say there is a difference through a rhetorical question asking if Dan saw no difference.  (Dan does, and soon after said so.)

I joined the conversation (such as it was) after Tim posted for the Nth time within the blogosphere the prevailing ideological truism:

What I find fascinating (and depressing) is that some Americans view Joe Stack as an “American Patriot” or “hero”. Which is a straight-up endorsement of terrorism against the US Government, no different than endorsing the methods and madness of Islamic extremism.

(Tim)

This comment confused me a little bit, because it seemed to suggest that Tim believes no one can be a patriot while not supporting the US Government; also, that the US Government is equivalent to the targets that Islamist terrorists attack, such as mosques, other nations’ governments, etc.  Of course, I was confused only a little bit.

Tim then defined terrorism as using “extreme violence on innocents” to make a “political statement.”

This raised even more questions for me.  Ultimately I realized the distraction of those questions.  The main point seems to be that nascent terrorists live among us:  and, wagging our fingers at fellow Americans who might — gasp! — think Joe Stack is a hero simply is not going to accomplish very much.  There may have been a time when the 4GWish effort to shame an opponent could work to great effect within America to maintain peace; but that time is gone for the foreseeable future.  Superempowered Angry Men like Joe Stack are not going to listen to the finger-waggers — might indeed see those finger-waggers as a part of the gullible who support the greedy powerful.  Superempowered Angry Men, to the degree that they are already angry are not going to need the cheer leading of sympathizers who are the primary targets of finger-waggers.  Furthermore, those sympathizers already have reasons (however ir/rational) for their sympathy, and finger-waggers using that 4GWish maneuver of delineating an us-them dichotomy will likely confirm to the sympathizers their belief that an exterior system which does not sympathize with them comfortably considers them to be outsiders, or outside the protections and support of that system.  It may be possible that some mere sympathizers will ultimately begin to see the finger-waggers in the same way Superempowered Angry Men see them.

Yet, so many finger-waggers simply cannot comprehend why their targets feel something akin to jubilation when they see an outward expression of what previously hovered silent within.

And so….Musing upon these themes, I remembered these poems:

THE FEAST

Almost at the end of the century
this is the time of the pain of the bears
their agony goes on at this moment
for the amusement of the wedding guests
though the bears are harder to find by now
in the mountain forests of Pakistan
they cost more than they used to which makes it
all the more lavish and once they are caught
their teeth are pulled out and their claws pulled out
and among the entertainments after
the wedding one of them is hauled in now
and chained to a post and the dogs let loose
to hang on its nose so that the guests laugh
at the way it waves and dances and those
old enough to have watched this many times
compare it with other performances
saying they can tell from the way the bear
screams something about the children to be
born of the couple sitting there smiling
you may not believe it but the bear does

                                     —W. S. Merwin

OUTSIDER ART

Most of it’s too dreary
or too cherry red.
If it’s a chair, it’s
covered with things
the savior said
or should have said—
dense admonishments
in nail polish
too small to be read.
If it’s a picture,
the frame is either
burnt matches glued together
or a regular frame painted over
to extend the picture. There never
seems to be a surface equal
to the needs of these people.
Their purpose wraps
around the backs of things
and under arms;
they gouge and hatch
and glue on charms
till likable materials—
apple crates and canning funnels—
lose their rural ease. We are not
pleased the way we thought
we would be pleased.

                              — Kay Ryan

After stumbling across this tonight, Dissent is Patriotic, Mr. President, I eventually found my way to this:

• It ought to be deeply impressed on the minds of all who have voices in this national deliberation, that no man can deserve a seat in parliament, who is not a patriot. No other man will protect our rights: no other man can merit our confidence.
  A patriot is he whose publick conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest.

• Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.

• Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.

• The greater, far the greater number of those who rave and rail, and inquire and accuse, neither suspect nor fear, nor care for the publick; but hope to force their way to riches, by virulence and invective, and are vehement and clamorous, only that they may be sooner hired to be silent.

• A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend publick happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace. Few errours and few faults of government, can justify an appeal to the rabble; who ought not to judge of what they cannot understand, and whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion. The fallaciousness of this note of patriotism is particularly apparent, when the clamour continues after the evil is past.

Of the two, I’ll pick Dr. Johnson.

The title of this post of course refers to another from the good doctor; I would include Boswell’s account:

• Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
  • April 7, 1775, p. 253
  • Boswell’s full mention of this statement reads:

Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest.

Looks like Akismet sucks about as bad as Captcha:  once again, my comment didn’t appear at The Committee of Public Safety; I am thought to be a spammer.  So saving this here.  Since this is a reply to a rather lengthy post at the Committee, and I’m not going to re-post or excerpt J.F.’s blog post, I recommend to anyone reading this the link above to see what it’s all about.

But I did want to make the note on “The Reinvention of the Wheel”, since the metaphor is decent for understanding how I view the generational/gradient aspect of xGW; i.e., that the theory is not an over-theory describing one singular evolutionary progression for the entirety of human history, nor that it is devoid of linearity or linear developments.

The comment is below.  The previous entry on this blog is at http://phaticcommunion.com/2009/11/commenting-on.php.

_________________



If I could have gone back and edited the comment, I would have removed David’s name — everything after that first line referred only to you and Peter — or would have introduced the comment in the way credits for movies sometimes make the distinction:

“Starring Joseph Fouche and Peter Hodge, with David Rondfeldt”

because I’d followed your link to see his paper’s age.  Nonetheless, on “reinventing the wheel”, two points:

1.  D Rondfeldt’s entry to the 4GW debate, on Peter’s blog, first struck me as being quite pertinent to the GMW-xGW framework, “the melee, massing, maneuver, and swarming” which, come on, if you’ve checked out the X vs. X table on the timeline you probably already know.  When I included his name, it wasn’t a reference to his old work so much as a reference to the fact that suddenly, yet once again, “the melee, massing, maneuver, and swarming” was being conjoined with GMW-xGW theory, although it was long ago joined with it.

2. “Reinventing the wheel” is a good metaphor for the type of a-historical yet generational framework of xGW, as I tend to see it, in that, whenever a similar need appears through history, a similar development may ensue.  We talk as if the wheel was only invented once and then used forevermore with nary a break; whereas we might be more right to assume that it was reinvented several times, in several places, either within an existing population or by isolated and separate populations.  Similarly, when a 2GW-type force was dominating, a 3GW force may have emerged to oppose it, based merely on necessity, several times in history, within particular geographical or cultural yet isolated areas or across areas.

Your example of “Bob is waging 0GW, 1GW, and 5GW…” shows a misunderstanding of xGW theory (at least xGW from my perspective) or else is a straw man you are using to build your point.

Perhaps you should better explain, for this naif, how you will achieve your universal-yet-understood-by-Joe-and-Jane theory of warfare that will be simpler than a model w/ 6 categories.  Several times recently you have suggested that xGW should be disentangled from 4GW theory because some naifs isolated from Joe and Jane will forever be tying the two together and incapable of understanding xGW for that reason; whereas I’m fairly sure that Joe and Jane will not have that problem.  So I’m confused by the populist-argument-from-elitist-armchair-theorist perspective.  Yes, that’s not a very clear description of the argument, but I suspect I don’t need to be clear with you.

BTW, I did try to use the adverb “merely” a few times although I left off the “ly” accidentally once; I mean, and meant, “merely descriptive.”  One of the links I gave early shows, I believe, my acknowledgment that a very basic descriptive framework may be important for any theory of warfare.  My problem is with theories that stop there, or are merely descriptive or, that is, have as their objective the placing of labels with the author’s name signed at the bottom.

Left a comment at The Committee of Public Safety which didn’t appear after I hit submit, or otherwise notify me that it was being held for moderation, so have decided to repost it here as a reference for myself.  (Had started a post for D5GW yesterday, which is incomplete, but which will include some of the below.)

————————————————————


You and Peter and David appear to be merely reinventing the wheel. For instance, in 2007, I had already written about the kinds of problems both you and Peter have been discussing, in “X vs X:Boom and the Generations in Conflict”, specifically the question of linear progressions pigeon-holed to specific epics. Although there I also, like later contra-Arherring and some others, proposed, and still maintain, the worth in seeing these generations/grades/whathaveyou in relationship to each other:

“Viewing the generations in a linear representation, in relationship to the Boom as Arherring has done, may offer insights to different styles of fighting which need not emerge solely as a uni-directional development of warfare. We might in fact contemplate particular strategies which have been employed throughout the history of humanity (which generally runs along with the history of warfare) and place these strategies either to the left of the Boom or to the right; are they, then, also “generations” of warfare? The question may be moot, if we are only to consider strategic dynamics as they relate to the Boom, or to kinetics, in the way Arherring has done. However, to postulate a generational model is to suggest a general uni-directional development through which different strategies emerge as a consequence of previous strategies which have been employed. A singular generational model need not be applied to the entire history of warfare in order to box certain styles of fighting into specific epochs, and only those epochs, within the history of humanity; rather, a generational model only need show that a given style of fighting has resulted as a consequence of another — and this will usually occur within a specific epoch, or a small time frame, simply because some overlap of generations, or competitive conflict, must occur in order for one style to develop as a consequence of another.”

In the later post, I made an argument against the sort of thing Peter has done with his “new framework” approach; such approaches, similar to Lind’s — and after all that seems to be his only model, ever — are mere descriptive. This reduces such frameworks to near uselessness. To reduce his offering to absurdity, suppose I could do similarly by delineating the style of dress, uniform, or combat gear broken out for distinct periods of time. This could be done. It might actually describe epochs, at least vis-a-vis the apparel; or, it might actually describe certain niches or styles which have reappeared throughout history. But it’s merely descriptive:

“In point of fact, Lind’s model has often caused dispute, particularly on the fourth tier, that is with regard to the prognostication of 4GW. Useful or not, the first three generations are descriptive of what has already occurred in our modern era and so are “pre-verified”. The fourth generation is a guess of what is to come, which has been partly verified by current conflicts but was left open enough to suggest all future conflicts. The fact that Lind’s GMW leaves “fourth generation warfare” open to becoming whatever happens in the future — the definition is vague and fluid enough — severely limits the usefulness of GMW. What are we to learn from GMW that will benefit us, whether as a state or as individuals engaged in conflict? By leaving no room for the development of a “fifth generation of warfare” that could defeat a “fourth generation warfare”, we are left no recourse in GMW except the ability to describe: Having described 1GW through 3GW, we come to “4GW” which we can use to tag all future events. What we are to do about those events doesn’t matter and is conspicuously absent from the GMW model. xGW, on the other hand, would seek to suggest a framework which would allow problem-solving. If we eject the word “generation” from the model and instead use something else, such as “grade” [2], and by so doing eject the most common connotations of “generation”, we can perhaps begin to postulate not merely the styles of conflict as they emerge exterior to us, one after another, but also the relationship of these styles to one another in a useful manner: i.e., we may postulate an interior activity, or a reflective and prospective activity which becomes problem-solving. One force sees its opponent’s activity, assesses itself, and seeks to develop a better method of fighting. For me, this is at heart the greatest strength of xGW.”

And if I may backtrack (which these recent postulations, here and there, seem to be), I would reintroduce from that first link the very same idea, or nearly the same, given by a commenter at one of Peter’s threads: that we may view these G’s as they appear within a specific culture, area, etc., without trying to lump all of human history, the world over, into a singular unidirectional progression:

“For our xGW, we only need to understand the possessive pronoun. Criticisms of the xGW theory that is currently propounded usually take the extreme position of pointing out that Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or some other historical figure or group also fought in an xGW manner or an x+1GW manner; and since the proponents of current xGW theory are assumed to be referring to the entire history of war when they discuss xGW, a theory which one assumes must fit a single uni-directional evolution of warfare spanning the entire history of humanity, those proponents are speaking gibberish. Well, some are; others concern themselves only with our xGW, limiting the theory to the period since the Peace of Westphalia or in some other way.”

I.e., this effort to create a Descriptive Model (tm) that must be able to describe all that has happened in the history of warfare, the world over, may be moot or distracting. What we have to do now is understand our own time (which extends backward somewhat, even to before our particular births, but not back to the dawn of humanity) and try to come to some valuable understanding of our time which we might apply to current needs. If we do see a useful somewhat-generational — taking several meanings of that word - development in our time, using what we see does not require that we also find a way to lump other efforts, from thousands of years ago or from vanished societies, into our vision of our own time.

Also, a final note: this hang-up on terminology seems to me to be pretty silly, even juvenile, and generally self-serving. Peter can only see so far into the definition of “generation” and so he had an apoplexy, like many others accustomed to stopping at “1.” in the dictionary. “Grade” and “gradient” may serve to trip up others, for similar reasons. It is too bad, but suggesting a whole theory is trash merely because a word brings up one particular connotation for one particular person, or several persons, is useless.

UPDATE:  Citizen Fouche has responded to this comment, after having a similar problem commenting at this site.

Word History: The chaos of war is reflected in the semantic history of the word war. War can be traced back to the Indo-European root *wers-, “to confuse, mix up.” In the Germanic family of the Indo-European languages, this root gave rise to several words having to do with confusion or mixture of various kinds. One was the noun *werza-, “confusion,” which in a later form *werra- was borrowed into Old French, probably from Frankish, a largely unrecorded Germanic language that contributed about 200 words to the vocabulary of Old French. From the Germanic stem came both the form werre in Old North French, the form borrowed into English in the 12th century, and guerre (the source of guerrilla) in the rest of the Old French-speaking area. Both forms meant “war.” Meanwhile another form derived from the same Indo-European root had developed into a word denoting a more benign kind of mixture, Old High German wurst, meaning “sausage.” Modern German Wurst was borrowed into English in the 19th century, first by itself (recorded in 1855) and then as part of the word liverwurst (1869), the liver being a translation of German Leber in Leberwurst.

[The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition]

—Or else, it’s all about confusion:

Late O.E. (c.1050), wyrre, werre, from O.N.Fr. werre “war” (Fr. guerre), from Frank. *werra, from P.Gmc. *werso (cf. O.S. werran, O.H.G. werran, Ger. verwirren “to confuse, perplex”). Cognates suggest the original sense was “to bring into confusion.” There was no common Gmc. word for “war” at the dawn of historical times. O.E. had many poetic words for “war” (guð, heaðo, hild, wig, all common in personal names), but the usual one to translate L. bellum was gewin “struggle, strife” (related to win). Sp., Port., It. guerra are from the same source; Romanic peoples turned to Gmc. for a word to avoid L. bellum because its form tended to merge with bello- “beautiful.” The verb meaning “to make war on” is recorded from 1154. First record of war time is 1387. Warpath (1775) is from N.Amer. Ind., as are war-whoop (1761), war-paint (1826), war-path (1775), and war-dance (1757). War crime first attested 1906. War chest is attested from 1901; now usually fig. War games translates Ger. Kriegspiel (see kriegspiel).

“Romanic peoples turned to Gmc. for a word to avoid L. bellum because its form tended to merge with bello- ‘beautiful.’ “  Well, isn’t that interesting!

Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behaviour.

Towards all this external evil, the man within the breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer…

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character. Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past: then they see it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.

Self-trust is the essence of heroism.

[Ralph Waldo Emerson, Heroism]

As for military enterprises, everyone sees how large a part Fortune has in them.  Even in our counsels and our deliberations there must certainly be some chance and good luck mixed in; for all that our wisdom can do is not much; the sharper and livelier it is, the more weakness it finds in itself and the more it mistrusts itself.  I am of Sulla’s opinion; when I scrutinize closely the most glorious exploits of war, I see, it seems to me, that those who conduct them make use of deliberation and counsel only for form; they abandon the better part of the enterprise to Fortune, and, in the confidence they have in her help, go beyond the limits of all reason at every turn.

[Michel de Montaigne, Various Outcomes of the Same Plan]

—Remembered these after reading Stephen Pampinella’s “Back to the Classics.”  In quoting R.B.J. Walker on Machiavelli:

[T]he virtu of a prince is understood in terms of a capacity to respond to fortuna, to the capricious bitch goddess who is ‘the arbiter of one half of our actions’.

All of this leads me back (although I never left it) to the best defense against 5GW:



 —in other words, taking from Peggy Holman, when confronting complexity and chaos, or engaging emergence, initial conditions are very important.  Your initial condition is yourself.  Emerson, Montaigne, and countless others have counseled self-trust which is not merely a feel-good, happy-go-lucky approach toward Fortune, but a recognition that, come whatever may, one may adapt to the situation.  But with that idea also comes the advice to prepare oneself, through a study of virtue, before engaging in battle; and then, holding to the course, or trusting in your own ability to observe, orient, decide, and act when Fortune strikes.  Success is not guaranteed — but then, it never is in such complex, chaotic events.

However, as this relates to defense against 5GW, I would place concurrent with a study of virtue the results Montaigne mentions: “for all that our wisdom can do is not much; the sharper and livelier it is, the more weakness it finds in itself and the more it mistrusts itself.” As far as acting goes, if initial conditions — your own person and mind — have been prepared, then trust yourself to act and adapt as needed; but keep in mind a healthy skepticism in what you observe.  Without a healthy skepticism, there is no room for adaptation, no possibility of adaptation in that equation.

A Brainstorming Post

First, of course, we have the difficulty of describing “superempowerment”, since the term is used in various ways.

We could first divide all superempowerment into two general, but not necessarily exclusive, frameworks: the individual and the social.  This is what I’ve previously done when I considered the Barnettian Superempowerment and the Robbian Superempowerment at the blog Dreaming 5GW:

• The Individual — people are considered “superempowered” in relationship to their own past selves and/or their ancestors. (Barnettian)
  
• The Social — people are considered “superempowered” in relationship to others currently living. (Robbian)
  

In other words, the prefix super- when it is used to describe relational disparity, in this case a disparity of powers, is relative in either case, but for understanding the significance of that disparity of empowerment and whether to label someone “superempowered”, we may either look to the past or to the present when making our comparisons.

Obviously, The Individual and The Social are not exclusive.  The small group of individuals who have managed to build or acquire a supply of small nuclear weapons might be considered “superempowered” compared to the average person living today but also “superempowered” in relationship to themselves before they acquired those weapons.

We might then subdivide our concepts of superempowerment on the basis of the word empowerment, or according to the various different powers each person may possess.  But since I haven’t intended this post to be an in-depth drill-down of this topic, I’m going to forgo the drill-down except to suggest that various types of empowerment might be described: economic, technological, intellectual, social, legal, biological, etc.

Instead, this is a brainstorming post really begun around one question, and is not meant to be too serious, at least on the surface.  The type of “superempowerment” I’ve had in mind for this question will require consideration of Individual and Social empowerments of various kinds, for answering; but skipping all that ballyhoo, let’s also just call it what it is:  Transhumanism.

YouTube Adventures

As often happens when I begin browsing YouTube, I moved from one thing to another until I found a fairly cool video that helped spark the question:

 


Anyone who enjoys speculating on the existence of intelligent life somewhere else in the universe will already be familiar with most of the questions and facts relating to the possibility.

I will admit that generally I believe there must be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.  I will admit that I often imagine tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of societies living out there beyond our little ball.  In other words, I’m very inclined to believe such things; but, and this is a big but, I can also imagine that I might be wrong.  I can imagine reasons for considering the reverse, that either we are the only species in the universe with our level of intelligence or else that the numbers are far lower than in the tens of thousands.

But I started thinking in an Adam-Elkus frame of mind. In very general terms, there are those who believe in the fairly unstoppable (unless self-stopping, self-destroying) advancement of science and technology, and that despite the potential for misuses of highest-end technology leading to blips on the path toward the future (or resets) the general progress will be quite positive.  And then there are those like Adam Elkus who have noted the tendency to call everything new a paradigm-shifting world-changing singularity beyond which nothing will ever be the same again.

In short, I began thinking of the Transhumanists — and at heart I am one myself, although if there is a spectrum for theoretical transhumanism I would fall on the cautious-skeptical side — and, combining a consideration of Transhumanism, superempowerment, and the type of infoenthusiam, etc., that Adam Elkus attacks, I began to wonder:

1. If we may advance to the type of existence, for our world and ourselves, that Transhumanists imagine, then why not consider the possibility that other intelligent species in the universe could advance at least as far themselves?  Technology is not inherently human, after all.
2. If there are tens of thousands of intelligent species in our galaxy alone, and hundreds of thousands at least in the Universe (or millions), wouldn’t it be possible that some of them have already made it to the level of technology that the Transhumanists imagine to be possible?
3. If “the singularity is near” (I keep in mind that the singularity is conceived differently by different people) and we are on the cusp of making extraordinary advances in technology, which is in any case advancing ever-more rapidly, then why not assume that many other intelligent species in the galaxy are also very near, or long past the point, of such singularities?
4. But then, if all this is so, why do we still see absolutely no evidence of intelligent life in the galaxy beyond Earth?  Even if we assume that our own abilities for detection are still quite limited, that would not explain why so many other intelligent species would also be similarly limited at this point in time — including their ability to transmit their locations or even travel the vast distances of space.

In short, I began to think that a) we might be quite alone after all, b) the laws of physics may turn out to be more restrictive than we imagine &/or the distances of space may turn out to be insuperable, or c) the dreams of Transhumanism may be fairy tales or at least Transhumanism may run up to limits not yet imagined (like those of, or similar but different than “b”).

Yes, yes, there are so many other considerations, and I know I’m not the only person to have thought these things.  (For instance, there are those who believe we’ve been “visited” many times in the past and/or present.  And there is the possibility that we could be the “first” in the Universe to have reached this level of intelligence, among millions of civilizations, or will reach the Transhumanistic Dream at about the same time as thousands of other civ.’s — simultaneously.  Etc.)

Anywho.  Here are couple more vids anyone interested in this subject should watch.  I say this because I think they are very well done and alternately funny and insightful.

The first in particular not only suggests one reason — a very funny reason — why the “abundant intelligent life” + “Transhumanist Dream” equation may not equal discovery of each other for intelligent civilizations, but also has a very hilarious presentation.  Warning though:  probably not work-safe.




 
 The second video is tonic for Adam Elkus and others who watch the infoenthusiast-style of optimism, vis-a-vis superempowerment, run amok:

Ok, this is a run-by post because it’s late where I am and I’ll need to get some sleep soon; but I wanted to put it down before I slept.




The answer to the question in the title of this post is, No.  However, there is much to learn from the Joker.

I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know… You know what I’ve noticed?  Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!

[Joker hands Two-Face a gun and points it at himself]

Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair!

With two important exceptions, and one minor exception, everything the Joker says in The Dark Knight is true.  What he does wrong, or let’s say where his evil lies, is his action, or what he does rather than what he says.  It’s not that he merely believes himself to be speaking truly.  He actually speaks true.

With two very, very important exceptions:  The first, when he gives Batman the mixed-up addresses for where Harvey Dent and Rachel are being held; the second, whenever he expresses his belief that people are inherently vicious, violent, and quite liable to tear each other apart.

Of those two exceptions, the first is an outright lie and can be considered successful if either of the following are true:

• The Joker knew all along that Batman would go for Rachel first, that his impressions of Batman’s feelings for Rachel are true, and he wants Batman to feel responsible for her death on some level.
• The Joker did not know who Batman would try to rescue; Batman would choose whoever he valued most and that person would be the one to die.

The second major lie — and really, it was expressed in various ways multiple times in the movie — is indeed a lie but the Joker believes it to be true and it leads to the failure of his plans when the people on the boats do not kill each other.

(The minor exception to his truth-telling:  when he tells the two stories about how he got his scars.  I call it minor because within the story, the people to whom he tells the lie have no reason to disbelieve the Joker and the lie does not lead to any significant outcome.  It’s a kind of play-acting meant to terrify his two victims because each lie is fit to bring to mind his victims:  father/wife, mobster/Rachel.)

The lines quoted above are, in my opinion, the most important lines in the movie.  One could almost imagine a 5GW plan being conducted by the writers/director:  Many of us instinctively understand the truth of what the Joker says, but that truth is put in the mouth of the Joker, agent of chaos who uses violence, and so we best not think about it too much.  Preserve The Plan™, shun any sort of anarchy or chaos.

Although I do not believe that to be an actual 5GW plan, I must give applause to the extraordinary artistic talent of the creators of The Dark Knight.  The Joker is a window into ourselves, since, besides the joyful violence he feels, we can quite understand the rest of his philosophy.  More importantly, we suspect that our countrymen and others in the world can understand the Joker intimately as well, perhaps more than we:  and that’s downright scary.

—which brings me to my point.  This subject came to mind thanks to a recent back-and-forth at tdaxp between me and Eddie.  The subject of that conversation was town halls and whether they should be conducted in an orderly fashion, “according to plan”, or whether the town hall format as it now exists has lost its usefulness to Democracy and in fact become a display masquerading as Democracy.

When I implied that a less-scripted format might be better, Eddie responded:

I concede your point. At the same time, all it leads to is even more scripted events, a false impression of widespread populist rage, and a PR win (probably) for Obama b/c the media (even conservative outlets locally) are often portraying them as flashpoints of disorder, paranoia and focusing on the Nazi talk, the not so veiled threats of assassination for tyrants, and the entry of what appear to be many out of district troublemakers into what are supposed to be local affairs.

What you will end up with is an even more artificial relationship between a congressmen and his constituents.

There.  Did you catch it?  We are liable to tear each other to shreds if we don’t have a well-defined, stringent Plan.

The problem as I see it is this:  The more we believe the lie as the Joker believed his lie, the more likely we are to fail as a nation, or at least as a Democracy.  Also, the more we believe what he believed about us, the more true becomes his belief in us.  In the Joker’s vision, The Plan was an effort at staving off this viciousness that truly exists (he believed) in the hearts of the general population.  The Plan is a result of terror and paranoia but does not cure terror and paranoia.  They continue.  Until someone starts blowing things up.  And then, yes, they continue.