Reminder

Packing makes me feel very alone. It means I'm leaving a group of people to go join another group of people I'll eventually leave, probably alone again. No one to share the journey with.
I started crying.

Eventually though I realized how selfish my attitude that "no one can ever love me" is, because it really means that I won't accept the love I'm given. It's like I'm telling the people who love me that their love isn't good enough. I'm blinded by my own inability to fill the god-shaped hole in my heart.

The other day I had a conversation with someone I love very much about why writing is important to me and at the time I said it was because I didn't know if I'd ever have kids and wanted to leave something behind. The quest for immortality for someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife. On hindsight I see how selfish that is and remember my real reason, the original reason writing becomes my life:

I want people to read what I write and feel like they aren't alone.

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Paradigm

In our introductory grad classes in our Master's program we had discussions that were designed to help us find a paradigm. Sometimes it turned into quantitative vs qualitative or post-positivist vs critical or whatever.
It was basically justify why you think the way you do. Some people need to do that by dismissing other ways of thinking. Whatever. I think that's just insecure. And I'm one of those people. Because as some brilliant communication scholar said, "How do I know what I think until I say it?" I usually think about the things I say before I say them, unless they're jokes then they just kind of come out and I feel bad afterwards. But my point is that when I say things I use a lot of short cuts and allusions because I already know what I mean. This is a problem because sometimes it doesn't make any sense. Like now. Or it comes across as pretentious or arrogant. Both probably true as well, but I contend that everyone thinks everything they think is right or they'd change their minds, unless they're idiots. I know I keep learning shit so I expect that's probably true for other people.
So I'm expecting that some of this might come up in my Ph.D. program, although it is a different school. It is a game that makes you think about why you think the way you do though, and I think that's why some people don't like playing.
I believe that communication takes place at several levels of consciousness. That the input from our senses we get from other people is processed in different areas of the brain. A lot of that input is symbolic. Because it is a way of representing thoughts, feelings, etc. to others who have no direct experience of them. This allows our consciousness to seperate itself from our physical bodies and become part of another's. Because of the Burke thing, how we can never be another person. Ok that got me off on another thought tangent and now I'm tired so I'm going to bed.

More later?

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The finite sadness

"Love, love / it's who you know"
-Smashing Pumpkins "Love"

np: Twilight to Starlight

Last night as I was driving home from a friend's house two things happened. First, my iPod played a song from Mellon Collie followed by a song from Thom Yorke's solo album The Eraser. Then I realized that it might be the last time time I make that drive from Gilbert to Tempe. In about three weeks I'm going to drive from Tempe to Austin.

Two years ago, as I prepared to move from Shreveport to Tempe, I listened to The Eraser and Mellon Collie constantly. They both have a peculiar resonance for me, so much that I haven't been able to listen to The Eraser since I've been in Arizona and usually will skip the tracks that come up in shuffle. When it first came out in 2006 I was reading a lot of Philip K. Dick novels and going through withdrawal in more ways than one, including the usual meaning. So everytime I hear any of the songs it reminds me of this uncanny gnostic alienation and freaks me out a little.

Mellon Collie has more complex shades for me. When it first came out I was in the middle of the deepest depression of my life (so far). I was still mourning the move from Iowa to Ohio and spent most of the 2 years in Canton leaving the house only for visits to the shrink (or the hospital if it was really bad), alternating my time between the basement and attic of our little house and listening to this album over and over. Flash to 10 years later and I'm sitting in an apartment in Shreveport by myself going through the accumulation of the years preparing to leave a place I've finally allowed to feel like home for I don't know what, and Mellon Collie is on infinite repeat.

There are some clear differences between leaving Shreveport and leaving Tempe. Although I like Arizona a lot, I don't feel it has defined who I am the way Shreveport has. ASU has obviously refined my career path. I've met some great people who I love a lot. And I think Arizona is a great place to live with the big-city advantages of Phoenix and the outdoors experience of the rest of the state. But at the same time, especially over the past few months, I've felt somewhat uncomfortable in the culture of the place, if that makes sense.

I won't talk about the department as such, because I don't want to talk shit when I really have no animosity at all, let's just say there is a difference of "value(s)" that has made me feel like the odd one in the department from the beginning. What I'm really talking about when I say "culture of the place," though, is Arizona and the obession with image and overall superficiality that I feel is at work here. Maybe I'm just projecting. It is the plastic surgery capital of the world though. And plastic, along with vanilla, are good words to describe it. The overwhelming aura of "sameness." Obviously this judgement isn't absolute (like I said, I've met a lot of interesting and genuine people) and may just be a way of me trying to say "hey I'm different, I'm special" but it just feels like Arizona is where the boring people of the world go to conform. I do believe that it will develop more character, but as it is a lot of it feels like a facade. Prefab. People and buildings. Interchangable. Commodities constantly marketing themselves. Because our value as people is defined by how much others buy our bullshit. Lame.

When people ask where I'm from I tell them Louisiana and I "identify" as Southern even though I spent my formative years in the Midwest. When I was leaving Shreveport I had no idea what I was in for. I came to graduate school not knowing exactly what I was going to study, just knowing I'm interested in culture and how it shapes us and we shape it. I didn't know anyone here. I hadn't been in school for three years and was tired of the "real world." Though I was unsure if I was up to the discipline of graduate school, I left Shreveport because I knew that I had to do something with my life besides being the night manager at a liquor store. And my nomad soul needed wandering.

Moving to Austin I already know some people. I have a rough idea of what the path ahead of me looks like. I'll be closer to family. I'll be closer to my friends back in Louisiana. I anticipate feeling more at home in the culture of Austin and fitting in better with the department at UT. At the same time there are some people here I'm going to miss a lot. Some of them I'll get to see on a semi-regular basis at conferences. But some of them I won't and that's probably what hurts the most. This is what Mellon Collie means to me: sadness tempered by the knowledge it comes from love, bittersweet. Not knowing if I'll ever see these people closest to my heart again. When I was leaving Shreveport I felt heartbroken because I had to leave people I loved and continue on my journey always alone. Da capo.

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"Love is suicide"
-Smashing Pumpkins, "Bodies"

Thesis abstract

I just finished my master's thesis. Here's the abstract:

The 9/11 Truth Movement is a collection of activists, academics and dissident experts who promote a new investigation into the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11). This analysis approaches 9/11 Truth as a rhizome with multiple entry points and possible levels of interpretation. Through assemblages of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Foucauldian theory and Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis I present this text as an abstract-machine which can be linked to the rhizome of 9/11 Truth in order to interrogate its discourses. As a vernacular social movement that attempts to resist neoconservative ideologies of globalization, 9/11 Truth illuminates the potential for online movements to manifest themselves in the public sphere. While 9/11 Truth uses conspiracy rhetoric to promote the multiple theories advocated by members, I argue that this paranoid subjectivity is inherent to negotiation of identity in Postmodernity. Specifically, the theories promulgated in the 9/11 Truth Movement invoke a modernist notion of rationality in discourses that both resist and reproduce the hegemonic order of contemporary America as desire is structured through discursive formations of power/knowledge.

Footnotes

Throughout my thesis I use footnotes to change voice, unpack concepts, self-reflextively comment on things, and make jokes.

There's a part where I talk about an interview on Fox News by John Gibson of Michelle Malkin where they talk about the "9/11 Truth Virus" I really want to add a footnote to Gibson that just says "ass" and one to Malkin that says "psycho."

But that would probably be unprofessional.

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Thesis

You can tell I'm almost done cuz I just came up with this:

Title: TruthText(s): A critical/cultural analysis of the 9/11 Truth Movement

Chapter 1: The 9/11 Truth rhizome
Chapter 2: Theories of paranoia, conspiracy rhetoric and vernacular discourse
Chapter 3: Desiring-Production: An analysis of Loose Change
Chapter 4: Social-Production: 9/11 Truth assemblages
Chapter 5: Lines of Flight: Conclusions, limitations, implications

We'll see if it sticks.

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Explaining things

"Matt, you got all the right answers but you didn't show your work."
"Wait, why do I have to show my work if I got the right answers?"
"Well how did you get those answers?"
"Um, I'm sorry, I'll be more careful next time." I really didn't know how I got the answers. Or did, but I couldn't explain it. I don't think it was the way we were taught in class, but I don't remember that.
"You have to show your work because guessing isn't always going to work."
"Ok." And soon thereafter I dropped out of high school.

Now there aren't any right answers. There's just shit that makes sense to me. And I have to show my work because I might be totally full of shit. First I have to show that I know my way around. Eventually maybe I can say "Hey, I already looked there, remember? No, follow me over here." And people will.

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Clusterfuck

I haven't been posting on here the last few days because I'm trying to finalize my thesis. Which requires me making sense of the things I read.
So there's all these dead French dudes: Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jacques Derrida. And I go back and forth between them, knowing that my understanding of their writings is informed by my understanding of others' writings. So I read Foucault with Derrida and vice versa, etc.

And behind all this is a trio of thinkers that I consider foundational: Nietzsche, Freud and Marx. Sometimes Darwin sneaks in there too.

Because my brain wants to make sense of things, I'm a little scattered. Schizophrenic even.

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Telos -> Techne: an eschatology

Dick Cheney is fucking crazy. According to the New York Times his office may have been involved in editing congressional testimony about global warming. I say "may" because that's what the NYT says. I say that shit is real. Cheney and co have had a persistent pattern of trying to manipulate evidence about global warming and environmental threats (Abestos in Manhattan the week after Sept 11). And evidence about weapons of mass destruction. Etc. This adminstration reifies the belief that if you control the discourse, you control reality.

I had a discussion with two friends/collegues the other day about 9/11 and got kind of upset. They started citing some of the same type of evidence the 9/11 Truth Movement cites to make the case that it's possible the Bush administration (ie Cheney) was behind 9/11. I've been doing research on 9/11 and the Truth Movement for over a year for my thesis, and I think a lot of the claims made by 9/11 Truth are shaky. The reasoning is kind of like this: if we question the official explanation, and we can find motive for those who give us the official explanation to lie, it must mean that those who gave us the official explanation are using it to cover up their responsibility. My problem is that motive does equal means. The assumption, of course, is that it's the United States Government, the most powerful thing on earth, so they can do anything they want. I don't buy this. So while I do think the official explanation has problems, I don't think it means that the buildings were bombed or that al Qaeda wasn't involved, etc. Of course, the useful thing about the "9/11 conspiracy theories" is that they're adaptable. If the government changes its story, it is lying to us. If we change our story it's because we have to explain the lies.

Maybe the U.S. government is behind al Qaeda. Maybe, but I think al Qaeda was perfectly capable of doing it without our help. Maybe we had warnings and let it happen. Maybe, but it's just as easy for me to believe we just fucked up. I do believe the 9/11 Commission was a "cover-up" but I believe it covers up our inability to actually deal with the threat of terrorism. I think we inflate the threat of terrorism to justify a lot of heinous shit but when it comes down to it there are things beyond the government's control. THE GOVERNMENT IS FALLIBLE.

Anyway, to the point: I still think al Qaeda did it. And I don't think that the U.S. government did it. Can I imagine them either arranging for al Qaeda to do it or having forewarning and ignoring it to let it happen? Yes, but my burden of proof here isn't "can you imagine it happening" because fuck, I can imagine a lot of things happening that ain't real. (And the response to the burden of proof re: 9/11 conspiracy theories is that the evidence is suppressed as part of the conspiracy so you can't say for sure who did it or why, only that it didn't happen the way the government says it did. ok...) I think attaching yourself to one of these theories fulfills an ego-defense function aka paranoia. It helps order the universe to imagine that the U.S. Government, if it failed to protect us, must have been responsible. The idea that they're a bunch of fuckwits like us who make mistakes is too much to handle. But I think it's true.

Let's look at this real fast:

Al Qaeda. Motive: Response to U.S. hegemony in the Middle East. Yes. Means: Hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. Ok. Opportunity: failures in the U.S. security apparatus. Makes sense to me.

U.S. Government. Motive: False flag attack so necons can do some fascist shit, we can start new wars in Middle East and get oil. Well that went exactly according to plan, didn't it? Means: Let hijackers into country to do their plan, plausible I guess. Plant bombs in the buildings, etc. Whatever, who, how, when, etc? No one knows. Stupid. Also, hundreds of government people from Clinton and Bush adminstrations have to play along, not one whistleblower. Opportunity: 9/11. Pretend it was a terrorist attack. Blame it on bin Laden. What?

One friend made the argument that the government plans everything several steps ahead, and I said I just didn't think they were that smart. She said this was really ignorant. I think that's naive and symptomtic of hegemony. Like South Park said, they can't have power if people realize that they can't control things like 9/11. So 9/11 Truth reifies the hegemony of the current adminstration by giving them more credit (evil credit) than they deserve. If we look at the record, what the Bush adminstration does is try to control the episteme, the way we understand and interpret things. But that doesn't translate to techne, or knowing-how to do shit. If the government was able to conspire to cause the 9/11 attacks, I submit that this would be one of the only plans in the last 8 years the Bush administration successfully carried out (not to mention that it would require Clinton's complicity, since the hijackers were let into the country on his watch).

Here are some examples of Bush's telos not translating into techne (with a paranoid interpretation in parentheses): Going into Afganistan to capture bin Laden, only to have him escape into Pakistan (what if we let him escape?). Going into Iraq to set up another client-state democracy in the Middle East to counter Iran, but they elected a Shiite government friendly to Iran (maybe we want Iran to become our new USSR?). Hurricane Katrina (Bush hates black people). No child left behind. Economic stimulus. Etc.

But back to Cheney. Why the fuck would you want to pretend global warming isn't happening? Because it represents a threat to economic interests. Ok, I buy that. Because global warming might kill a lot of people in the world and the NWO wants to kill most of us so they can consolidate control. Eh...

But what if Cheney believes this too? Like, what if Cheney believes that a kind of armageddeon is inevitable (I mean, he knows we're running out of oil, etc.) and that it is up to him and his friends to make sure they're ok to survive it. That's fucked up evil, but Cheney might be crazy enough to be down for that. What gets me is this: if you believe that this New World Order thing is really this diabolical plot to centralize control over the earth, shouldn't you believe that al Qaeda did 9/11 because that represents a resistance to global American hegemony? It shows the cracks in the surface of the Empire. Right? By believing that the U.S. government did it aren't you sacrificing your agency (responsibility) to a supposed force beyond our ability to control? Aren't you just supplementing the U.S. government for Yaldabaoth?

If Cheney has delusions of grandeur why accept the premise of his delusions? The funny thing here, to me, is that because he is in a position of power he has the ability to manifest his delusions. But as delusions they don't work out exactly as planned, because nothing ever does, does it? So if he can get the rest of us to believe that the NWO is going to protect an elite while allowing the rest of the world to shrivel and burn, then it probably will, because there are a lot of problems in the world and if we believe the source of those problems also controls the power to change them then...

It's secular gnosticism. And as a former gnostic, I find it attractive as a metanarrative, but I also feel like things are too random to buy into that paranoia. Having said that, I still do believe in the Apocalypse narrative, minus a personal god, because I think the prophecies so inform our ways of seeing reality that we manifest them, ya dig? Lots of bad shit could happen and our way of dealing with it is informed by our episteme in which the prophecies are important chains of signifiers for many of us. I still think it's gonna be different than we expect. I know it's going to be different than Cheney expects, but it's up to us to handle up on that and quit accepting his delusions in order to prevent his paranoid fantasy from becoming reality.

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Annoyed

I'm having one of those days where everything I touch turns to shit. So I'm in a bad mood and don't want to explain it anyone because it just makes me mad.

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Business communication

I'm teaching Com 259: Communication in business and the professions during the second summer session, which I find to be funny. I'm not fond of corporate America. I worked in the "real world" for three years after college and didn't enjoy it. (The most important thing I found in business communication is that you try your best not to communicate; cultivate a paranoid sense that if anyone found out what you were doing you'd be screwed; don't suggest anything they didn't teach in business school; try to figure out ways to get credit for anything anyone does; stifle creativity; think like a prostitute; etc.) I want to subtitle the course: "How to Be a Tool.*" But that wouldn't be professional. heh heh.

So there is part of me that wants to just tell them to watch Office Space and The Office and say "that's what it's like: soulless, absurd, degrading and exploitive." I think that's the best way to make this stuff interesting and luckily the colleague who set up the shell for the online course assigned South Park clips. Awesome.

Last year while teaching the Org Com unit in Com 100 I realized that if Org Com isn't your schtick, it's really fucking boring. When I was writing test questions I found myself falling asleep. For the incoming Freshmen I was teaching I had a hard time imagining that they gave a shit about the org com stuff (interpersonal: good. Sex stuff!). Now I have business students and I have a hard time imagining that they don't already know everything I'm supposed to teach them.

But the book is written by Bud and Sandra Goodall. And Bud is one of those people who reads a lot of books, which I find tends to make your writing more interesting, especially if some of those books are fiction and literature. He also tends to make jokes about conspiracies when he sees me, or calls me a communist. I'm ok with that. I wonder what would happen if I called him a capitalist tool.*

Incidentally, as much as I love some of the Org Com people at ASU, I cringe every time one of them says something about "selling yourself" and that kind of thing. Honestly. Do you have to be cheerful about being a tool*?

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np: Wu-Tang "C.R.E.A.M." The 36 Chambers

* my vernacular for petit-bourgeoisie

Ubi sunt: Elegy for American intelligence

Oh where have all the smart Americans gone? In his new book Rick Shenkman rehashes the tired stereotype of American ignorance, excerpted on Alternet here:

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/90161/?page=entire&ses=a2a47c7198da63e0197a5064b3e10f84

Although I haven't and won't read the book, the article uses statistics from widely distributed surveys over the past few decades to "prove" that Americans are more "ignorant" than ever. Among the things we don't know: Who was our greatest president?

Reading the article I couldn't help but think how it amounts to bitching about how the Americans who answered the surveys cited don't know what people like Shenkman think we should know (ie: those people specialize in things the rest of us don't give a shit about, which is understandably piss off). The example of the "greatest president" to me is typical of the poli sci privleging of knowledge in their field as essential to enacting "good citizenship" and being "informed." It isn't that Americans didn't answer the question, it's that they said it was Reagan, JFK or Clinton. Oh God, how stupid, we didn't answer the way they wanted us to.

There are several assumptions behind this argument that I don't buy. The first, of course, is the privileging of knowledge. Just because many Americans apparently can't answer basic civics questions does not mean they're stupid. Maybe it means civics teachers (ie poli sci types) are shitty teachers? I dunno, I didn't take high school civics and I can answer all the questions he cites. I would imagine, though, that these same people know a lot of other shit (for example, he talks about how more people can name the Simpsons than the parts of the 1st Amendment). What's wrong with that? Isn't that why we have "representative democracy" instead of democracy? So some people can specialize in governance while the rest of us go about the business of being real people with lives. Feeding our families and stuff like that.

Secondly, Shenkman assumes that because individuals can't answer these specific questions it means we as a whole are stupid. This might make sense at first thought in our individualistic society, but we're also an expert society. The division of labor in post-industrial society also means a division of knowledge. What this means is that while individually we might be ignorant of some things, we're also well-informed on other things and the diversity of the country means, to me, that as a whole we're probably SMARTER than ever before (see wikipedia). There is a lot of shit to know and you can't know it all, so most people pick some things to know about and others to leave to others. Many people know more than me about sports, for example. And if you take away the "better knowledge" thing, the amount that someone who knows a lot about sports knows is probably roughly equal to the random shit that I know a lot of. I would imagine.

You may not have thought about this, but there's a pretty good chance that you, if you have a basic college education or beyond (which most people I know do, cuz I'm an elitist) then you (and I) know more (in general) than, for example, Plato, Shakespeare, Washington, etc. Simply because we have the benefit of being on this end of history where a lot of people learned a lot of stuff that was cutting edge at the time and is now elementary school. Like gravity, you know?

Tell me who knew anything about global warming 50 years ago. I'm waiting.

This is all relative and I wonder what Shenkman is comparing this to. I know a lot about movies, but I don't know the technical aspects or even the high theory of it. I've just seen a lot. So if I were to talk to a "real" expert on film, I probably seem ignorant. But if I talk to someone else they might mistake me for an expert.

So the third assumption is I think the most damning: if Americans are more ignorant than ever, this assumes that at one time we were less "ignorant" than we are now. So this is where the conservative thing comes in. Shenkmen is essentially mourning our lost intelligence, without proving that we ever actually WERE more knowledgable than we are now. When was this? Can anyone tell me? Is it because back in the day instead of learning through multimedia we used to all read newspapers? Really? Have you ever actually READ an old newspaper? Because that shit is stupid. Sorry. I'm just saying.

Finally, this argument seems to me to basically be an ego-affirming argument. You see a lot of this on Alternet and other "liberal" media outlets. Bitching about how stupid everyone is because they don't agree with the author on everything, which is a conservative mentality. It's just another way of making up for insecurity. The entire argument amounts to "I must be smart because I can call these people out for being stupid." Which is stupid.

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awake

Fuck. I went to sleep at ten with an ativan, hoping to sleep through the night and maybe fix my sleep cycle. I woke up at at 12:45 with the image of a corpse rotting in a bathtub lingering from a dream.

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Postmodern pretentiousness

"My generation's for sale / Beats a steady job. / How much have you got? / My generation don't trust no one / Its hard to blame / Not even ourselves."
-Queens of the Stone Age, "I'm Designer."

Ok, I'm kind of tired of postmodernism and the ironic self-reflexivity thing. Why do we have to be so aware of our performance that we have to put a distance between ourselves and how we act? "Look at me, aren't I clever? Ah, but this is is art. I'm consciously performing for your gaze." Like, how you act is how you are and you aren't supposed to think about that shit. It's just supposed to happen. This is the thing that annoys me the most about studying communication: having to verbalize shit people aren't supposed to really think about and everyone intuitively knows. WTF? I look at some articles and wonder why the fuck anyone ever wonders about that. Some things just are what they are. Shit. (Again, I say it, here to a more public audience: I think some communication research is only interesting if you're socially retarded. Intellectually gifted: yes. Socially retarded: yes. [cough quantitative.] Ahem, sorry, my fingers slipped.)*

It's like we have to constantly call attention to our consciousness for fear that it won't be recognized. News: You're right to be afraid that it isn't real. It's a delusion. You are just a product and by no means original. Different, yes. Unique, yes. Just like everyone else. Deal with it.

Of course I blame capitalism for commodifying everything to the extent that we have to sell ourselves in order to be accepted. In a world where they've codified popular culture so that we're awash in mass-produced product bullshit (annoyance: digitized voices in pop music and hip hop. Kanye is played out for me. Sorry. Get over yourself. ;P) it seems like the only way for people to be creative is to, like, totally throw away expectations and consciously "subvert norms" or whatever. To the point that it's predictable. Lame.

Why can't we all just keep it real? Like Dave Chappelle. Minus the paranoia. Wait. No. Paranoia is what makes us individuals. Individuality is another lie they tell you to sell you your self.

"I listen to music no one's ever heard of because I'm so fucking indie. I watch foreign and art house movies because I'm beyond hollywood. I read books normal people don't read because I just can't do the bestseller list, it's so jejune. I use French words and smoke cigarettes. Coldplay is Radiohead for people who don't 'get' Radiohead. I drink Pinot Noir."*

Of course here I'm talking about me. Ironically self-reflexive (and to my chagrin, appropriately narcissistic-neurotic), I know I'm pretentious as all hell and buy into this way of being so much it annoys me about myself. Because I know that behind it is this kind of "hey, aren't I cool and clever? Don't you love me?" insecurity thing. A desperate attempt to be unique by moving beyond the cultural capital of the mainstream. For reals though: I get bored really easily so in order to perform my identity I have to always be looking for the "new" shit, even if it's just stuff that's new to me because they don't play it on the radio par exemple. It isn't even really a performance, or it is: sans intentionality, sometimes. I don't really give a shit about what others think about me, until I'm reminded that I'm supposed to, because apparently everyone else does. It pisses me off. Overstimulated spoiled children chasing the dragon.

So I don't know if this really applies to anything outside my perception of myself, and I know I'm too hard on myself and think about things too much, but I'm just tired of having to be scared of how I'll be interpreted. I'm tired of having to envoke a persona (constantly joking!) to distance myself from others. I'm over it. I'm over me.

Not really. Now that I got it out of my head I'm ok. I'm a high school dropout, a southern dude who regularly drops his "g"s and I don't give a shit whether you think I'm smart, creative or funny. Oh but I do. Love me because I can't love myself! [?]

Enjoy your fucking symptom. Everyone thinks they're fucked up and is afraid someone might find out they're not normal, it seems like. When did we all turn into teenagers? Chill the fuck out and embrace your imperfection.

Ok, what this is really about is that I'm annoyed with the formatting in House of Leaves. I get it, it's supposed to be a struggle to read so it's like a labyrinth or something. I'm not gonna stand in front of a mirror to read pages of a book. Fuck that noise.

"It's truely a lie. I counterfeit myself."
-"I'm Designer"

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*Of course, the same could be said about my research agenda. Which is basically thus: "crazy is communicable. People say crazy shit to each other and they believe it. I'm not judging, I'm just saying. I say crazy shit too, because I'm a person in the 21st century and we've got a lot of shit to think about, but I think it there's some value in knowing you're crazy so you don't take shit too seriously. That's my critical praxis. Allow me to demonstrate. Now think about yourself and what you say. And laugh. And quit being a hater."

**To be honest, I listen to music no one's ever heard of because I get bored. I watch art movies and foreign films because I like to see how far people can take film, and yeah, I can't abide formulaic stuff. At the same time, I loved the new Indiana Jones. I read the books I read because the last time I tried to read popular fiction it just felt so bad to me I couldn't abide. You can't go back. I think it was a Michael Crichton book. And I like Coldplay, although a lot of their songs sound the same to me. I'm addicted to mind-expansion. Also, Pinot Noir is good.

Entropy

Yesterday I started hallucinating in semiotic phenomenology class. I was sitting there listening to people talking but I was seeing two people fucking (reverse cowgirl). I didn't make this image appear, it just came up unbidden. It didn't even last a second. Just a momentary image. A few minutes later, again without any conscious direction on my part, I thought I was in Grand Theft Auto IV. Not playing the game. In it. Snap and gone.

I've had this experience before and know it is a result of sleep deprivation (and, I suppose, the regime of psychotropics I've put my brain through over the years). My main concern was that in this random state I also have random thoughts that I'd be embarassed about vocalizing because they ARE FUCKING RANDOM. Word salad. With ranch.

Other than that I'm ok with it because I know it's gamma waves in my brain and such. It happens to me basically every night as I'm falling asleep. I know that I'm about to go to sleep when the random images start appearing in my head. I go into REM before I actually go to sleep. For reals.

While I was sitting there pushing time towards our break, I had a moment where I felt myself slip into a universe where history was destroyed, language was gone, and we all just were there, in the refuse of civilization, confused as hell. Everything before that moment was a lie. I wasn't really Matt Morris. These people sitting in the room with me weren't really who they said they were. Just a sudden break, where nothing before now had happened. Thrust into consciousness without any context.

During break I walked around a little, smoked a cigarette and drank some caffiene. I could feel my body start to go back into daytime mode and the rest of class passed without incident.

On the way home the wind was fierce. As I walked to the door I was struck by leaves and sand. There were oranges scattered on the grass.

mm

np: The Doors

Remember

That there is a genesis and an apocalypse in every moment.

Time is only a progression of universes that we travel between.

Like walking from room to room in an infinite mansion,each moment of consciousness we experience is linked to all others past present and future.

Only the limitations of our physical being force us to forget this.

Each person you meet is only another self in mascarade, there to remind you of something you forgot when you put on your present persona.

And you may as easily shed that as you shed a piece of clothing.

Eternity is not a progression of moments piled one upon the other but rather the experience of all moments as one.

This is the Alpha and Omega.

In choosing this limited existence you live at risk of being seduced by sense experience.

But all this is an illusion.

Even these words are a lie.

And in that body you may suffer cold, hunger, loneliness, doubt and pain.

And even death.

But in that body your cells experience cold, hunger, loneliness, doubt and pain and die without you even being aware of their passing.

Such is it with the universes.

You are but a vessel in which the divine may find a temporal expression.

Use this existence to the best of your ability, always remembering that in every moment that you continue it is a choice to be.

And that the greatest illusion of all is the concept of you and me.

mm

"What is this but my reflection / who am I to judge or strike you down?"-Tool "Pushit"

Emptiness

Last night at about this same time I was lying on the couch reading House of Leaves and listening to Nine Inch Nails's Ghosts . Although I found With Teeth, Year Zero and The Slip to basically be Trent Reznor rehashing the adolescent angst formula he's used so well over the years, this collection of 36 instrumental tracks highlights his talent as a composer. Austere yet exquisite.

So I have this creepy music playing and I'm reading this book about a house that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. This creates an uncanny echo, as a hallway that seems to leak darkness into the surrounding room just appears in this house, evoking emptiness, space, and simultaneous feelings of claustrophobia and agorophobia.

I'm scared of the ocean because it seems so large. I wrap the covers around myself at night because empty outside threatens to devour me. The hallway behind me opens to abandoned rooms. Without their auras I feel the silence staring at me. I can't even look that way without imagining something that isn't supposed to be there walking out of one of their rooms. It is very tall and it knows me, but I know it not.

In the corner of my eye I expect to look out the sliding-glass door onto our back porch and see it watching me.




mm


np: Radiohead In Rainbows

Off the meds

I've decided to start a stream of consciousness blog for July. I'm almost done with my master's thesis. My roommates are out of town. I'm moving to Austin in a month to start my Ph.D. program.

It's a liminal time and I'll have more time alone than I have in a while. Time to write.

I think my thoughts will be worth recording over the next month. For one thing, I quit taking my meds. Just a sec, I want a cigarette.


Ok, so I'm not totally quitting my meds. That could be dangerous. But I'm weaning myself off the Cymbalta. I never wanted to be on it in the first place, but if I quit taking it suddenly I get really moody. I figure having my roommates out of town is a time I might be able to deal with it and the other withdrawal effects (muscle spasms, fucked-up sleep, etc.). I will still take Ativan* as needed to deal with anxiety, which is what I started taking meds for in the first place.

I'm bored with this. I'm gonna go smoke and read.

mm

np: The Beatles, Mindless Self Indulgence, Beck
nr: House of Leaves

*Yes, I know Ativan is pretty addictive. I have already weaned myself down on that, though in the past few days it's been more common...fuck it, one thing at a time.

My dharma

Things you have taught me, or, I might be wrong but I’m still learning.

Warning: reading this may cause discomfort.*

Why is the world so fucked up?
Because the postmodern breakdown of metanarratives leaves us with a lack of ethical foundation. Late capitalism exploits this by manipulating our desires to subjectivize us as selfish consumers: We buy what they tell us we want. This ideal of selfishness perpetuates itself through popular culture, which exploits our insecurities and fears so that we think we want what they tell us. We think that makes us empowered and free. These discursive formations are found in popular music, television and film that provide us with the resources to negotiate our identity within the confines of ideals that are a virtuality, and looked at critically, are pretty shitty ideals. But because we want to think well of ourselves, we project our shadows onto the illusions they provide us, while those illusions reproduce themselves within us subconsciously. Deprived of the ability to consciously encorporate the shadow because of our attachment to an ideal-ego we then manifest the shadow in our presentation of self to others. In other words, we start to obsess about those negative qualities and in order to defend itself, the paranoid ego sees those qualities in others. When we accuse others of having negative qualities it brings attention to those qualities within ourselves.
And all of this only reinforces our selfishness, serving late capitalism. It is in the very act of accepting their definition of power that we loose it. Because when we believe that power is being able to get what you want, we become susceptible to needing what they give. So to get what we want we start to manipulate others, or try to anyway. Which makes us dependent. Because our desire as consumers forces us to validate our egos by constantly shifting our negative aspects onto others while also relying on others to provide us with a concept of self. We form illusions of others to give us a shopping list of qualities we can use them for. These become manifest in ego-ideals, our concept of others as we perceive those others to see our selves. When someone violates those expectations, our threatened ego lashes out to reinforce itself. And that’s why people are shitty to each other.
Also most people are young souls.

What is your solution for the lack of an ethical foundation?
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” allows us to form identification with others that is interdependent, not dependent, because it forces us to equally value others with ourselves. This leads us to a more balanced perception of others in our ego-ideal. Just as you come to understand that you’re not perfect you don’t expect others to be perfect, so you can forgive without having to compromise your concept of self.
“Detachment from the illusion of self.” Don’t attach yourself to the illusions your mind creates, because while these may be reality for you, they only exist in virtuality in relation to the Real. You can never contain the Real within your concepts. For example, any concept you have of another person is simplistic in relation to their actual consciousness. You can’t read minds and other people can’t read yours. You’re human, don’t take yourself too seriously. You’re a delusional ape. So long as you are attached to the illusion of the self, you can only be what they make you. And they try to make you feel bad about yourself so they can have power over you.

But how do you escape the illusions created by late capitalism to enslave you?
The Four Noble Truths. Your disempowerment and dependence is a result of your desire, which is based on a perceived lack within the self that you seek to fill through others. Late capitalism reproduces this perceived lack in order to provide you with products to consume to fulfill your desires. The bourgeois modernist self will always be insecure because it is that insecurity that makes you susceptible to manipulation.
Enlightenment is part comes in the deconstruction of the self/other binary, which results in ego-dissolution and detachment from desire. We are all made of stardust. Manifest in fractal complexity, the materiality of your existence is of one substance with the universe. That which you identify as your self is a temporal consciousness that is as a firing of a single neuron within the cosmic brain.
Ideology is just another way of saying maya. Look it up.

That sounds like hippy bullshit, Matt.
It’s just a metaphor, like monkey brains. You can’t ever tell the Truth, just pass on the dharma as you’ve received it. Dude, I just blew my own mind. Sorry, I’m kind of spaced.

What the fuck are you talking about?
EVOLUTION!

Chill out.
I’m ok now. My point is we need better idols to replace the ones we’ve smashed.

Why do you care what I think?
I don’t.

Where are your citations?
This is a fucking blog.

-mm

* Maybe you don’t like what I say. Maybe because of cognitive dissonance. Maybe because I don’t make any sense. Maybe you just don’t get it. Arrogance used ironically, in deference to Nietzsche, because I think it’s funny.

Education for discussion

This post is revised from an email orginally sent to a private Yahoo! Groups listserv as a response to a discussion among a group of friends who developed a kind of debate society called the Society of Reason at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Eventually the Society of Reason developed into the Society of Revelry, but many of us continued to stay in touch and share our thoughts, problems, triumphs and general ravings on life.

From the book "The Culture of Narcissism" by Christopher Lasch:

"The whole problem of American education comes down to this:
in American society, almost everyone identifies intellectual
excellence with elitism. This attitude not only guarantees
the monopolization of educational advantages by the few;
it lowers the quality of elite education itself and threatens
to bring about a reign of universal ignorance."

While I don't agree with much of what this book says, because
so much of it is a condemnation of our national culture in ways
that I don't think are valid, I've made this observation before.

In order to serve the needs of all, we water down our educational systems
to a lowest common denominator in order to be "inclusive."

Colleges are now having to make up for deficiencies in our high school
educational system.

The book argues, as I agree, that much of this is because education has
tended to demphasize competition because of the attitude in America today
that competition entails conquering.

But in fact, competition forces us to attain new heights of excellence. And I think
most of us recognize this, but we're narcissistic in so many ways that the very
concept of competition either leads us to some kind of Ayn Randesque Superman
ideal or it reveals our insecurities.


Not all the blame lies with the educational system, because they are having
to pick up slack left by the other traditional cultural institutions that have
been torn apart: family, religion, government, etc.

The problem, to my point of view, is that education has become less about
academic achievement and more about personal development.
And the training of a proletariat to serve the bourgeosie.

So of course, the limitation of the intellectal development of the proles serves
to reinforce the current social order. Instead of intellectual development, schools
are now about socialization and a kind of "I'm ok, you're ok" feel-good fuzzy
esteem boosting. To the point that standards have fallen for fear that those
who are unable to attain the higher standards will be discouraged and it will
affect their self-image.

But self image should be built on a realistic assement of character rather than
the flattery that we try to suffice with in our current cultural conditions.

It is no wonder so many of us are so insecure. We've been lied to so much.

Many educators are concerned about scientific illiteracy, and so am I because
I am by no means well-trained in scientific disciplines but I at least have a
conceptual grasp in my own subjective way of the subjects of science.
The other day I had an experience where I mentioned global warming to
someone and they had no idea what I was talking about.

But of even more concern to me is cultural illiteracy.
While I am a great proponent of multiculturalism - I have made it a point
to study other cultures and take what I can from them - I also feel like our
common cultural heritage as Americans should not be marginalized.
And this includes an understanding of the great thinkers of western civilization.

Instead, we've got Dubbya saying "disassemble, that means lie."
And he's our representative to the rest of the world?
No wonder they think we're morons!

We shouldn't have to sacrifice an understanding of the principles
that are at the foundation of the American ideal in order to be inclusive.
The very fact that the historical, literary and artistic knowledge of so many
people is so lacking scares me.

I believe we need a greater understanding of the humanities because these
are the things that make life worth living.

Plus, a democratic society is depenent on an informed populace in order to
bring us to our greatest potential.

Critical thinking skills are greatly lacking in our society and this makes most
of us vulnerable to manipulation by propaganda because without well-developed
critical thinking skills we're dependent on others to do the thinking for us.
The fact that I can talk to a fellow college graduate and they have no idea
when the French Revolution was is appalling.

Marx critisized the bourgeois society of America because the class warfare
at his time was between the owners of the means of production and
the proletariat, the working class.

What I see coming is a further class division based on cultural capital.
Now, while this may be beneficial to me because I make an effort to develop
my cultural capital, I see it as a problem for society as a whole.

And as a whole, the problem IS cultural.

Because our educational institutions have had to compensate for the
failings of other cultural institutions in the socialization process: religion,
the family, government, etc.
After all, it is these things that formerly allowed us to transcend our egotism
and understand our place as part of a greater whole.

Our lack of scientific understanding may cause us make bad policy choices,
but our lack of understanding of the humanities makes us less human, I believe.

Another part of the problem with the equasion intellectualism = elitism is the
idea that there is a barrier there that most people can't cross.
Now I know I'm not that smart, but I feel like I've been able to cross that barrier.
One of the problems with the dumbing-down of our curriculum is that it serves
the elite by continuing the model of the bourgeosie vs the proletariat by
withholding cultural education from the proles because what has
happened is that we've evolved past the old American dichotomy between
bourgeosie vs proles by creating a new "creative class" that will eventually
subvert the bourgeosie system of rule.

This is the cycle of history.

The ruling class creates the class that will overcome it.
The democratization of information is allowing all of us, no matter our
socio-economic status to develop a greater understanding of the world
than was previously possible.
My only fear is that many of us will squander these opportunities by succumbing
to a mediated lifestyle in which weapons of mass distraction keep us from
critically thinking about the issues of our time.

And too many of us are not equipped with the cultural capital to rise above this,
but it is there for everyone to understand according to their abilities and
this will make for a new societal evolution that I think we're just now beginning
to understand.

All I can do is encourage others to take advantage of these opportunies:
learn your history, political science, psychology, sociology, literature, become
scientifically literate, and accumulate cultural capital in order to have a
shaping role in creating the new society that is developing with our current
information revolution.

And I think everyone is able to achieve this in their own way.

So there is no point in us fearing knowledge or dialectic discourse because
it through this that we are better able to understand what we think and believe.
Our educational problems can really be solved by us casting aside the
resentment of intellectualism and taking responsiblity for our own educations.
We do have it within our power to create our own destinies, but it is
by embracing rather than fearing the "intellectual" that we may make new
paths for ourselves.
I have faith in the ability of everyone to work toward their potential of
intellectual development, but it's a hard road and one that shouldn't be
taken lightly.

Thinkers of the world unite!

-mm