I am a citizen of a Native American Nation and was working for them during the "pandemic". They are a government with a bureaucracy that has little to do with the people of their nation and much to do with the running of their government. I came to see the two are not interchangeable or especially compatible.
I reckon this is equally true of most governments and results in equally conflicting interests when a government seeks to defensively protect its bureaucracy above the interests of its people. Making an error in thinking the interests of the government and the interests of the people are the same to damaging consequences.
That then have to be prioritized in what I experienced, the government choosing the interests of itself over the interests of the people it was initially constructed to serve. So totalitarian measures must be taken to coerce the people to relinquish their personal interests in the interest of the government while the government believes it is doing nothing wrong only serving best interests.
The world flips and the people now serve the government. The upside down. Not pretty or healthy.
Thank you for this article. Very thought provoking and illuminating.
Thank you so much for the kind words and for sharing your experience.
I think governmental institutions inevitably tend towards the authoritarian condition, at least when they expand beyond the immediate influence of a small group of people that devise and control them for their own sake. The interests of the people immediately involved and the interests of the institution seem to start to deviate as soon as the institution also gets this "life of its own", when it is inscribed with this intention to preserve itself as a goal separate from the interests of the people who originally constructed it.
And arguably, in a society so vast, complex and (superficially) interconnected as modern industrial civilization, the distance between the people and the institutions for control has never been greater, which I think would imply your conclusions above, that there's almost no sense in which the governing apparatus can be said to serve the interests of actual human beings in a specific context. The connection is so thin that it's almost non-existent.
Yes. Agree completely. I only wish I had an idea of what to do about this situation, but I admit, I don't. Other than an individual one I'm working on to leave modernity behind and stare at the trees all day communing with God.
In section 150 of Pt III of Minima Moralia, Adorno writes of the appeal of the "new," linking it to repetition of sensation rather than anything introduced into the world that has not yet been experienced. He finishes this section with an insight that resonates especially for those who follow the Aesthetic Resistance discussions.
"Perhaps humanity's refusal to have children is thereby explained, because everyone can prophesy the worst: what is new is the secret figure of everyone not yet born. Malthus belongs to the Ur-fathers of the 19th century, ad Baudelaire had reason to exalt what is infertile. Humanity, which despairs of its reproduction, unconsciously casts the wish to survive onto the chimera of never known things, but these latter resemble death. They point to the downfall of an entire constitution, which virtually no longer needs its members."
Adorno's observation led me to think about John Berger's notion of the dead. Berger asks in "Twelve Theses on the Economy of the Dead"
"11. What is the relation of the dead to what has not yet happened, to the future? All the future is the construction in which their 'imagination' is engaged.
12. How do the living live with the dead? Until the dehumanization of society by capitalism,, all the living awaited the experience of the dead. It was their ultimate future. By themselves the living were incomplete. Thus living and dead were interdependent. Always. Only a uniquely modern form of egoism has broken this interdependence. With disastrous results for the living, who now think of the dead as the eliminated.."
I guess I'm leading to an hypothesis that this authoritarian mindset also works by shearing off previous ideas of birth and death, sterilizing discourse metaphorically speaking so that that we are effectively trapped in our historical bell jars.
Sorry for the late reply. This was a profound comment, and I've had my hands full for the last few weeks.
We cast the wish to survive upon those populating an unknown future. Right. And this, perhaps, is even more true today, with this widespread sense of despair and ennui that render the present so inhuman that it's almost incomprehensible. Our reproduction, always in some sense connected to the desire to reach out and touch what is truly Other, becomes invested in something so different from the present that it almost resembles a death wish.
This is somehow echoed in certain climate radicals' paradoxical insistence that reproduction literally is an expression of a collective death wish, while at the same time.
Reproduction equals death, reads the cryptic paradox slogan of the Extinction Rebellion.
A story of a memorable journey. See if you can relate and if any of this holds in the memory.
It’s ordinary.
I left home for a short trip by car, turned left out of the driveway and up the 2 lane country road. We’re on the edge of a village. It’s just 7km away, my destination. Nothing remarkable along the way. Ordinary country houses. Farms. The road winds here and there, and up and down a bit. The low sun late in the day, throws orange and pink light on tree lines and fields. The speed limits are typical, sometimes 50 sometimes 70 km/h. Sometimes straight road for some time. Sometimes curving left or curving right. But then coming to the next village and 40 kmh in front of one of those typical Scandinavian small factories in the middle of nowhere basically. And tighter curves in both directions and then slowly rolling up into the next little village facing straight into the target, the little COOP food store with green sign, and the parking lot around to the right, after turning right under some old trees.
I park and get out of the car, and walk back out around front, up the sidewalk and into the store. Past the produce first, Swedish and Spanish tomatoes, the “Mexican” section on the shelves behind, next to the potatoes. The ceiling is low. The store is not very large but dense. Lighting is subdued. I follow the path around to the back and left, passing everything else, breads, pastries, meats, cheeses milk, soups and all the rest. I skip the chips back in the far corner to the right and stop short at the ice cream case and find the blue box of ice cream sandwiches. The good ones. It tastes like vanilla ice cream because it is, and actual chocolate cake top and bottom, because it is. Unlike the other brand that’s inedible that I wouldn’t feed to my dog. Sickly sweet and false.
Just a box of ice cream sandwiches, I check out, and back in the car drive back the way I came, the sunlight still delightful. At home I chuck the box into the freezer, snag one from the box for myself, unwrap it and walk out back barefoot on the boards of the deck. The sandwich fucking great. I think I’ll have another.
Does that story hold in the memory? Could you retell it? It’s not very interesting. I just went out for some ice cream close by, and came back.
Now, can you remember any story told by any of the 12 who said they went to the moon, walked on it and came back. Any single story?
Funny. I thought about this yesterday. How Armstrong or Aldrin or whoever it was, claimed to have taken Communion within the confines of the LM. I think this is the only in terms of an immediate personal account I remember. But it came to light many years later, apparently covered up by NASA over fear of some atheist woman (https://www.history.com/news/buzz-aldrin-communion-apollo-11-nasa).
Yeah. Your story is a remarkable example. Almost everyone would be able to recall several details after hearing this. But what are the main features of the common, detailed descriptions of a similar sort that we would have heard from the stories or recollections brought home from the astronauts?
I am a citizen of a Native American Nation and was working for them during the "pandemic". They are a government with a bureaucracy that has little to do with the people of their nation and much to do with the running of their government. I came to see the two are not interchangeable or especially compatible.
I reckon this is equally true of most governments and results in equally conflicting interests when a government seeks to defensively protect its bureaucracy above the interests of its people. Making an error in thinking the interests of the government and the interests of the people are the same to damaging consequences.
That then have to be prioritized in what I experienced, the government choosing the interests of itself over the interests of the people it was initially constructed to serve. So totalitarian measures must be taken to coerce the people to relinquish their personal interests in the interest of the government while the government believes it is doing nothing wrong only serving best interests.
The world flips and the people now serve the government. The upside down. Not pretty or healthy.
Thank you for this article. Very thought provoking and illuminating.
Thank you so much for the kind words and for sharing your experience.
I think governmental institutions inevitably tend towards the authoritarian condition, at least when they expand beyond the immediate influence of a small group of people that devise and control them for their own sake. The interests of the people immediately involved and the interests of the institution seem to start to deviate as soon as the institution also gets this "life of its own", when it is inscribed with this intention to preserve itself as a goal separate from the interests of the people who originally constructed it.
And arguably, in a society so vast, complex and (superficially) interconnected as modern industrial civilization, the distance between the people and the institutions for control has never been greater, which I think would imply your conclusions above, that there's almost no sense in which the governing apparatus can be said to serve the interests of actual human beings in a specific context. The connection is so thin that it's almost non-existent.
Yes. Agree completely. I only wish I had an idea of what to do about this situation, but I admit, I don't. Other than an individual one I'm working on to leave modernity behind and stare at the trees all day communing with God.
In section 150 of Pt III of Minima Moralia, Adorno writes of the appeal of the "new," linking it to repetition of sensation rather than anything introduced into the world that has not yet been experienced. He finishes this section with an insight that resonates especially for those who follow the Aesthetic Resistance discussions.
"Perhaps humanity's refusal to have children is thereby explained, because everyone can prophesy the worst: what is new is the secret figure of everyone not yet born. Malthus belongs to the Ur-fathers of the 19th century, ad Baudelaire had reason to exalt what is infertile. Humanity, which despairs of its reproduction, unconsciously casts the wish to survive onto the chimera of never known things, but these latter resemble death. They point to the downfall of an entire constitution, which virtually no longer needs its members."
Adorno's observation led me to think about John Berger's notion of the dead. Berger asks in "Twelve Theses on the Economy of the Dead"
"11. What is the relation of the dead to what has not yet happened, to the future? All the future is the construction in which their 'imagination' is engaged.
12. How do the living live with the dead? Until the dehumanization of society by capitalism,, all the living awaited the experience of the dead. It was their ultimate future. By themselves the living were incomplete. Thus living and dead were interdependent. Always. Only a uniquely modern form of egoism has broken this interdependence. With disastrous results for the living, who now think of the dead as the eliminated.."
I guess I'm leading to an hypothesis that this authoritarian mindset also works by shearing off previous ideas of birth and death, sterilizing discourse metaphorically speaking so that that we are effectively trapped in our historical bell jars.
Thank you,.
Sorry for the late reply. This was a profound comment, and I've had my hands full for the last few weeks.
We cast the wish to survive upon those populating an unknown future. Right. And this, perhaps, is even more true today, with this widespread sense of despair and ennui that render the present so inhuman that it's almost incomprehensible. Our reproduction, always in some sense connected to the desire to reach out and touch what is truly Other, becomes invested in something so different from the present that it almost resembles a death wish.
This is somehow echoed in certain climate radicals' paradoxical insistence that reproduction literally is an expression of a collective death wish, while at the same time.
Reproduction equals death, reads the cryptic paradox slogan of the Extinction Rebellion.
A story of a memorable journey. See if you can relate and if any of this holds in the memory.
It’s ordinary.
I left home for a short trip by car, turned left out of the driveway and up the 2 lane country road. We’re on the edge of a village. It’s just 7km away, my destination. Nothing remarkable along the way. Ordinary country houses. Farms. The road winds here and there, and up and down a bit. The low sun late in the day, throws orange and pink light on tree lines and fields. The speed limits are typical, sometimes 50 sometimes 70 km/h. Sometimes straight road for some time. Sometimes curving left or curving right. But then coming to the next village and 40 kmh in front of one of those typical Scandinavian small factories in the middle of nowhere basically. And tighter curves in both directions and then slowly rolling up into the next little village facing straight into the target, the little COOP food store with green sign, and the parking lot around to the right, after turning right under some old trees.
I park and get out of the car, and walk back out around front, up the sidewalk and into the store. Past the produce first, Swedish and Spanish tomatoes, the “Mexican” section on the shelves behind, next to the potatoes. The ceiling is low. The store is not very large but dense. Lighting is subdued. I follow the path around to the back and left, passing everything else, breads, pastries, meats, cheeses milk, soups and all the rest. I skip the chips back in the far corner to the right and stop short at the ice cream case and find the blue box of ice cream sandwiches. The good ones. It tastes like vanilla ice cream because it is, and actual chocolate cake top and bottom, because it is. Unlike the other brand that’s inedible that I wouldn’t feed to my dog. Sickly sweet and false.
Just a box of ice cream sandwiches, I check out, and back in the car drive back the way I came, the sunlight still delightful. At home I chuck the box into the freezer, snag one from the box for myself, unwrap it and walk out back barefoot on the boards of the deck. The sandwich fucking great. I think I’ll have another.
Does that story hold in the memory? Could you retell it? It’s not very interesting. I just went out for some ice cream close by, and came back.
Now, can you remember any story told by any of the 12 who said they went to the moon, walked on it and came back. Any single story?
Funny. I thought about this yesterday. How Armstrong or Aldrin or whoever it was, claimed to have taken Communion within the confines of the LM. I think this is the only in terms of an immediate personal account I remember. But it came to light many years later, apparently covered up by NASA over fear of some atheist woman (https://www.history.com/news/buzz-aldrin-communion-apollo-11-nasa).
Yeah. Your story is a remarkable example. Almost everyone would be able to recall several details after hearing this. But what are the main features of the common, detailed descriptions of a similar sort that we would have heard from the stories or recollections brought home from the astronauts?
I can only think of one single thing.
"I can't recall seeing any stars."