There is the cosmos, there is the individuated being (the Self), there are Others, there is the collective, the ensemble, there is Terra, there is all which is not the Self and the Other: there is the cosmos. What are the upshots of a completely unified cosmos? There are none of the above. There is only the process of is-ing.

Upheaving, upheaval. Testing dependence and independence. Just when the path looks stable, where the knowns gradually coagulate to staunch the in-and-out-pouring stresses of un-knowning; the flow is not turbulent, the road is straight and wide, with interesting terrains somewhere up ahead. Then one finds a dip, through a desert wash, unseen just a short distance away. In this dip is a mess of flash-flood debris, and a double-fork in the road: change comes along with deep choices to be made between diverging pathways. One is obscured by the morning fog of oracle’s lack, so that what lies ahead cannot be distinguished; the other way may be seen, but with curves that carry it quickly out of sight. The third apparently climbs out of the one dip, and is the road that one perceived from a distance to be the straight and wide, but turns out that there are many dips, as when crossing a wide alluvial fan spreading out from the base of a mountain canyon.

Then there is the idea of the bush-whack. A process that forgets the roads and launches out into the countryside, a self-determined goal in sight or hinted at by the terrain to cover. The bush-whack presumes a base, often, with measured forays out on a daily basis, rather than a continuous and wearing, un-remitting confrontation of the unknown. It is the frontiersman, one who stays at the edge of stable regions, the fraying or un-formed edges. One foot in, one foot out. Solitary. Progress not determined by forward motion, but rather by the growing determination to remain in motion at all. That is progress, in the Light of how life comes and goes, the determination to continue is a hard kernel around which to wrap the discoveries that occur along the way.

My dear friends, let me sing you the song of solitude. Without solitude there is no suffering, without solitude there is no heroism. But the solitude I have in mind is not the solitude of the blithe poets or of the theater, where the fountain bubbles so sweetly at the mouth of the hermit’s cave.

From childhood to manhood is only one step, one single step. In taking that step you break away from father and mother, you become yourself; it is a step into solitude. No one takes it completely. Even the holiest hermit, he grumpiest old bear in the bleakest of mountains, takes with him, or draws after him, a thread that binds him to his father and mother, to the loving warmth of kinship and friendship. My friends, when you speak so fervently of people and fatherland, I see the thread dangling from you, and I smile. When your great men speak of their “task” and responsibility, that thread hangs out of their mouths. Your great men, your leaders and orators, never speak of tasks directed against themselves, they never speak of responsibility to destiny! They hang by a thread that leads them back to mother and to all the cozy warmth that the poets recall when they sing of childhood and its pure joys. No one severs the thread entirely, except in death and then only if he succeeds in dying his own death.

Most men, the herd, have never tasted solitude. They leave father and mother, but only to crawl to a wife and quietly succumb to new warmth and new ties. They are never alone, they never commune with themselves. And when a solitary man crosses their path, they fear him and hate him like the plague; they fling stones at him and find no peace until they are far away from him. The air around him smells of stars, of cold stellar spaces; he lacks the soft warm fragrance of the home and hatchery.

Zarathustra has something of this starry smell, this forbidding coldness. Zarathustra has gone a long way on the path of solitude. He has attended the school of suffering. He has seen the forge of destiny and been wrought in it.

Ah, my friends, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you any more about solitude. I should gladly tempt you to take that path, I should gladly sing you a song of the icy raptures of cosmic space. But I know that few men can travel that path without injury. It is hard, my dear friends, to live without a mother; it is hard to live without home and people, without fatherland or fame, without the pleasures of life in a community. It is hard to live in the cold, and most of those who have started on the path have fallen. A man must be indifferent to the possibility of falling, if he wants to taste of solitude and to face up to his own destiny. It is easier and sweeter to walk with a people, with a multitude — even through misery. It is easier and more comforting to devote oneself to the “tasks” of the day, the tasks meted out by the collectivity. See how happy the people are in their crowded streets. Shots are being fired, their lives are in danger, yet every one of them would far rather die with the masses than walk alone in the cold outer night.

But how, my young friends, could I tempt you or lead you? Solitude is not chosen, any more than destiny is chosen. Solitude comes to us if we have within us the magic stone that attracts destiny. Many, far too many, have gone out into the desert and led the lives of herd men in a pretty hermitage beside a lovely spring. While others stand in the thick of the crowd, and yet the air of the stars blows round their heads.

But blessed be he who has found his solitude, not the solitude pictured in painting or poetry, but his own, unique, predestined solitude. Blessed be he who knows how to suffer! Blessed be he who bears the magic stone in his heart. To him comes destiny, from him comes authentic action. — Hermann Hesse

John Vallee, 54, lives near the trestle that spans the Crane Creek and was watching TV when he heard a loud screech. He went outside and first thought he saw a blanket tangled under a rail car. Then he realized it was a person.

“It’s going to be hard for me to get to sleep,” Mr. Vallee told Florida Today. “I can’t get it out of my mind.”

The energized impression and apprehension of be-ing leaves us with resonant formations in embodied memory. And it is resonance that best circumscribes (models) the phenomena of the propagation of empathy from the Other to the Self. Although there is no hard evidence in humans, the concept of mirror neurons would seem to support the idea of resonance. Caught a lecture at UM with Deb on “Empathy in Normal Adult Development and Neurological Disease” with Bob Levenson from UCB which got me thinking of the actual mechanism that allows for the transmission of the energies of expression across Cartesian space from the Self to the Other. The obvious model would be the transmission of band-limited radiative (visual, auditory, touch, etc) energy which then is apprehended by the neural system, a system which is sensitive to ‘matched’ or similar experiences that have already impinged and impressed themselves on the body system. This impression process changes the body system from one energy configuration to another. And any life system will have fundamental resonant pathways — these would be necessary determinants of basic learned experience — whatever the particular and precise mechanism is (mirror neurons being perhaps a primary model), the idea of resonance seems to be key. Resonance would depend on some accounting of sameness and difference as per prior embodied experience and the persistence of impressions (which themselves are configurations of energized neuronal structures: memory) among other factors. There would have to be a means for rapid energy pattern-matching across a huge volume of semi-fixed memory structures in the brain — it would be impossible to check all possible prior impressions with all live incoming impressions, so there would have to be some kind of disgressionary or limiting function to the process in the form of step or directional filters…

I can’t get you out of my mind…

If one constructs a tool, what is one doing, and why is one doing it? How will one do it?

How to control of flows around oneself? And what does this control mean? Where does the desire to control arise from? Is it simply about evolutionary (survival/procreative) pressures? Is there anything about control that is altruistic (or simply outside of the broadly evolutionary)?

The divide between life-forms that make tools and ones that don’t is fundamental, but it may be ignored when regarding the smooth continuum framing life as a system(?) that alters the flows of energy around it generally to its advantage (or to its need to continue — life is about life needing to continue life). The divide then appears to arise only when one considers how (from a mechanistic p.o.v.) that control is exerted.

This divide seems especially arbitrary when the body itself may be seen as a tool. The mechanical relations between bone structures, for example, or the magnifying ability of the lens in the eye. And, extending the definition of tool beyond the purely mechanical to, say, chemical, the body is a clearly a refinery in the exact same sense as a petroleum refinery. It conducts a wide-ranging set of thermodynamically driven reactions to access and distribute concentrated energy sources that it has introduced to its system. While there is a material dividing plane, the skin, which historically looms largely absolute in determining many classifications of relation and order, that plane may also be seen as arbitrary. The surface tissues — including the entire gut and lungs — are highly permeable surfaces which are constantly interchanging matter and energy with the environment they are in. In an optimal sense, at a particular time, this interchange process does not degrade the general order of the biotic system, but it does precipitate localized and systemic change. Also to be considered are the millions of microscopic organisms which synergize with the larger human body system — without which that system would likely not survive.

Are there, then, distinctions to be made based on body-as-tool and the ‘external’ tool that the body/mind system synthesizes? Or are these distinctions merely artifacts of the entire mechanistic p.o.v.?

It would seem so. If one considers, again, the relations within the body between , say, limb or organ, where a part may be seen as having a particular function which benefits or affects another part. A particular part has a function (as any tool also has) which aids in the performance of the body-system and interacts with other specific mechanisms in the body. In a living body-system these inter-relations are both necessary and sufficient if one includes the those moving between the body and the external. The body is seen as an indivisible whole, but without the constant interactions with the external environment, it would, for practical purposes, dis-integrate immediately.

The point of this short meditation is to emphasize the process which a tool, by definition, precipitates. That process is the fundamental alteration of the energy flows to which the tool is applied. This process unites the purpose of both internal and external systems for energy flow change which may be seen as a tool. The body is a technology as much as anything external to it which causes an alteration of extant energy flows. (Uff, this suggests that life itself be defined as a technology as it always alters the flows around it — we are life, we alter the flows around us, we are technology.)

The division between tool-makers and those organisms which do not make tools may then be seen as a somewhat arbitrary one. Both organisms are needful of altering the surrounding flows to survive, they actualize that need via evolved mechanisms as they relate with those particular flows. The ultimate point for both internal and external tool use is the optimized continuance of life.

without framing the precise context, a couple quick notes to Rob, regarding the Internet of Things (IOT) and social pro-activity:

and

Men’s opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, are affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in regard to the conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those which determine their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their reason — at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their social affections, not seldom their antisocial ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or fears for themselves — their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority. . . . Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendancy, or where its ascendancy is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority. Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in act and forbearance which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics. — John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”

Yes, definitely, opinion is affected by the directions of the wind. And add to the multifarious causes the role that contemporary media plays in opinion-forming. Counter-pointed by the influence that the controlling figures in those social media structures have — all as a result of the face-time, the attention spent by individuals on those channels of ‘information.’ It is precisely this passivity, or servility, as Mill calls it that forms the kernel of power in every regime or social organization.

How to transcend the rigidity of extant and defined protocol? Opposition is no cure. Poetry is emetic (of protocol); or poetic stretching, morphing of the protocol. Or simply turning away to create a new protocol. This is a critical issue as protocol underlies all techno-social deployments. All. And the affect of protocol, its genesis, its makers, its purview, all contribute to the formation of a (dominant) worldview that it imposes a(n arbitrary) frame of reference upon the participant in the particular techno-social system. On the other hand, life without protocols: an impossible situation for social animals (or any animal, for that matter — a protocol may be thought of as a way of going, whether self-directed or directed by innate sense and following the line of maximized entropy production).

This conundrum applies to all (socially) evolved protocols, no matter the genesis. It means that this pervades and saturates, all experiences of being (except perhaps for the pre-human, or over-human). On The Poetics of Protocol, a working title moving towards a core thematic. Using the metaphor of a sliding scale, at one end, chaotic ways of going, at the other, completely prescribed ways of going, life falls somewhere in between.

Having to jump between several points-of-view — the tremendous volume of applicable writing on the range of subjects; a strong, principled, and unifying overview tied to idiosyncratic personal experiences; and, finally, the mental focus required to tie all this jetsam together — the jump has to be transformed into a creatively complied micro-narrative. But looking around at the plethora of source materials is always discouraging — in form and content. The inability to structure my own content into a form consistent with the material that I consume is disturbing, though idiosyncratic expression is one of the goals for DCA research. (Inconsistency has potential to uncover innovative spaces and may be used as a strategic tool or approach.) So this can be viewed as a strategic advantage in the creative interpretation and packaging of the material. Content-wise, I am confident of the presence of something to say, as well as a subsequent pathway-of-action reflecting what is said. Daunting task none-the-less, from any vantage.

Seeing from more than one point-of-view requires motion or at least movement between points of stasis. Does the establishment of a point-of-view require a cessation of movement? (motion of course is completely relative regarding point-of-view: life is never static so point-of-view never absolutely static)

Meanwhile, thinking about difference and edges. Organisms are distinguished by defined/refined difference between themselves and that-which-surrounds through changes in the characteristics of the field/flux. There is also an internal(ized) sensitivity to difference that arises in an organism — as an evolutionary trait related to the search for usable energy gradients as a source for ensuing negentropic action or use. Distinguishing difference: how does it arise and proceed? Or is the energy gradient, a fundamental expression of difference, difference itself? Skin seems to be absolute and abrupt but in fact is a layered, gradational transition from Self to what is out there. And, in fact, if there is a continuous energized substrate within/below/of all, there is only difference in relatively and locally definable by characteristics which are circumscribable with non-absolute frames of reference … sheesh …

The need for criticism to include the framework for a new, alternate pathway to travel upon shows up when I find myself focusing too much on circumscribing the problems. This is the same as opposition politics that gets too mired in opposition (doh!) and forgetting that an alternative vision is necessary as well. How to find autonomous spaces when on the road, moving along the lines of power drawn by the dominant social system? How to find or facilitate interstitial spaces that are not under the control of that system. Do these spaces have a set of characteristics that makes them immediately identifiable? Or are they only identified by the precise instances of (uncontrolled) energy flow that occur within them? (chicken-and-egg situation!) For every unit of human-controlled flow of energy, there are countless flows of energy of many orders greater magnitude that are not controlled. Humans are capable of controlling a certain, very limited range of flows. This range has increased in time from those expressions of embodied reach to those far beyond the direct impact of that body. By collecting the energy of many bodies, humans are able to express and project the reach of their control over vast regions. Ultimately, this reach is limited by the number of bodies at the disposal of the regime and the efficiency with which that granular energy is harnessed (through those controlled pathways).

Ran across a couple (excerpted) essays by Ivan Illich, a radical critic of techno-social consumerist systems.

The machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed. — Ivan Illich, Silence is a Commons

The demands made by tools on people become increasingly costly. This rising cost of fitting man to the service of his tools is reflected in the ongoing shift from goods to services in over-all production. Increasing manipulation of man becomes necessary to overcome the resistance of his vital equilibrium to the dynamic of growing industries; it takes the form of educational, medical, and administrative therapies. Education turns out competitive consumers; medicine keeps them alive in the engineered environment they have come to require; bureaucracy reflects the necessity of exercising social control over people to do meaningless work. The parallel increase in the cost of the defense of new levels of privilege through military, police, and insurance measures reflects the fact that in a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. — Ivan illich, Tools for Conviviality

In the contemporary framework of human encounter — dominated by instances of hyper-commerce and of tele-mediated presence — life changes to fit the mediation (it does not evolve in the same sense that Darwin’s idea of the process; instead it simply fits the technology), and the character of encounter with(in) life alters for each shift in the techno-social milieu that collectively generates the allowed pathways of exchange. Freedom is not a question in this situation. Nor is autonomy. Those are absolutes of the abstract: virginal conceptions not directly related to the contingencies of be-ing in and of the world. Absolutes and abstractions do not prepare the Self for the shifting potentialities of collective human encounter which proceed by degree and layered complexity. And indeed, when abstractions govern encounter, the full field of possibility of human encounter is quickly limited to a much-less-than-finite set of conditions, processes, and outcomes. There arises the alienation of emotive loss in this limitation, but that is another issue to raise elsewhere. Or perhaps this alienation is the reciprocal experience of the (unfulfilled) possibilities of creative encounter.

Or is all this just about losing or gaining procreative (evolutionary) advantage for the species (via technological augmentation), and nothing more?

The fact that the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent are, overall, given social reward when compared to the least. (Recognizing this, the revolutionary community organizer, Jesus, said (as interpolated by Mathew) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” to invert the perception of this evolutionary order, and the alternative fact that following his lead will actually alter the order. Was this a miraculous strike at limited potentialities? Or mere agitprop for political expediency?