No post here for a while. I’ve been thinking over the question: ‘What’s it all about?’
The blog, I mean.
And that very soon leads into further questioning – computers generally, society generally, life generally…
I see us all as rowers on a slave galley. I see us as slaves, rowing away…
Something after the style of Plato’s chained figures in a cave…
And Lemmings, like Lemmings, we are. Or like we assume Lemmings to be. According to Wikipedia they are not really so, they don’t really slavishly follow each other to certain death – but in that case the myth enshrined in our language has a life of its own, is a thing itself and that’s what I’m referring to. I’m using a convenience. An artifact of our language.
And, like slaves in a galley, like chained prisoners in Plato’s cave, like (mythical) lemmings, I have been living my life.
Up to an including this blog.
I’m now ready to stop it, end it, cut it off. I’m ready to stop, end, cut off my whole computer interaction inasmuch as it is computer specific interaction rather than incidental to some other task, effort, interest.
I see that I have been following a lemming interest. I have been looking at shadows in the cave. I have been rowing with all the rest, devoting my life, my energies, to this vast ship I’m part of, rather than consciously to myself.
It remains, on this day, for posterity. For my kids. That’s all. To leave a trace, to leave some footprints, to leave something.
At this time it still exists and that’s why it exists. I see no further reason.
There could have been many other reasons, of course: it could have been a business enterprise, it could have been a facility intended for the use of others, it could have been a work of art, it could have been a work of ‘portfolio’ – to demonstrate ability – and so on…
The blog remains, now, after my tiny epiphany only for the sake of leaving something which is genuine demonstration of myself for the sake of my children.
And that, itself, only really because I wanted so much something from my parents and got nothing, never, ever. They left nothing. My mother left many paintings, my brother, probably, destroyed, gave away, sold, them all – I never even saw them.
So I want to leave something for them.
And that’s what this is.
And now I look around and see what else I am leaving. And it is a big mess. I am leaving much. Much mess.
A mess itself can be a great treasure, I know, I admit, I don’t mean to denigrate what I’m leaving, I only mean it is in a disordered state.
I will try and order it somehow and at the same time chronicle my attempts to order it…. as part of ‘it’.
So is that all of it? Is that the end, then, of ‘Ipolli’ with a raison d’etre of it’s own?
No. I haven’t suddenly pared myself down to some inner ‘bone’ and divested myself of all my interests, habits, obsessions, hobby horses…
‘Ipolli’ is meant to try on concentrate on things of merit, find them, comment on them, express interest in them, whatever… and it will still try to do that.
Why does it do it when there are so many other places?
I can list some that I refer to myself, that I draw my material from:
‘ The Weekly ‘
‘ The New Scientist ‘
‘ The Economist ‘
‘ The Spectator ‘
‘ Quantum ‘
and so on… there’s heaps of them..
And blogs and web pages without number…
So what’s the point of me adding to the clamour?
Just adding to the numbers, mate, that’s all. Just throwing my weight behind that direction…
Just one more signpost showing that particular way..
I’m so dumb I can’t even define the ‘way’. I couldn’t even tell you if I am a Liberal or a Conversative or a Labour or a Green or Calathumpian….
I just am what I am.. trying to figure it out for myself…
I work on my instinct and bring to bear what intellection I can, whatever common sense I can, whatever critical analysis I can… but I inevitably finish up with another betrayal of my own shortcomings and prejudices etc….
A revealing of myself.
Well, that’s okay. That’s what it is all about. As we human beings reveal ourselves on this internet, within this amazing machine ( see Marion Bride )
then the expression of the single organism which is the human presence of planet earth becomes more clearly defined and capable.
It’s like we vote, nowadays, in our ‘advanced’ and ‘democratic’ countries, when we are given the opportunity and give expression to ourselves, our desires, our wishes for the common government, the common direction and methods, attitudes, organisation, values, etc…
That’s when we are permitted. When we are asked. When it suits those that are manipulating this machinery.
Once in a while we are called upon to manifest ourselves.
Well, the web enables us to continually manifest ourselves. We become constantly living presences.
This fact, the mutation of the nature of the human organism on planet earth – the evolution of it – has simply not been recognised by hardly anyone…
In fact I know of no one.
But I expect there’ll be someone… I’ll try and find them…
In the meantime, this web presence, this blog, is part of this new structure, this new ‘humanity’ this new expression of the will of the whole (as distinct from ‘will of the majority’, the ‘democratic’ ‘justice’ and ‘universal suffrage’ and which itself is everywhere in practice mutated into the ‘will of those with the levers’ ).
No, the established controllers don’t know.
They didn’t know about the financial meltdown, did they?
The leaders lag, they don’t lead. That’s the point.
The ‘leaders’ are yesterday’s news.
These are the last days of the traditional ‘leaders’ in all respects in all countries – I mean ‘democratic’ leaders and tribal leaders and authoritarian despotic leaders – all ‘leaders’ – their days are finished..
the human organism has reached some kind of critical mass and has become self organising in a way that Plato couldn’t, I suppose, have possibly conceived of.. not having any way of knowing of the web.. unless he were to intuit it all as an expression of the mass mind, or some kind of groupthink, or communion of souls, I don’t know…
But now we are different organisms. We manifest differently. Those who manifested via robot computer programmes buying and selling derivatives helped somewhat with the conditions of the financial meltdown and are helping now to create the conditions for the next crisis…
Those individuals simply manifest as a ‘position’, I think they call it, with respect to their trading and their trading actions given various scenarios.
In our monetary democracy, our totally money oriented society this makes them part of the very machinery like never ever before.
Once the machinery was only dumb passive paper documents etc. and the ‘masters’ and ‘manipulators’ were a few (relatively speaking) individuals possessing of great wealth and influence.
Those few masters could do much, of course, and, of course, were always keenly looking for an opportunity to do as much as they could to manipulate events of all kinds to suit themselves for their own profits.. this is the history of the world… wars for the sake of munitions manufacturers profits… for the sake of garment manufacturers profits… for the sake of profits…
But what they sought to manipulate was slow and cumbersome, enormous and unwieldy… masses of paper were required at all times, for any thing to happen…
The organisers, the racketeers, the manipulators, the overlords, the parasites, were people, the mechanism was ‘stuff’, inanimate, inert, passive.
But now the ‘stuff’ is electronic, capable of changing overnight, over a second, a split second, and the manipulators are any tom, dick or harry…
As the traditional manipulators in their greed urge ever more and more people to join in the market they inevitably undermine their own importance, they become of diminished significance as against the mass of people in the market with them..
But they are not even people in the market with them… they are computer programmes…
What will happen in the world depends so much on these ‘money markets’ (which term, for me, here, includes all derivatives markets, the whole ‘wealth trading’ farce ) – when they collapse everything collapses…
But no one can guard against their collapse. Because no one can comprehend it all. No one can encompass the totality of it.
And that’s because of the web. And ordinary people’s involvement in it. ‘Ordinary people’s…’ There’s the thing, you see. ‘Ordinary’ people were never, ever ‘ordinary’.
‘Ordinary’, ‘the mass’ , ‘the people’ always meant something smaller, something less, something not ‘up there’, something not good enough, something from low down, something without power, without ability, without standing, without real presence…
Throughout the ages the ‘people’ have never been a threat except at times of hysteria, brief hysteria… survive the brief hysteria and soon the status is restored.
Here’s from Wikepedia on the Krupp organisation, which build Germany’s war machine:
After Germany’s defeat, Gustav was senile and incapable of standing trial, and the Nuremberg Military Tribunal convicted Alfried as a war criminal in the Krupp Trial for “plunder” and for his company’s use of slave labor. It sentenced him to 12 years in prison and ordered him to sell 75% of his holdings. In 1951, as the Cold War developed and no buyer came forward, the authorities released him, and in 1953 he resumed control of the firm.
45 – 53. That’s eight years. After eight years it was business as usual. What do you think was happening in the dining rooms and the stately homes and the business board rooms, etc., etc., all the normal daily habitats of the powerful, influential, wealthy? Did they shun the Krupps? Were the Krupps ostracised? Did the Krupps eat shit in a back alley?
No. The Krupps retained their ‘position’ within the establishment.
Wikipedia on the Krupp organisation
That’s how it is. That’s how it always was. It never recedes, it never diminishes, it never goes away. The powerful, the rich, retain power and retain wealth, they help each other to do this. Of course. They don’t help you and I. They help each other. They live in their own bubble, like those ridiculous beings the ‘hollywood actors’, well divorced from reality.
But now it gets different. Now the people are a threat. Are a presence. Once they were only cannon fodder in uniforms to be sacrificed and then ‘dealt with’ when they returned home at the end of the war and discreetly cleverly turned back into humble civilian slaves again, divested of their war machinery, their warlike abilities, any danger.
But now they are there all the time. All the time. And everywhere. They can see everything. They can hear everything. They can communicate with each other across the whole world in seconds.
But more than this, more ‘integral’ than this: they ARE the machinery of the modern world. They ARE the computer programmes that buy and sell derivatives, stock and shares. They are the sea. They always were the sea. But the sea used to have no consciousness – now every molecule of the sea has a human consciousness behind it.. we now have a thinking sea… a conscious sea…
We’re not quite there yet… we haven’t really hit ‘critical mass’ or the ‘trigger point’ because the sea hasn’t become aware of itself as yet…
But it is getting there quickly….