Today · 1 October 2008
Three years ago, I spoke with a wonderful financial historian about all this. She said: let us hope that the US declines gracefully from its place of supreme dominance. Hope it for everyone’s sake.
Well… this is horribly abrupt and traumatic, and it will still be a long time before our mundane, taken-for-granted reality catches up. This vacuum of political power laid on top of a vacuum of market organization is ok, in a sense, because on mental and interpersonal levels things are holding together. We go on reproducing social order through our habits of being, thank god. It’s actually kind of great… the microsocial strength that sustains a whole society amid two phenomenal macrosocial failures.
Barack Obama’s ability to hold back from full-scale demagoguery makes me love him more—those crying for him to show more power and leadership are so very old school. He’s already running the show in his way.
For me, I love to watch the practical nature of the sense-making we’re all doing now. Had the LHC created a black hole last month the physicist would have all looked at each other shaking their heads Oops, tapping around to find where exactly it went wrong. The present crises are in certain ways the same. The levels of technical understanding vary, but even for those who have seen this coming for years, there’s some kind of aporia.
For me, there’s so much going on it’s ridiculous. I’ve been getting my dearest remaining presuppositions undermined to hell, and beautifully, by Mark Whitwell in recent days, and ought to blog about it but feel maybe it’s just too much to lay on you. Also, with what time? There’s none. I’d leechblock everything to stay on target, but the world is too good. Some bits for today in case you missed them and for my own future reference:
George Soros on a better bailout.
V Good Mark Buchanan Op-Ed
Kathy G’s Palintology
Oh, also important: Mohair Gravy.
Happy October. I woke this morning on the other side of about three rabbit holes, and will definitely need some time for these known and unknown revolutions to remake my everydayness.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: evolution
, markets-networks-society
, social theory
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Thank you for the Palintology link. I was away last week, so I watched the SNL parody of Couric’s interview of Palin only this morning and I thought it was funny, then I watched the real thing and I was gobsmacked. I was no longer sure which was which. You’d think she’s been abducted by aliens and replaced her with a robot. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. I pitty America and I hope, as I said before, that there are enough intelligent people out there to vote Barack and Biden into office. Otherwise all hell will break loose. And not just for you guys, our parts of the world are at stake aswell.
Posted by: Fatou · Oct 1, 10:52 AM · #
Fatou! Hello, it’s great to see you. I hope you are well.
Surreal, isn’t she? Had the crisis not happened, Obama would have squeaked a win—at least according to all the fundamental political science equations (which are nearly always right even if they’re right for the wrong reasons). The crisis may have initially created a bunch of chaos in public opinion, but now I think it locks in a landslide. I just wish they could hold the election now and spare us the damage to women-in-power that Sarah Palin is about to do to our culture. And the racism we’re about to see coming out of the desperate right wing. Talk about knowing when to decline gracefully! Gramps McCain should make enjoy his final weeks in the public light with a little style. But he’d rather do some damage on the way out instead. Getting this close to the brass ring has completely warped him. It’s horrible to see.
Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 1, 11:02 AM · #
Mark Whitwell, REALLY?
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Oct 1, 11:03 AM · #
Sonya, Yes.
Yes.
Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 1, 11:09 AM · #
Is it time to read The Road yet?
hehe
:)
Posted by: Gregor · Oct 1, 11:46 AM · #
Oh geez. I think The Road has become the Apocalyptic scripture of choice for those who eschew the more traditional hellfire-and-brimstone biblical tracts.
Posted by: Carl · Oct 1, 02:13 PM · #
I like Mark Whitwell’s book, but when I went to his workshop there was too much encouragement of ‘sharing’... I paid to hear from him, and not all the minor worries of the other attendees seeking and getting consolation / approval. I got bored.
Too harsh??
Posted by: susananda · Oct 1, 02:28 PM · #
When I read your recent stuff, I think, wow, for all our intense stresses, we seem to be on totally different planets. I am in “be present” stress; there is no option, no escape. Pure vision or else the wave crashes over. But this is coming with no undoing, no reinvention. It’s just pure driving focus. All the same, I feel that if we were to hash this out in about two rounds of email, we’d somehow see it’s all the same stuff.
YES, to “this proximity to the brass ring has corrupted him horribly.” Absofreakinlutely.
Whitwell: Jason, of all people, unknowingly long ago turned me on to Whitwell’s video that you can get through Netflix. I dug it. Are you getting him in person? Bet that’s a trip.
Posted by: patrick · Oct 1, 06:00 PM · #
Hey Carl, have you read it yet? It’s symbolic which of course means Baptists will take literally…
Posted by: Gregor · Oct 1, 06:32 PM · #
Oh dear.
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Oct 2, 10:02 AM · #
It’s symbolic? Then why is it so scary to me?
Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 2, 10:11 AM · #
Oh, just saw Susananda’s comment. Briefly (I got to get back to work):
Hmm….
First, aren’t all workshop Q&A sessions kind of excruciating? Speaking of patriarchy… (I’m remembering my first workshop with RF 3.5 years ago, some kid yammering about apana in Marichy D, me thinking WTF is apana? Hee hee.) Anyway, yes, that sounds kind of like a difficult time.
Second though, maybe there’s a kind of hilarious difficulty in that his teaching can be expressed in just a few phrases and is so totally based on one’s own experience that talking about it isn’t as useful? This is very funny to me…
He’s really something, I feel.
Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 2, 10:14 AM · #
It’s scary because it also could happen, as opposed to going to happen. But then, to read it is to take the road less travelled. I really didn’t mean that pun godammit. I think to walk that road is to attend to fear and to breathe, this is what everyone is doing all around now after what has happened. Except not breathing and not attending.
There is after all a beautiful lysis in the book.
Posted by: Gregor · Oct 2, 02:00 PM · #