Tectonics

Nugrug
benjamin harubin 2017
collage

Some say they believe in God and others say they don't or that they don't know.  
I say that human experience between all individuals is non-trivially similar in this regard.
Instead of God you might say Nature or the Government or the Past.
That is, there is some all-powerful force that is outside of you.
In all cases, there are unquestioned bases and unanalyzed assumptions, whether they be materialistic, theistic, animistic or etc.
Confronted with the ineffable vastness of conscious experience, 
we extract images, which extrapolated and reiterated, 
gain greater and greater weight and complexity 
to the point where now can say for certain what happened  
at 1 × 10^-42 seconds after the creation of the universe 
or how many angels can dance on the head of a fly's eye.  
We use these images to effect change in our experiences; 
to produce positive outcomes. 
We use these models to predict experience.
All of them are potentially useful, 
even as fragments folded again and again back into the ineffable vastness, 
resurfacing billions of years later, still influencing the collective structure.  






୫፥ງ

In Defense of "Art"

Any defense of monuments commemorating Confederate asshats citing the value of "Art" or "History" is completely bogus.  There are no such neutral or objective things.  History is fabricated by the winners, duh (albeit maybe "inspired by" actual events, or maybe not).  History is an art, and serves the needs of the state ("state" used in the broadest sense of the dominant power structures).  


Conversely, history and art can serve the needs of those who wish to fight the power; to right wrongs; to change the power structure and see justice done for the marginalized.  Hence we have revisionist history: re-writing the narrative to include that which has been glossed over in the urge to propagandize victory.  Thus we have such works as Oliver Stone's "Untold History of the United States".  But i don't think that this revisionism is destructive of the country; indeed it is a part of the country's (and the world's) process of growing up.  It is the process of coming to a new understanding and empathy for all of humanity.  

Artists have always been about this; telling truth to power.  Most of what we now recognize as the avant-garde in modern art was meant as a slap in the face to "the establishment".  Think Francisco De Goya.  The reason we know about many of these artists over their contemporaries is that they shook things up.  Think Edouard Manet, spoiled rich brat though he was, insulted the piss out of the comfortable propriety of the ruling class.  

 
All good art involves destruction.  The clutter of insidious complacent symbols of state oppression need to be periodically recontextualized and repurposed.  Our contemporary history of art is a series of rebellions; either reflections of (or initiators of) great social, technological, or political change, much of it ultimately judged to be for the better.  

Those people defacing and tearing down statues are artists as much as Picasso or Banksy.  They're making cultural statements.  Deal with it.  Is nothing sacred?  All art is culture.  Culture is a dialog.  Art is fungible; part of a conversation.  The conversation is the way that humanity grows.  The old school will try to preserve their (illusory) entitlements and prevent this kind of change, but, as always, they're on the wrong side of history.   

Where will it stop?  OMG!  I hate to tell you but it's never going to stop.  One day we will be flying the flag of the United Federation of Planets.
Should Washington's Big Dick Monument be torn down?  No, but maybe crown it with a Pussy Hat to balance the forces.  Or better yet, crown it with a Jimmy Hat, to prevent the further propagation of War Babies.  

I agree that we shouldn't forget history.  Don't melt down all these offensive memorials, some of them need to go into special FAIL Museums and Gardens of Shame, so people can remember the idiocy.  Ultimately they will be just considered kitsch, when they have been robbed of their force.  

Some say that these things are just a part of the charm of "the Old South" and a part of "heritage".  REALLY?  So, you're ok with big box stores and the destruction of neighborhoods, but you want to preserve some crappy statue of some treasonous slaver dipshit??

Walk Down the Aisle

close your eyes.

"Object Five"
benjamin harubin 2017
in silico collage

there is a voice inside.
there's a voice of clarity and sense
that cannot be properly remembered
because of how insane it is 
measured by the ruler of our outside lives.

the voice wants to come out.
i am the interpreter for the alien,
if you are wondering how a light-years-distant being
can speak in such an odd, yet rooted vernacular.

they scold us from either side of the aisle
and we are distracted willy and nilly;
yanked along- the stuffed animal's paw is stuck in the leash, clipped to the dog, who barely notices in it's romp.
and the hall is only rented anyway.

they shout Liberal and Conservative, 
Socialist and Capitalist,
Hope and Fear.
and when they got you locked
you can't see the complexity.
you can't see the stunning fractal beauty of this system of worlds.

they shout from either side of the aisle
but you can walk.
you can walk down the aisle
you can walk up the aisle.
walk up to the front
and speak.
now open them.

WE ARE AS PLANTS TO THEM

benjamin harubin 2010
human plant communion
poster

IF, as the dominant scientific paradigms of evolution and astrophysics relate, there are some billion habitable planets in our island galaxy alone and evolution has proceeded for billions of years,  then it is almost a certainty that there exist beings in our space that are millions or billions of years more advanced than us hoomans in intelligence.  In fact there would be hierarchies of beings, just as we see within ourselves a hierarchy of biological orders: systems, organs, cells, organelles and molecules.
Just so as a single cell can exist as an individual living thing, given the right environment, we can exist as individual beings supposedly alone standing on the Erth.

What is the difference between having faith in a near certain probability of extra-terrestrial intelligent entities and having faith in a supreme being and a whole succession of prophets and angels and such?

They are both similar, related activities of the creative, dreaming brain.

We would be as plants to them, to grow and to reap.

And anyway, diehards, even IF Erth is the only place in the cosmos with intelligence, or even life, you've got to wonder where all this intricate organization comes from, and choke just a little on the Anthropic Principle.
You've got to ask why the orders of organization should arbitrarily stop at our level.
And where do all these ideas come from (when in several isolated attics around the planet, people are inventing light bulbs simultaneously)?

What big Face is emerging from bioslime book?

We are as plants to them.

See what i did there?

How about a religion for the Post Ironic Age:  a fake religion, an agnostic gnosticism, a humanist mystery rite?   Oh wait...   You can't stop the Dream.

Axions and Chameleons

"Web of Flies"
benjamin harubin 2016
digital superimpositioning

We have found a new particle.
>possibly is dark matter.
>possibly is gravity.
We have named the particle.
We are protecting the particle.
The particle is ours.  
We trapped, measured it, weighed it
and put it in a box, with a guard cat.
The guard cat shields against fields that surround the particle.
Once the particle interacts with its field, it vanishes.  
So we must be very careful because conceptually we cannot have a particle and a wave at the same time!
The cat shield is made of a dense metamaterial of woven conceptrons.
Above all, WE are not the subject.  

The subject IS we.
Or should i say was.
Then it became the object.

Does science have a problem with objectivity, its holy grail? 
All the confusion of description could just be a language problem.
What we've got here is failure to communicate.
All suppositions, theories, particles, words, pictures, dreams, visions, angels and demons are composed of code.
Most of it is unexamined biomachine code. 
Starbaby blinks.
Twice. 

You Can't Tell People What to Think

this text is kind of a way of consoling scolding those progressives who are surprised, scared or depressed by the Tuesday tally.

"The Elephant IS the Room"
benjamin harubin 2016
a mashup

if you read the comments on the losing side, you'll find many examples of  'the failure on our part to engage with others in a meaningful way'.
this failure is blamed on individual failure as well as the nature of social media itself and the actors who send their robot fleets on the high media sea.
and yes it's all true.
...and it's true that there's gonna be a/another actor in the whitehouse.
whether or not there's a Man behind the man behind the man,
or a secret cabal.

but whatever.  there's still this feeling of insecurity.
it doesn't really make much functional difference what the actual mechanisms of state are.
i for one am not a proponent of 'conspiracy theories' in the sense of a discrete body of people who are pulling all the strings.

but there are interests...  forces...  groups...  bodies.

science tells us that our social structure is built on top of our individual biology, and that our biology is built upon chemistry,
the way that chemical interactions are built upon the laws of physics.
in other words, politics, power and the state are extensions of who we are as a species, currently.
they are as much biological in nature as our hair.
and also like hair, there are gaps in our understanding of them.
indeed, legally corporations are people i hear.
are they not men?
so i don't see the election as hiring one idiot over another, but as more of a compass direction indicator; a meme war; just the pulse of the drivers of state.

clearly there are forces at work that are beyond anyone's comprehension.
combined with artificial agents, this is a complex system indeed.
if you have any scientific bent, then see that our technologies are also an extension of our biological brains,
so we can cut to the chase and just proclaim that we don't understand ourselves.  

here philosophy can merge with science.
the resurgence of references to Karl Marx and Marxism is interesting.
although you may agree that the applications of the his theories have been disasters, his was an early attempt to wed rationality and science to human economic behavior.
since then, information scientists and evolutionary biologists have added their studies.
maybe what we need is even more rationality.  more consilience.

what would a new rational approach to economics or politics look like.
it's up to us to create it.

what kind of experiment can we as scientists run?
and i say 'scientists' in quotes because we DO have an agenda; there is a built-in bias: that is, some kind of concern for human welfare, or at least our own welfare.
but before you start screaming about advanced social engineering nightmare dystopias, realize that
a: we already have one, and
b: the engineering is by itself not the issue, whether it is used asymmetrically against others or voluntarily to help all humans is.

so we're all more like creative technologists insomuch as we interact socially.

but marxism, or anti-capitalism as understood is not the solution.
to somehow ban the acquisition of wealth is to deny certain biological traits,
and hence is doomed to failure.
and clearly Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' has theoretical validity.
if we can just balance the table and keep the damn thing running!

socialism and capitalism don't actually exist!

what kind of experiments can we as creative technologists run?

what does medicine do we it can't run fully rigorous experiments as in other sciences?  it runs trials.  and that is what political people are doing.  governments are trials, flourishing or collapsing under their own weight.

so much media focus has been set on the presidential election, where your voice is heard (probably) but is very tiny.
whereas an individual's immediate sphere probably contains many more avenues of action, local though they may be.  the world doesn't really depend solely on one big shit show.

what matters are individual actions, inasmuch as we can act.

in the micropolitical sphere of our everyday lives, it's up to us to construct alternate modes of action- to solve our dilemmas in creative ways.
if you surrender to fear in your immediate thoughts and actions, you are helping to spread that meme.

while i acknowledge that a destructive attack (virtual or physical) on 'the enemy' has its purpose,
there is a limit to it's effectiveness, as we have seen.
but for those who have to fight, be positive and fight smart.

wait, instead of creative technologists, we should emulate horticulturalists,
and grow better social and economic structures, on whatever scale,
through patience, love and understanding.
and paying attention to what works.
what's so funny about that?

the responsibility rests where it always has, and not in some all encompassing "choice" that will take care of everything once and for all.

the experimental opportunity that lies before us is on a unique scale, because of internetivity.
it is voluntary, and it is of the crowd and of the individual person.
our jobs should be to create successful models of human interaction that can serve as meme germs.  every time you even talk to someone of a different class or viewpoint than you, you are creating new structures.
it is in this way perhaps that THE MACHINE can be steered more towards human benefit and long term survival.

because You Can't Tell People What to Think.

but cheer up,
keep your eyes open,
no fear.
and fight the good fight.
rock on

Dem Robots Ain't Gonna Buy Your Crap

OR WILL THEY?

"Dem Robots Ain't Gonna Buy Your Crap"

benjamin harubin 2016

electronic collage

"...more than half of humanity as yet exists in miserable poverty, prematurely doomed, unless we alter our comprehensive physical circumstances. It is certainly no solution to evict the poor, replacing their squalid housing with much more expensive buildings which the original tenants can’t afford to reoccupy. Our society adopts many such superficial palliatives. Because yesterday’s negatives are moved out of sight from their familiar locations many persons are willing to pretend to themselves that the problems have been solved. I feel that one of the reasons why we are struggling inadequately today is that we reckon our costs on too shortsighted a basis and are later overwhelmed with the unexpected costs brought about by our shortsightedness."
     -R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth


Worldwide commonwealth credit is both needed and achievable to provide mass-produced sustainable housing for all. That in turn frees up the five billion poor to create “infinite wealth” by combining their intellect with infinite free energy to advance civilization.
     -REVIEW: Buckminster Fuller’s 1928 Ideas & Integrities

That’s because you forgot that your workers are also consumers. As you’ve pushed wages downward, you’ve also squeezed your customers so tight they can hardly afford to buy what you have to sell.

      -Robert Reich, An Open Letter to the Republican Establishment

Lord Turner argues that countries facing the predicament of onerous debts, low interest rates, and slow growth should consider a radical but alluringly simple option: create more money and hand it out to people.
       -John Cassidy, the New Yorker


Bandar thinks that a digitally preoccupied society will come to appreciate the pure and distinct pleasure of making things you can touch. “I’ve always wanted to usher in a new era of technology where robots do our bidding,” Bandar said. “If you have better batteries, better robotics, more dexterous manipulation, then it’s not a far stretch to say robots do most of the work. So what do we do? Play? Draw? Actually talk to each other again?”       -A World Without Work, DEREK THOMPSON

Rapid technological improvements have created unforeseen societal chaos and this change is just starting to pick up speed. Our economic operating system—the “program” at the heart of Capitalism itself—is deliriously out of control. The economy no longer serves the human race, just a tiny elite sliver of it. The rest of us, whether we realize it or not, to a certain extent toil on their behalf.

      -CAPITALISM’S OPERATING SYSTEM HAS GONE OFF THE RAILS: AN INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

This time it’s Karl Marx, not Groucho, who comes to mind with the idea of giving people a universal basic income (UBI). This is raised as a possible remedy to any misery caused by rising unemployment from job automation.

       -What to do when machines take our jobs? Give everyone free money for doing nothing