About
- Peace.
- Justice.
- Health (global ecological health, including human health, including individual health, embodied and psycheic).
- Vaccination against fascism.
- That “AI” would be far more resource-intensive than it would be profitable.
- It wouldn’t produce reliable or universally-agreeable results, because while these are the most important human pursuits, they pose difficult (perennial) problems. The fantasy of a facile, universalizable, standardized answer is propaganda for fascism.
- Good results would lead to less reliance on the technology, less engagement, and therefore less profit.
- Therefore it will not be attempted, let alone made.
Æ.3
i’m only here because of you, you said
i said, you are your secrets too
Æ is built and born anew
from hiding
Phaedrus loves
to hide so grow
from hiding
//
ælizabeth is
moonchild
mother of cats
mask-maker’s wife
wholly enthused
by gift of life
dust weeper and dabbler
in girlish games
waggle dancer
rhymes with rain
inexpertly forgot
how to explain
sassy
midnight train
seer of self
in silvered waters
beggar’s bowl
auditioning
translator of one
worldly thing
porous
and learning
how to breathe
again
sayer of no
didact of pain
ambassador of monster
in the main
decaying
maybe insane
but fascinated by
reptile wile
lover of light
but versatile
hallowed home
if in a dream
maker and
amatrix in æxile
meeter of Muses
student of Prophet
rememberer of Names
servant of Allah
humble
as æver always on
the way and
doubtless never
lost for words
//
(for a new about page)
Æ.2
ok computer whereto and from
dragging chains against the sun
the name of both is Æ
(orthœpy in play) and
ælizabeth is setting honey traps
for dragons
//
Æ.1
we visited your grave the other day
how’s that thought for you?
Æ went there to kiss the sky
because a chariot
is life’s emancipation of
the written word
//
Writing about “hereness” //
“If not in America, maybe it’s a little alright. But if in America, it’s not alright at all”, said E. We were looking at this Naomi Klein article on “end times fascism”, specifically the propaganda photo with tattooed prisoners. I said yes, pretty much. We noted the irony. He said he remembered similar propaganda photos from Suharto’s regime. Those guys look like Blih, I said. Tattoos and all. He’s our closest Bali family and one of my protectors. That means if anything ever happened to my husband, I would call Blih first. I would usually abbreviate his name, but that isn’t his name, although it’s the only thing we call him. Blih is Balinese for Brother, and he is a brother.
Back to Klein’s article, she does maybe the best work accounting for “what’s happening” that I’ve read, encompassing the mood and seemingly-conflicting realities of it. (Tech billionaire TESCREAL and apocalyptic Christian prepper cultures coming into alignment as xenophobic bunker-building fascism.) But she also manages to be somewhat uplifting, or maybe that’s not the right word. It’s a nice piece. She mentions the Yiddish concept of “Doiykat, or ‘hereness’”, as a possible antidote to the surrender of Earth inherent in an apocalyptic mindset. Although I find her elaboration a little flimsy (maybe too abstract?), I like the suggestion and appreciate the reminder, especially having recently spent so much time contemplating a vehicle of travel.
Spend too much time on chariots and you might lose a sense of “hereness”.
As a recent expat/immigrant (almost 6 years), at first I wondered if I had been under-emphasizing “hereness” in my thoughts, feelings, or writing. Maybe it doesn’t come naturally for me? Have I been too online? But then I began to list examples and think of ways that I write about it. (This is my interpretation of the word, not that of a Jewish tradition.) For me, “hereness” is the work of embodiment, including yoga asana, as well as prayer, veganism and fasting. Islam is an embodiment practice. Also, my marriage. Marriage is an embodiment practice too.
Then my “hereness” work is to figure out life as an always-somewhat-stranger “here”. On a community level, I try to do as little harm as I can (spending money in responsible ways etc). To support local governance and cultural organizing, we donate as much as seems right to several kampungs, including Mosques here and in Java. But not so much as to draw weird attention or throw anything off. We socialize, including with neighbors, they come over for lunar ceremonies on the full and new moons. I’m working on language, although I haven’t been studious about it. The more socializing we do, the faster it comes along.
My sense of “hereness” also comes through the non-human world, the animals, plants, rocks and dirt, weather, and all of these other things that I do indeed write about. The driving, lol. Almost every category in the archives is a nod to “hereness”. “Hereness” would also come through a feeling of home (there are different versions of this e.g. from house work, from husband, from cats, chickens, etc., from the plants in the garden, from our accumulating memories) and of figuring out how to be myself here. You aren’t at home if you can’t be yourself. It’s all work in progress.
I’m a Cancer, I come with armor and pincers, (also Scorpio rising, lol), but we are in no way bunker-builders. (Well, we’ve contemplated a small one, if we ever live in Java, but that’s for an active volcano, which is a totally different kind of bunker.) Our protection will be in the community connections we’ve made, or we’ll have no protection. It’s that simple. There’s a community philosophy in Indonesia called “gotong royong”, which means people are always helping out their neighbors. Having seen it in action, I find it comforting. In turn, we actively keep our eyes and ears open for ways to “help out” in the village. My husband explains this as preparing, in case something ever happens to him, if he’s gone. But it’s good preparation in case of any kind of emergency.
My “hereness” will always be a little weird or deviant because I’m an expat/immigrant and I rely on E as a cultural mediator. But it’s still often on display. This makes me glad, and a little relieved, because I am indebted to it. I’d like my blog to have a strong sense of “hereness”.
Myself here isn’t the same as myself was there, and the selves of the blog can go off-and-around sometimes, but all of this is written by Elizabeth, of her body and of Earth. There is a body and a planet behind all of this wordiness without which it wouldn’t be what it is. The point of “hereness” is perhaps not to be uplifting, but to be grounding. The ground is an important thing to cultivate.
It’s excruciating to imagine Earth as past-tense. It is literally the worst, the most terrible vision, and it does require an antidote. This beautiful one, where I feel the sky on my face, this place of friendship and delight, is my only planet. I remember myself here. I have no doubt I would forget myself on Mars.
a chariot is
reply to Isthmian I, via Phaedrus 227β
//
a chariot is artifact entombed
beneath packed sediment
an imprint on the earth
of acts not of the earth
sightless as solitude
lifeless as time itself
rotting perpetual
vehicle disposed
it falls apart
a chariot is
impervious
to crying
a chariot is a paragraph
about ancient technology
symbols illuminated by
old photos from museums
shaded settings in relief
straight lines on pregnant-bellied vases
fragments of singed and tattered verse
reasons described almost
as spatial motion re-constructed
of kingships and bloodline races
past endings to beginnings of
gods animals and man
words used as tools
each one to fix and justify
as evidentiary groping at
a world of human things
we still don’t know
a chariot is an easy gift
against a multitude
of horses
the machines we used to get
from place of rest to planet mars were splendid
magnificent creatures in their own
golden-
ratioed
grammars
and dragons that took hold of drivers' eyes
they thought the wind but caught to ride
a flaming sword instead between her thighs
maidens of modern mythologies arrived
on cliffside edges wearing white
translucent coats
arousal com-
partmentalized
to celebrate new body parts cognized
the jewel-tones of her lacquered toes
the scent of ozone taste
of toxic fizz behind
her sucking nose
her mouth disclosed
she swallows apples licks
a rose the absolute
glory hallelujah
ravenous grows
vulva exposed for clicks
each flick a seed she sows
from echoes loaded lead
her rainbows red as victory
she was the counting down to blasting off
she was four hundred thousand horses yoked
by arc of axel angel burnt tendrils
smoke billows over rocky rough terrain
past battlefields and nations past
her recent childhood and
arsenic smile
their eyes went to
her nippled curves and angles
her thorough flexibility
her starry nights and spangles
her lashes cruelly clawed
her pussies pawed
and oh how they
to her with her and of
her came
as realism
inscribed by god
rendered maidens un-made
oiled python sheen of ageless skin
she was the beauty left in violence
they were materials for war
sapphire eyes emerald or amethyst
you chose the crystal the correction and
the facets for
some child in Africa
was orphaned by each armored scale to feed
her un-weaned toddler burger meat
( at least the blacks buried
and did not eat
their very
fathers
a chariot is
from-dust-
arisen life transcribed )
annunciations posted inter-angel
a holy home a web apart
filters of pale ethereality
content implicitly divorced
from earth’s divided continent
baptismal diamantine written
laws skinlessly conceived that we
may find and hold as work of art
your child’s hunger as forgiven
a chariot is
already cleansed of blood it is
excerpted rage it is
brave forms we made
from partial purpose or
how to make pure
a brilliant woman true to life
but honestly a whore
a chariot is what you drive to get
to work your nightmares harnessed by
engines of piston pretenses
at likely sentences
a chariot is nothingness herself
but full of manliness
the games we play when we
make love in light of day
driving endlessly divine
at origins as orifices flying
a chariot is
a summary
of dying
//
selamat purnama 🌕
our exercise as exorcism of time —
the oddly-staggered rhyme leaves bruises
on buds stringently-steeped, the undisclosed
grays of grass groped in dark of morning that
took hold as roots in midnight, not knowing color
not knowing how seemly to be in sun —
steps right into the rhythm of blinding fire
this prism of shadows is highways home, revealed
in daylight’s reconciliation with desire
//
Selamat Idulfitri, Eid mubarak, blessed Eid to those who observe.
Alhamdulillahirabbil’alameen. 🌙
//
The result of all this “intelligence” // (A rant)
In these final days of the holy month of Ramadan, I am publishing this “rant” on “AI” and technology. It is a long rant, cobbled together, rambling, error-prone, and possibly shouty at times, but with the enthusiasm of madness, rather than anger, I believe. I imagine it as tribute to the darkening moon, as well as Ogoh-ogoh, which is today in Bali. Ogoh-ogoh is when the demons (called ogoh-ogoh) go howling and yowling in the streets, causing violence and uproar, to be brought out, burned up and chased away for the next year. I didn’t get any photos today as we moved around our neighborhoods, but (oops, these probably are NSFW) here is the fabulous vibe.
//
I am not anti-tech. I am not anti-AI. But writing something like this feels like writing against a deluge of history, imagining the words scattered and lost in a roaring flood. (Relatable?) Sometimes purgation itself is a good thing, the locals seem to believe. There are demons in the street, I can hear them this moment, their words and their hyper-active laughter, their growls and groans and spat curses, the frantic drumbeats of their chaotic mission, accompanied by frequent pyrotechnics. So.
Tech serves only the one in posession of tech.
(Who is that one?)
For the one in possession of tech, it makes things possible on different scales then pre-tech. Colonial and then industrial-scale genocide are examples of this, as are vaccination and virality.
Communication tech (from carved writing in stone, all the way up to algorithmic social media and/or “AI”) doesn’t just convey power over bodies, but over hearts + minds, in ways that are not well-understood. (And at tech-enabled massive scales.) It grants someone (the one in possession of the communication tech) the power to sway populations.
I am not anti-tech; I blog. (Even written language, as I wrote, I consider to be tech.) I have an iphone and an induction cooktop, I use tech all the time. I am even a tech lover. (Again, I blog.) But the use of technology (especially tech that creates new needs, i.e. luxury tech) builds a kind of ethical scaffolding (ἕξις or hexis, an active condition, disposition, or habit) for a narcissistic comportment in the world. Implicit in the building of tools, even the simplest ones, is the thought that the material exists only to serve the user. Technology progressively (re)defines the world as “material”. It serves the appetites of those who can pay for it (or invest in it). Every tech is an example of this, but it’s especially poignant when the “material” is alive, as with “factory-farmed” animals. Whether a chicken is mere material, or something in itself, has become irrelevant in the (modern western, but increasingly global) day-to-day world, built by human technology.
Of course, it’s already happening: techno-fascism is the not-long leap of turning humans into “material” too.
I am also not anti-artificial intelligence. I just have a different idea of what artificial intelligence means, than the people who are setting (and selling) the terms of the conversation.
To discuss “what is artificial intelligence” would first require a discussioin of intelligence. I’ve seen no evidence or argument that what is being sold as “AI” even resembles intelligence. What paradigmatic “intelligence” are the “AI"s being tested against? What are the “benchmarks”? We are left to gauge the purpose of it by observing what it does. (This idea, “The purpose of a system is what it does”, is straight out of Aristotle too.) As far as I can tell, the benchmark of a language model is, to convince users that it’s reliable. That it doesn’t (often because it has been specifically censored) spit out a disturbing or offensive response. That when a user feels like double-checking, it matches extant data, until a user is convinced not to double-check anymore. It doesn’t matter whether the response is “true” or not, there is no available parameter for that, because “the true” is not present in the extant data. “The true” is not present in the sum total of the internet, or ten thousand internets. “The true” is not a statistical regurgitation of ten million all-over-the-place opinions.
For “AI”-generated content, the “benchmark” (as far as I, an observer, can discern) is to convince people to keep watching, to keep scrolling, to keep using. The more people it convinces, the more money it makes, the more successful it is. And bonus, the proprietary “AI” has become an indispensable source (a medium through which to interpret the world) for an entire population.
This is not knowledge, it has nothing to do with knowledge. My prediction is (to predict this seems trivial) that the holistic result of all this “intelligence” will be insanity. And then, war. Well, more war, and worse. Anyway, it strikes me as a contradiction.
Intelligence doesn’t cause or profit off of war. Intelligence doesn’t cause or promulgate insanity. Intelligence doesn’t harm the weak. Intelligence without empathy isn’t intelligence. Intelligence isn’t complacent in the face of suffering. Intelligence doesn’t perpetrate or propel people toward self-harm, genocide, or extinction. When there is a cultural consensus on intelligence, according to which intelligence does these things, that is a sign of immanent catastrophe. So even if I am all alone in doing so, I reject that definition.
Here are some “benchmarks” for artificial intelligence I would (conditionally) accept.
Where is the “AI” that prioritizes these? Not just in its words, but its actions?
So artificial intelligence, according to me, is not present in this “discourse”. Except inasmuch as any number of artists and writers and poets have always provided artwork-based interpretations of intelligence, of what it looks like or what it is, going all the way back to the (pre-human?) invention of artifice. Religious texts offer interpretations of intelligence, and state constitutions and laws, and music, and mathematics. They are all artificial intelligences. The intelligence of a dancer. Ptolemy discerning the intelligence of stars. Intelligence understands and makes room for itself as plural – it is neither an absolute, nor a scattered infinite of particulars, but worlds within worlds. Like a jungle, or an animal, or a coral reef. Or even, something like Ocean.
Technology does not and never has had a monopoly on intelligence, no matter the propaganda they’re injecting into our feeds. Tech’s monopoly is on control.
Just so, peace remains ever beyond the reach of technology, because peace is not imposed as control. That is the violent fantasy of fascism.
The easiest and therefore the only path to (techno-)fascism is through insanity. This appears to be the “benchmark” and the purpose of what is currently called “AI”, because this is by-in-large what “AI” (in a mutually-servicing arrangement with algorithmic social media) does. It turns people into users, turns users into the used, and turns the Earth into a ball of flaming garbage. A junkies’ den. This is our new politics, or lack thereof. Other “use-cases” – (e.g., if it can practice and propagate anti-fascism as hexis, as an active condition) – will be rare, if not merely accidental.
Because technology is essentially narcissistic and only accidentally good.
It requires education as a precursor, with subsequent active intention and effort, for a human person to be healthy and good. Education if successful puts us on a path toward (empathy, as David said) sensing the depth of the full breadth of the world, as well as our own depths, and sensitizing us to our limits and boundaries in these contexts, rather than imagining ourselves to be little kings. So education was needed to temper technology. American education, including its incentive structures, has done almost the reverse. Not just by emphasizing STEM and pumping money into innovation, but also using standardized testing to measure children’s worth. By design, even our education has been in service to tech.
As I’ve mentioned before, my only political view is (public, obviously) education. Education is the living soul of (human, obviously?) politics. All else in any political constitution should be organized to protect and serve education. While the end (telos) of education is active inquiry into the discovery, expression, and interpretation of justice, as the end (telos) of politics, of what it means to be just.
That is the secret teaching of “philosopher kings”, by the way – that education alone must rule.
(Here I offer yet another on-the-fly-interp of Plato’s Republic. I say it to acknowledge the hubris of it, but also to express gratitude for the ancient technology that has somehow educated me, though any errors are my own. And I might change the word order tomorrow. Wink emoji.)
(Here I note further, as my “rant” fizzles out, that I never intended to write on the Republic for my blog, not even in oblique terms. This blog is a constant meditation on the Phaedrus, I stubbornly maintain, where we find ourselves in a quasi-mystical meta-political realm. However, here as in the Phaedrus, politics is fully capable of accompanying us outside city walls, presented and represented by its – ugliest and most beautiful – faces.
For me at least, a reference to the Republic is a reference to the past. Lol, that’s also hubris. I hope very soon to get back to more direct engagement with the textual object of my adoration, beginning with some remarks on “the chariot”. However, I’m very bad at promises. The best way for me NOT to do something has always been for me to promise to do it. I would be a very bad employee of myself. Deadlines are unnecessary, we are worlds-building, after all. So no promises, just surprises.)
This flashed across my incredulous and hungry eyes today. Okay. Islamaphobia, they say. But in another way (from another perspective of Islam) this is the truest tattoo you could ever get. It’s like getting a giant tattoo of “asshole” across your chest.
We were laughing about it, because things suddenly seemed very funny. “Oke Jeki, go hunt it like a cicak (gecko),” my husband said. And we just couldn’t stop laughing, it was just so funny. These are the useful idiots of the basilisk.
All it has are its useful idiots.
Mask firmly engaged: these long posts always strike me as narcissistic. For example, imagining all the time it would take someone to read these words, and still posting them. So I guess one thing I’m wandering-around-about-on-here is the possibility of whether you can fight narcissism with a narcissistic act. This is what poetry is, and anyone who has ever experienced a glimmer of the joy of writing knows this, even if they won’t admit it, that poetry is engagement of a deep (and hopefully redeemable, if somehow self-defeating) narcissism.
I control every little blip that’s on here, almost.
//
Tomorrow is Nyepi, Bali’s silent day, so the demons fly away. For twenty-four hours we’re not supposed to make noise or use electricity, and internet and celular are often down. Even though I guess nowhere else celebrates Nyepi, I can still say Selamat Nyepi, have a nice Nyepi. Even from a distance, to imagine an island (a party island) that is totally peaceful, no cars or motorbikes or airplanes, with birdsong taking over the entire sky, as if everybody has suddenly disappeared, an empty day that darkens down quickly to unlit night, so that it disappears from the satellite photos, is also an effect. So just imagine the sound of Bali without humans. That’s where we will be, when the purification rites are over, and I’m not posting on my blog.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far. Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🔥🌑✨
//
Ironically(?), when I write about fascism, my voice goes into führer mode.
Take a deep breath, I say to my heart. Peace is every l — e — t — t — e — r.
The anti-gospel (of TESCREAL + “AI”) //
I’ve been trying to write something about the “TESCREAL bundle” but it’s such a weirdly traumatizing thing to think about, no I wrote that wrong, what it is, is triggering. So far the thing I’ve written is very long and weird and if I end up posting it, everybody is welcome to skip it. It makes me feel like a crazy person to write about this. I scrapped and rewrote, it’s shorter now at least. Maybe I’ll post it tomorrow.
Understanding (the myths told amongst the perpetrators) clarifies.
Baldur Bjarnason posted an excellent fact sheet on AI and its connections with esoteric neo-nazism, in which he includes TESCREAL. His post is full of great links for different perspectives on the political history and directionality of “AI”. I relate to his initial hesitance to write about it, and I appreciate that he has. His own conclusions are stark but apt.
Especially of interest I found the website and blog of Dan McQuillen. For example a talk he gave, back in 2019, Towards an anti-fascist AI. I have my own idiosyncratic writings on anti-fascist “AI”, but that seems to be something nobody is looking for, lol. (Let’s invent a new category of irony specifically for “AI”.)
Then I read this AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality , via @tracydurnell, which describes the mutual amplification of algorithmic power and “AI”-generated content. “AI” is “brute forcing” social media by overwhelming slower, less algorithmically-responsive human creators. I’m trying to imagine politics in that context and I… can’t quite.
(Tracy draws this tidy anti-TESCREAL conclusion in her post: “we must work from principles, not merely towards an outcome.”
Related not-by-accident, TESCREAL is consequentialism, drawn to technology-enabled absurds.)
I first read about the “TESCREAL bundle” in 2023, in this article by Émile Torres. It made me nauseous and I hoped its relevance would wane. This is a very dark topic and nobody wants to write about it, least of all me, but it seems to have become more relevant, not less, these past months. So something I’m working on is understanding and describing TESCREAL in my own words.
I think there will (and should) be a multitude of perspectives providing critical interpretations of TESCREAL and the related encroachment of “AI” technology. I also think it’s key to understand this “bundle” as a whole, and try to give it unifying names to better understand its meaning. Names will come not just from the context of history, but from the broadly-conceived history of philosophy, as well as theology and ontology. Established religious traditions will also have critiques of TESCREAL, and many will resist (or are already resisting) for their own reasons. (At least, those that aren’t captured by online fascist political movements.) Let there be folk stories too, the more, the better. The anti-gospel of TESCREAL + “AI” should be spread far and wide.
As it becomes believable, it’s time to call it what it is.
//
There’s a strong wind and rainstorm tonight, we’ve had these daily for almost a week now. Strong enough to be scary.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌒
Notes on techne.
//
There is no eros in technology.
(Technology is anti-erotic,
Ending in the endlessness of desire.)
Techne is the technology of Allah.
(Techne is Al-Khaliq, Al-Bari, Al-Musawwir.
Eros is Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem.)
Poetry is erotic techne.
(The Qur’an is poetry of poetry.
The basmala —
Bismillah hir rahman nir raheem
By the Name of Allah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem
— is the poet’s seed.
The poet of poets is the Prophet,
Recollection as Self-conservation.)
The stranger (X) is the poet as lover.
Thoth is the poet as technician.
//
Phaedrus is a (the) passion.
//
Prayer becomes mantra
And we are taken for a ride —
//
Of time. //
This was, in fact
The creation
Of the human —
The first ape who took
A swing and
Hacked off a piece of God. (It was
As always
A piece of herself.) It was also
The invention of writing.
Logos descends from a (golden) lutung
Justice from the gentle orangutan
Guerrilla from gorilla (forever Dian)
And monkey business from a macaque.
Let us become primate and
Undo the butchery of time.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌔
The thing that I’m most afraid of is dying in anger.
Unsafe Spaces and the Privilege of Peace
//
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.
I do not know you. Neither do I know myself.
My desire is to be honest, and to welcome you here.
I espouse neither hatred nor violence.
//
I consider my “real life” to be qualitatively different from my writing and reading life. I suspect there is no one best way to express, explain, or “argue for” this, especially in the ingrained contemporary context of social media. But here, following my own experience, I will try to tease apart the difference.
I love having conversations about books and ideas. I have always sought them out, despite being a socially anxious person. Here are a few examples. I founded a “philosophy club”, with friends, when I was in high school; I went to a unique college where classes consisted of nothing other than text-based seminar conversation; I didn’t want it to stop, so I sought out more in graduate school; as a “teacher”, sitting in a circle with my students, I imposed the same (in my opinion) heavenly practice on them; I also founded a women’s book club, and helped keep it active, until I moved away from the United States.
My personal dream of paradise involves so many conversations, with all kinds of people, over books. These take place as in a state of perpetual youth, around an otherwise quiet seminar table. The scent of springtime occasionally drifts in from an open window, or perhaps it’s fall, with the toasted crunch of fallen leaves and a hot cup of tea. (It is not my present, tropical climate.) Yes, my heart flutters up into my throat when there’s an awkward silence. Or when I’ve made a mistake in argument or expression, I think I might vomit. It doesn’t feel good to be misunderstood or ignored. Nobody carries the same baggage, we are all different, and we speak very often at cross-purposes. So it’s messy and confused. Questions are gaping, answers are rare and the whole experience can be quite terrifying.
But it is the most torturous and humbling and wonderful trial. (To write about it makes me tear up with nostalgia.) Every individual is equally anchored to this gorgeous disaster that occasionally converges in a sublime moment of realization. I love it, it has shaped and nourished me more and better than any other form of social interaction. That, and singing in a chorus, (preferably Mozart, but anything really), are my absolute favorite ways to be part of a group of human people.
In contrast, “online conversation” has always repulsed me. I remember to this day the confusion and then sort of visceral discomfort I felt when F-cebook introduced status updates, and a timeline. I could never explain why, but I could find no use for it. It seemed both too public and too mute, too casual and too leaden. There was nothing I could say that I wanted to say. Soon after, I stopped using the platform. After that, I never really participated in “social media”, until I started this blog.
“This” is not “me”. From the outset, I’ve been pretty heavy-handed (look, I wear a mask in my avatar) in expressing myself according to this, my apparently unusual intuition. But I wanted to be clear with you, and honest, and this was the only way it would work.
So I do not claim an “online identity”. It doesn’t feel healthy or right to do so. And from what I have seen, of these online “places”, it’s not healthy for anybody. To identify closely with an “online persona” isn’t conducive to learning about oneself, or the world.
One reason for this might be the multiple alienations involved in the activity of writing and reading online. These are each complicated, but just in brief. First, to express myself in writing is poetic alienation from myself, as I am, in my body and place. Then, to consume “other people” through their writing is to alienate them from their body and place. This is alienation from the (unwritten, unexpressed, personal-historical, perhaps sub- or unconscious) conditions that might help me better understand who they are, as themselves.
Then, to “read people” online is also a kind of alienation from all of the living people who do not write online, or even, write at all. I think about these people often, I am rather haunted by them. These are the people from whom I will never read, the ones I will only ever read about. The poor, the starving, the refugees, the tech-less masses who appear in news articles about natural and geopolitical disasters. But also, this includes a lot of normal, everyday people, from all over the world. There are many who have no desire to appear in such an alienated form, as is required for entry into the world of online writing.
Finally, “reading people” online is alienation from the living people who are present to me daily, in what I call my “real life”.
This present world of living people, my local and embodied community (family, friends, and neighbors), demand negotiation and compromise in a plethora of ways. It isn’t quite a seminar conversation, (and there’s usually no book involved), but it’s not altogether different. For one thing, we can’t really avoid each other. This is sometimes frustrating, disturbing, annoying, even frightening. Sometimes, we need to ask a person’s help, sometimes to help deal with somebody else. We all have our different personal histories and perspectives. Different ones of us call for different expectations, different treatment, and a different response. Sometimes I adjust my expression toward someone deliberately, in order to avoid confrontation. Sometimes I do it habitually, addressing certain people (elders, community leaders, bosses, professors, doctors) with a certain kind of respect. With friends or intimates, I might tread carefully, especially if there’s a difficult subject but I sense the potential for common ground.
As I mentioned, I’m socially anxious. I have some trouble with eye contact, and I often find myself at a loss for words, or staring off into space. But I do my best, basically because I have no other choice. I like people, for the most part. So it’s worth it to me, to put up with discomfort, although I don’t habitually seek it out. Luckily, I live in a place where people like to come over and visit. They are always very insistent that we visit them back.
//
But “real life” isn’t easy. It requires adaptation, compromise, and (I believe, if you do it well), a constant effort toward reconciliation.
Like most people, I hold certain beliefs close to my heart. And I know better than to expect everybody around me to be (my belief, my opinion, or my strongly-held conviction, of what is) right and good. For example, I am a long-time (>15 years) strict vegetarian/vegan.
(Side note. I bring up veganism not to be divisive, but because it’s an obvious and accessible example of being alienated through “real life” customary practice from an ostensible community. My blog, and even this post, is chock-full of other analogous relationships.)
I believe that “to eat meat” is, more-or-less, murder. This means that I live side-by-side with murderers, in community, in many different circumstances. My family are murderers. My neighbors are murderers. Almost all of my friends are murderers. I myself was previously a murderer. It’s quite terrible to live in a world full of murderers. Even members of my supposed political cohort (which, as an academic, was leftist progressive) pretty consistently deride veganism. There is no sympathy offered to vegans, who have chosen their alternate path, and so have taken a burden on themselves. They are often invoked as the definition of “privilege”, used in the pejorative sense. Over the years, I have worked on how to deal with that. Social alienation can be soul-destroying, but ditching my (otherwise relatively easy) practice of compassion seemed far worse.
So one of the important spiritual lessons of being vegan, for me, has been the effort it takes to understand and forgive the non-vegan world (including my pre-vegan self). To live, think, and engage, without being blinded by constant anger. (To be clear. The anger is at the vast and unfathomable harm involved in modern animal agriculture, the relative ease of removing one’s support from that institution, and the flagrant embrace of “my people” of the dietary status quo.) When I first “went vegan”, I implicitly assumed everybody else would too, simply because our (U.S. American) normal eating habits were so obviously unsustainable. Well, I was obviously naive. (What can I say as an excuse, other than, it was 2008.)
To tame one’s own righteous anger is a basic need, I think, for anybody who, in “real life”, observes a minority belief. Especially so when that belief has dawned later in life, so it feels intentional, like a well-earned choice. Another relevant factor is if that belief is related to justice, or the common good. (I think those who are religious will relate to this too.) Rejecting the “real world” is not an option, but neither is grudging silence. The work is not just to compromise, but to overcome the temptation of alienation and hatred. To not, for example, become the next unibomber.
There’s an irony here. Once one takes the first simple but substantial (because active and everyday) step toward non-violence, one is suddenly presented with a heavy lesson in social alienation. One becomes, in a way, the young Mohandas Gandhi, stumbling around London. The accomplishment doesn’t make things easier. The lure of anger and violence does not dimish, but compounds. Dedication to non-violence is called upon to become measurably more deliberate and serious, as a kind of self-calibrating lesson. Not only to “turn the other cheek”, but to love.
Reconciliation, not by reversion to violence but through some hypothesis of love, becomes a perpetually humbling task.
//
Writing, whereby I separate my words from my local and embodied self, sending them off into a realm of unmoored digital flux, is different.
Writing enjoys freedom from the necessities of “real life”, and many of its compromises. I can make my online writing whatever I believe it should be. It is limited only by my ingenuity and imagination. I no longer need even to submit myself to the messy and imperfect vicissitudes of a group seminar. (Not to mention, subjecting it to the demands of mainstream publication.) My writing can, if I am capable of creating it so, become its own perfect world. This is why I love writing, but also how I know to be cautious of it.
Online writing and reading can seem like a dream come true. The inconveniences of “real life” are many, compared to a written fantasy. The incentives to grapple with its necessities, beyond addressing basic needs, are few, other than a desire for social engagement. It seems that “social media” might, by re-introducing social “others” into a written world, alleviate a tendency toward narrowly-built and myopically-occupied psycheic spaces. “Others” are present as apparently spontaneous written words in the feed, and the user receives social “others” through reading words they did not themselves compose.
However, one chief function of social media has been to increase the degree of our self-curation, as readers. Social media users accept textualized (and thereby alienated) others into their field of view, but only as they choose. Others are not there by presence, accident, reason, or necessity. Even those we choose “to follow” (which really means, to summon onto our screens) have no embodied presence. They never actually go anywhere. Astounding dimensions of the other source remain invisible and excluded from the social media feed. The user fills these gaps with their imagination. Sometimes charitably, sometimes less so, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.
The result is that social media users surround themselves with figments of their own imagination. To do otherwise might not be impossible, but it requires the superhuman task of “imagining into being” other peoples' substantial otherness. That is, one must do something for which there is vanishingly little incentive. One must will into imaginative existence all the ugly, confusing, and messy realities of an in-person, non-addictive, locally intimate relationship. Rather than letting that otherness slip away into the void, along with the actual work of relationship building. (Let alone, community.) Which is to say, the easiest thing to do is to avoid the ethical and educative challenges of alienation and reconciliation.
It is not work to get along with a curated timeline. Or rather, it is only the work that the user has (with or without consideration) chosen not to ignore.
This almost necessarily lends itself to narcissistic and histrionic comportment toward others. It teaches social behavior through a simulation of social engagement that eliminates the natural obstacles of “real life”. It’s not even that individuals become tyrants (although the bigger and better-platformed “influencers” often do). But that people, identifying closely with their “online personae”, cultivate mutual and exclusive tyrannies with each other. They build these structures with written snippets of easily-affirmed (or excluded) dogma, including codified language that seems invented for this very purpose. They utilize all the reflexive responses available to the social media machine (“likes”, thumbs-up, retweets, etc.) as tools to fortify the borders. To succeed in a social media “world” is nothing other than to indulge and confirm others' and one’s own very worst neuroses.
It is unnervingly easy to sense whether or not one “belongs” in these sealed-off groups, what are often called “communities”. The lines of exclusion are clearly-enforced and absolute. You’re in, or you’re out. As for me, I’ve only ever floated by, as a silent observer, what one might call a lurker, or possibly an “NPC”. There was never any real reason to participate. Challenging perspectives are welcome only in orthodox and accepted modes. Subversion is made impossible, with alternate possibilities of engagement either unacknowledged or disallowed. It is obvious, from the outset, exactly what one is expected to say. Needless to say, I recognize nothing of my heavenly seminar conversation in this mode of social participation. To me, it is literal hell.
Most of us have experienced, recognized, and to some degree rejected this dynamic. It is mainstream social media in a nutshell, regardless of which profiteer owns the platform. And it encourages people, everywhere, (and increasingly, it seems, on purpose), to grow in catastrophic directions.
I don’t wish to cultivate those tendencies, in myself or others. I imagine you don’t either, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading my blog.
//
In distinguishing the modes of “real life” versus writing and reading, I think the distinction between “play” and “serious danger” is both useful and substantial, if not cut-and-dry. Writing and reading are done in play, while seriousness is reserved for what is present, real, and historical.
(A lot of ink has been spilled on this topic in the academic field of hermeneutics, specifically by Hans-Georg Gadamer. But the idea goes all the way back to the poetic subject of my never-ending adoration/translation, Plato’s Phaedrus. Here, I briefly summarize how I experience this distinction, with regard to my habit as a writer and reader of blogs.)
Alienation endows me with this dubious privilege. That my true self is protected from you, by all these layers of separation. Each word is a half-silvered glass. I’m kind of here, but kind of not. Almost like you. I remind us of this, in all of these silly and unsubtle ways. My personal (hi)stories on here are relevant, but only as footsteps that might lead to some other thing. That other thing is not a fact or piece of information. I am not a newspaper journalist. I am a human person, and my blog is where I meet myself, in writing. Here, I engage your immateriality as a way of invoking and experimenting with my own.
In return, I do not “read you” for the purpose of judging you, in any serious way. I gave up on that endeavor (if temporarily) when I stopped “teaching”, when I stopped marching and shouting in the streets for political causes, when I moved away from the United States, when I took a break from talking to my neighbors and intimates, and started reading the internet, instead. This, here, is something other than that. I always enjoy you, and I would never shout at you, or even give you a grade (lol). The worst I would ever do is to leave you, un-read. I think you probably wouldn’t even notice that. You are in no serious danger from me. I’m really here for us to play a kind of game.
Maybe this is unusual, but I desire multitudes in the “people” I read. I have a voracious, almost unhealthy appetite for it. If there is anything that draws me into the way you express an idea, I want to read you. I’ve found this to be so, regardless of whether I agree with you, or not. Often, agreement doesn’t even apply. You can write about almost anything, from the obscure or intellectual, to the lowest-grade gossip, through “over-sharing” and adolescent “cringe”, to theological or political argument. And don’t get me started on “the boring”. The more boring you seem, the more captivated I am by any accidental glimpse of the hidden world that I know (and perhaps this is my unshakable faith?) is concealed therein.
I am a fiend! I will read you until I am exhausted. Or until I feel ill. Or until something in “real life” pulls me away.
You, to me, are the advantage of being alive right now. You are Odysseus’s oceanic world to explore. An entire internet of extant written work is literally at my fingertips, waiting for me to read and puzzle-solve (and weep with joy) and (mis)understand. Sometimes, to out-trick and escape. Always, to make the story my very own. So how could I confine myself to a textual dimension of self-curated agreement? I’m reckless too, like “the man of many turns”. I do not ask my reading to be “safe”, in fact, that would defeat my very purpose, my deepest desire. Which, as Aristotle points out at the beginning of the Metaphysics, is to see and to know, as whole, the whole of whatever there is to know.
(By the way. If you are reading this, there is a pretty good chance that I already read everything that you post on the internet. And I appreciate all of it, so thanks for expressing yourself in writing. When I write, I’m sure it reflects everything that I have read. I have most likely taken you into account. If you doubt that’s the case, and think I may not “read you”, please send a note by email or through Micro.blog. I will happily add your writing to my RSS feed. This wouldn’t be charity, to repeat, this would be you helping me satisfy my voracious appetite.)
Complementary to this, I do not consider my blog a “safe space”. I meet myself here, and as you can tell by now, I am not “safe”. However, my blogging is done in play, and not as war. In writing, I entertain danger for the sake of discovery, and not from a desire or intent to do harm. I do not pose questions from cruelty, and unless it seems very important, I would hate to hurt your feelings. By telling you, for example, that your feelings aren’t real. I do not believe that at all. I believe that your feelings are immanently real. And if anything I write is ever too painful for you, (or makes you feel ill, or heaven forbid, abused), please, look away.
Here are some examples of my repugnant beliefs, just for fun. (This is me, poking out a Cyclops' eye.) I don’t believe in free will. I don’t believe in historical progress. I don’t believe in human rights. (I do not consider myself a humanist.) I don’t believe “science is knowledge”. I don’t believe information is knowledge, either. I don’t believe all men (or all human beings) are created equal. For that matter, I don’t believe Thomas Jefferson was a genius, or particularly smart, or a good person, at all, (not just for being a serial rapist, but also for that). And I dislike the Declaration of Independence. Etc.
I do believe in other things, that are sometimes difficult to express (and less codified or quantified) in modern terms. (I read a lot of very old books, very early in life.) But these things are often intuitive from an unstudied perspective. I do, for example, believe in being kind. I believe in nature. I believe in human needs. While history may be up for grabs, I treat myself as a work in progress. And in case I haven’t yet made myself clear, above all else, I believe in Love.
//
But “real life” is complicated.
“Real life” amounts to navigating situations I didn’t choose, and never would have chosen. Injustice happens, that’s “real life”. Despite a lifelong effort, there remain many things (mostly involving human people) that simply don’t make sense to me. And yet, “real life” always takes precedence over writing and reading. Sometimes it does so by force. At actually dangerous moments in my “real life”, I stay well away from the “publish” button. Complimentary to that, I hope and pray that when you are in serious danger, you have elsewhere to turn, than to read my (or any) blog.
In my “real life”, I have responded in (sometimes regrettably) absolute ways to political difference. I do not like giving my tacit approval to abhorrent political positions. I do not like sitting at the dinner table with that, or praying with that. I have cut family members out of my life, for years at a time, after finding myself unable to sway them from their support for (what I view as) very bad, and possibly evil, political actors. I’ve made my mother cry too many times. I have mixed feelings about it. I’m not sure how much “real life” good any of it has done.
“Real life” also includes decisions about how to obtain and spend money. Like most people, I try to make ethical decisions, and not to support “evil”. (As I said previously, I’m not here to judge you. I’m sure you do your best. I do too.) For me, veganism is obviously part of my attempt, as food takes up a massive portion of my family’s budget. I’m proud of the money we don’t put toward destruction and collapse acceleration. But in certain areas of “real life”, including medical care, I find that these commitments require compromise. And then, when it comes to technology (phones, tablets, computers, various digital “subscriptions” and “services”), which are all ostensibly luxury items, (and yet, somehow, not really?), matters get incredibly complicated. To avoid the stress of calculating the practically incalculable, I try simply to buy (and to pay for) as little “tech” as possible.
(Here, I arrive finally at the thorn in my side, which prompted this entire, novella-length post. It was a deluge of controversy that struck a virtually microscopic online space. This piece of writing became much longer than I expected or wanted it to be, but maybe now it fits the prompt, even better. If you’ve read this far, then surely you deserve to have my opinion on the issue, which is to say, my “real life” rough calculation.)
The amount of money I pay to my host and platform service, Micro.blog, is relatively small ($5/month). But it’s one of these exceedingly complicated “tech” expenditures. For the sake of comparison, I will probably have to buy a new phone this year, as my screen and casing have cracked for the third time, (each time having repaired it at the local shop, here in Indonesia, where authorized Apple is not-a-thing). The display is starting to malfunction in weird ways, preventing me from hanging up at the end of calls. It’s not ideal. A new phone will cost me, at the low end, $700. That’s more than 11 years’ worth of Micro.blog service. I will hand this money over to a corporation whose CEO has just openly gifted a million dollars to the U.S. American president. I don’t like to support that, not at all. But I will, probably, because the alternatives are not really any better.
I have very little idea what goes into the Micro.blog product. (I am not “a computer person”.) Much of it is invisible to me. But cancelling the service, based on a few embarrassing (and at this point, amply-shamed) posts from a contracted employee, seems patently absurd.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t know these people. I can’t read what’s in their minds, let alone in their hearts. Even or especially when they try to put these things in writing. Like most “tech guys”, they are not the best at expressing their feelings. Nor are they good at resisting the siren song of “shiny new things”. They’re not public relations experts, critical theorists, or acclaimed poets. They are, as many have pointed out, “cis het white men”. Please don’t take this the wrong way, either. But ten years ago, at most fifteen or twenty years ago, I wager you wouldn’t have used those words, or perhaps even known them. With their quick categorization according to hierarchical possibilities of personal well-being, organizing “real life” with deceptive ease, they are pretty clearly born from the hellscape of mainstream “social media”. It’s ok. I promised, I’m not here to judge you.
But dear God. Isn’t it time for a little humility?
I can’t read what’s in your heart. Mine, also, is often a mystery to me. And yet I write this blog, and expose you to my idiosyncratic observations and negations and whatever else flows from these (sometimes, apparently, deranged) fingers. The deeper the question, the weightier the responsibility. I take care to caution you regularly about my writing, because I have (to some degree) been humbled. I am not blind to my limitations, which are personal, to be sure, but also inherent in the very act of writing online. I have no way of knowing who or what is on the other end of this, and how it might influence anybody at all.
I am words in the dark, mixing with other words, in the dark. Nothing here is pure. This risk is incalculable in a whole other way.
However. I do believe that “indie blogging” is peak anti-fascist internet participation, right there alongside other things that get too complicated and dangerous for me (in “real life”) to consider (like hacking, or espionage). So by my rough calculation. Even if I’m paying a few USD a month to a closeted fascist fanboy, and his slow-to-respond, painfully naive boss, who doesn’t give anybody the exact official statement they demand, (Honestly, I don’t believe this is fundamentally who I am dealing with. I think these are just normal, well-intentioned, clumsy communicators. But as I said, there is no real way for me to know), that is still ok with me. Really ok, in “real life” fact. Because my rough calculation still holds.
Fascism, in this exchange, has gotten the raw end of the deal. This right here—me, with my un-timely and meandering response, (and you with yours, which I am pretty sure I have already read, and for which I was grateful)—This right here is the true revolution.
We win.
Speaking of which,
//
From a theoretical or “philosophical” perspective. There remain open questions (OPEN QUESTIONS, I am tempted to shout, but in “real life” I know better) that current U.S. American political discourse has shut down into black-and-white demands for allegiance. “Shutting down open questions” is how many people respond to fear and uncertainty (i.e. danger, real or perceived). That’s understandable, I’ve done that too. Emergencies require reflexive, rather than circumspect, action.
But when the (federated or not) world of online writing is treated as a battlefield, it precludes thoughtful engagement and learning. (It also builds resentment and misunderstanding.) So it precludes U.S. Americans (as their online-written personae) from thoughtfully engaging with each other in open-minded ways. It also precludes thoughtful engagement between U.S. Americans and people from throughout the world, who come from vastly different traditions and cultures. (And subcultures, and marginalized minorities, not to mention individual people who are utterly unique. I want to believe. They do exist.)
A lack of thoughtful dialogue, and the decreased capacity for it, has ripped “the United States of America”, as a “real life” political entity, apart. This has subjected everybody in the world, (in the “real life” world, whether they are recognized by U.S. American discourse as “marginalized”, or not), to exponentially greater danger.
Every living thing, subject to death, becomes “marginalized” by war.
Above all, shutting down open questions precludes inquiry into the truth. (This includes inquiry concerning God, nature, the divine.) Peace, perhaps, is not just a prerequisite for such inquiry, but also its end. Rightly labelled as a “privilege”, and wrongly available to some more than others, peace, (or as it is sometimes misleadingly labeled, “leisure”), is that very thing for which we might courageously endure countless discomforts or dangers. But to shut down inquiry into open questions enacts the opposite transaction. It sacrfices all of this—-truth, God, and the potential for discovering a common cause—-in the name of making war.
War is ignorance in action. Non-violence is the only foundation for understanding. My priority here (on my blog, in my writing) will always be the latter. This isn’t because myself and my loved ones are safe from the imminent and global danger whose toxic vortex looms over the country of my birth. Nobody anywhere is safe. But I believe that the only thing that will redeem any of the “real life” destruction, that is already well underway, is to be found in and through truth and understanding.
Which means, for me and my blog, that we’re staying here. To exercise my capacity, in full view of the problematic and unsafe creature that (in “real life”) I am, to discover, envision, and enact, a life, in writing, of peace.
Thanks for reading, to anyone who got this far.
_ Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin._ 🌒
//
On Introspection and Ideology // One Year on “Micro.blog”
As prologue. I’ve been thinking about what Denny wrote here the last few days, and I wanted to thank him for putting it in such stark terms. I think this is an important conversation to have, but not an easy one, especially to address in a public way. This is not intended as an argument against Denny’s initial post. This is my perspective, which I believe overlaps with his in a significant way, but from some different angles. I share here for the sake of supporting, by responding to, his statement, while reflecting our plurality of voices.
“This is who we are.”
Given that I agree with Denny’s assessment of the country’s genocidal history, as a supplement to its present and future likelihood of violence and (self- and other-) harm, that this is its basic definition or essence. On what grounds is there any “we”? If the “we” is defined, tied together and made one, only by those lies and that violence, then how can it be owed any allegiance?
So quickly, for me, the statement, “this is who we are”, becomes the question, “Is this who I am?”
I think that’s more challenging to address, but also, more welcoming. It’s a question, it requires introspection, which is intrinsically uncomfortable, and it will indicate responsibility, which is doubly so. It’s not easy to tease apart national identity (including ideology, lifestyle, family, etc.) from a sense of who you are. It’s grown into all of us in different ways, in ways not at all easy to see or know about ourselves. I would repeat that, we have been brought up in violence. Introspection is bound to dig up the deepest traumas. And I guess there would be as many ways of answering (“Is this who I am?") as there are individual people “around here”.
Speaking of “around here”. A lot of online people talk about seeking community, and they seem to mean by that, affirmation, support, a feeling of safety, agreement, optimism, positive vibes. This makes complete sense, to me. It’s hard for people to feel empowered, without an initial feeling of safety, or rest, or support. I sympathize and I believe that the moral support of online communities for sharing (as people search for a surrogate “we”) is real, valuable, and important.
But I also share Denny’s frustration, that more people in the global north (generally) aren’t incorporating real lifestyle changes (i.e. major simplifying, quitting air travel, eating plants, or other fasting, broadly conceived) in solidarity with those (in and out of the geographic U.S.A.) on the receiving end of a malignant culture of violence and exploitation. (Or if they are, “around here”, they are not posting about it regularly. But also, and this is important to acknowledge, it would never be regularly enough.) Lifestyle changes, incidentally, seem to me more sustainable, more personally empowering, less scary, and probably more effective than organizing for direct confrontation. (Especially for “online types” of people, if I may compassionately akcnowledge that.) I realize also that people resist lifestyle change, for real reasons. It is stressful. When someone is already feeling vulnerable, or exhausted, the last thing they want to do is voluntarily increase their discomfort, which lifestyle change entails. And also, of course, there is supernaturally intense pressure, in dominantly global northern online “places”, to maintain a high-powered lifestyle, to keep up with everyone else’s consumption of new and more stuff. And the ubiquitous implied promise that more stuff will make you happy, or at least, less afraid.
These are things I know that Denny knows, because of the way he lives, and the way he writes about the value of a bag of beans. He writes about it like it’s precious. Which, in truth, it is.
Here is another sliver of irony, which has again to do with the people “around here”. The very act of “moving” onto the independent web, and saying “no” to the loud and abusive “places” of mainstream social media, is an anti-fascist lifestyle change, it seems to me. It is a kind of fasting. It represents sobriety from that extreme form of psychic addiction, (and anybody reading this will know exactly the feeling of sickness), which is mainstream social media. That means, everybody “around here” has taken one real and concrete step, at the very least, demonstrating who they are not. Concrete steps, when they are shared, build a sense of solidarity. And then, “we” are and remain, together, addicts in recovery. As they say, recovery is an everyday effort, which you (InsyaAllah) undertake, every day for the rest of your life.
Is it enough? (Being on the “indie web”.) No. And then, nothing will ever be enough. Not to undo history and the catastrophic effects of American (and other colonial) empire, plus its bottomless appetite for increasingly, stupidly powerful technology, with which it is choking the world. What’s done is done, tipping points were in-all-likelihood conclusively demolished, on Nov. 5, and the future has become ugly indeed. But plenty of paths remain for introspection, and self-possession, by self-sacrifice, by helping others, by standing up for others, by doing work you believe in, work that you stand for, (which includes writing or making art), which (InsyaAllah) become the artifacts that plant seeds of support or inspiration for nobody knows what, but everybody (“around here”) wants to believe.
Here is what I believe, anyway. That introspection is and will always be everything, in the work of anti-fascism, and introspection requires seeking out, actively and intentionally, the quiet voices that pose difficult questions. By which I mean not just the brown peoples' voices who live on the other side of the world, or in the other part of the state, which (apparently) remain abstract figures, for the majority of U.S. Americans. But also, and I mean this in seriousness, the quiet voices of the heart. This is not abstract, this is the opposite of abstract. People may well have different capacities for it, and it will mean different things for every person, to answer the question, in their heart of hearts, (and thereupon reflecting it in their actions), “Is this who I am?” The individual nature of the question means that asking it, in a genuine way, will take time and (what I would call spiritual) work, it will be awkward and ugly, and it will often feel like alienation, or rejection, like the opposite of community. It is notoriously difficult to keep the same group of friends, before and after you release an addiction.
At the same time, I think all of us, always, can use regular reminders of how empowering it is, and how empowering it feels, simply to withhold support from, or investment in, a terrible cause. This is intrinsically difficult to “share”, while it is easy to “share” a new purchase or service or accessory. This is in evidence, for example, all over micro.blog’s discover feed (last time I checked, which was probably a long time ago, because it is peak gaslit Hobbiton, over there). Perhaps people have carried over this habit from mainstream, monetized social media. Because even in the “indie” context of micro.blog, there remains ample expressed support, (which could easily and freely be withheld), of a violent regime enabled not just by fear, and hate, but also by our blind addictions to its poisonous products, in exchange for which many have delivered (or have lost, or are in the process of losing) their very souls. The amplified sharing of products consumed is in no way, at this point, politically neutral.
I guess this also fits as my “one-year anniversary” review, of micro.blog as a service. It works perfectly adequately for me, as a host. Please, no more “A.I.”. Please, keep it simple. The “social” aspect is something else. I’m not going anywhere, probably, as long as @manton can keep it running. But I’m curious to see how the platform and the people deal with what’s coming, with the ongoing human crisis, in all of its aspects, but especially with political deterioration in the U.S.A. Not because U.S. American suffering is worse, than the rest of the world’s suffering, but because U.S. American voices are almost always the loudest, “around here”. And I wonder how “we” will absorb, process, accommodate, and/or respond to the increasing expressions, not only of suffering, but also of violence, explicit and implicit, that make it through, into the blogs. Will what “we” see be a reflection of reality? And whose? Responsible governance also requires introspective effort.
While who this is, the surrogate “we” of “around here”, remains to be seen, I turn this question also back on myself. “How will I do this?”, I keep on asking, over here, in my head, in my in-person life, (which is extremely different in social and cultural character than anything “around here”), and in my blog writing. I’m a stubborn person but I have some experience sacrificing what I believe is good and right for the sake of getting along with a(n in-person, neighborhood, or family) community. I’ve written some about this, but I don’t focus on it, for obvious reasons. I can keep my head down, not make trouble, and I don’t need explicit approval or applause to carry on my own work. I am surely unskilled, awkward, and inexperienced, navigating the whole “social media” scene. For the most part, I avoid confrontation, and also what is called, around here, “conversation”, (which is, for what it’s worth, nothing like the conversations on which I was raised).
But I know this about myself, I have a line. There are things I don’t abide, in the way of abuse, and I’ve been known to pick up and leave, institutional situations, in pretty abrupt ways. (e.g., “I renounce my credentials.") What I’m saying is, if I speak or write about “running off into the jungle”, it’s not an abstract possibility.
My (anxiety and) prediction is this, that the yearning for community is about to get much more desperate, and much more concrete, for all those in the U.S., and perhaps “the West” more broadly. I don’t have solutions for building online relationships, (other than the obvious one, which is, use email), much less for governing online communities, much less anything “on the ground” in the U.S. I have scattered family and friends, and that’s all, in the country of my birth and ongoing citizenship. I will not be travelling there, during a Tr-mp regime. (Even if I wanted or needed to go, it would be too dangerous for my husband, and he wouldn’t let me go alone.) So in this way too, I feel like a mis-fitted part of the U.S. American “we”, gone but not gone, a part of it, but in an estranged and displaced position. This mostly serves as a reminder, to me, that everybody’s situation is unique, and most people, at this point, also have specific ways in which they have become vulnerable. That’s how “creeping fascism” works. But here’s something I have to say that is basically the same for everybody.
I earnestly hope, and pray, in the name of God, (Bismillah hir rahman nir raheem), that people all over the world are seeking out not only the easy but the difficult questions, and discussing them, substantially, with their loved ones, with whatever neighbors and family they hold close, and in their own hearts. I hope people are preparing, with their actions, by practicing, by making and living with the manageable and right sacrifices, now. I’m doing the best I can with this, too, and I pray and work daily, for my own stamina and resolve, to be hard-headed and absolute at the right moments, while retaining a capacity for softness and understanding. To answer the challenge of introspection, and follow until it leads to a deeper source of belonging, one that might overturn, or at least cease the perpetuation of, the violence from which I, as a political animal, was born.
And then, if I’ve learned anything about spiritual community, in its place, by living where I do, (adjacent to indigenous communities that to this day resist the genocidal oppression of colonial past and present), it’s this: side-by-side practice (i.e. of sacrifice) builds solidarity, while solidarity builds confidence and the sense of personal power required for gracefully courageous action. It’s pretty basic, and not meant to be easy. All of us, at some point, will be tested. We will face a sacrifice that seems un-manageable, that seems impossible. We will, each of us, feel very alone. And it will be extremely important, in that moment, not to f-ck it up.
Thanks for reading. May peace, and the blessings, and the mercy of God, be upon you. And have a beautiful full moon.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu and selamat purnama 🌕
On Vulnerability as a Key to Everything
This post was inspired by the #weblogpomoama challenge, from Annie, which prompted another Annie’s question and response, which prompted the first Annie’s re-response, which inspired me to reply, so a heartfelt thank you to both (all) of them. As the first (?) Annie wrote, my answer is not an argument with previous replies, it is my personal perspective, or what the question has brought up, for me. If you wish, please “ask me anything”, my email is in the footer, although I don’t promise satisfying answers.
What makes you vulnerable?
Being alive makes me vulnerable. I am vulnerable by nature. If I have been made, then my maker has made me vulnurable. Therefore most of what I have to do, in order to be vulnerable, is “just to let go”, although (as most are aware) that’s easier said than done. In my experience, “just letting go” involves (paradoxically) study and effort. It is a blessing (of God) to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is a prerequisite for anything worthwhile. (Isn’t it?) Love, learning (and therefore, intelligence, wisdom), pleasure. At least, worthwhile from a human (mortal) perspective.
I am vulnerable primarily through my embodiment and my attachments to other bodies, including ecological, political/legal, “marketplace”, and local community interdependence, all of the people (living or dead) whom I love, or embodied children of various modalities (including animal companions and, in a weird way, writing, more on that below). My embodied presence makes me especially vulnerable. The mere fact of my body, (my heart could just stop), its vulnerability to injury by another body, (I could get long covid, etc.), its vulnerability to social or political conditions, and/or punishments, my vulnerabilities as an immigrant, (I am helpless in so many ways), my vulnerability if I were to “run out into the jungle”, etc. My body is constituted almost as pure vulnerability, every part of it is subject to violence or failure. (One is aware of this especially if one lives with “physical disability”, or suffers even an unanticipated moment of it.) But perhaps (InsyaAllah) no vulnerability surpasses the vulnerability of my body in pleasure. I am most vulnerable in love-making or sex, to be blunt about that. For me, the vulnerability of erotic love is vulnerability before God, in the person of my husband/partner. We become witnesses for each other (in love). It requires that we let ourselves be seen (in our utter incapacitation).
“Letting oneself be seen” (whatever that entails) sounds plausibly like the ultimate in vulnerability. But another candidate is “letting oneself be had”.
One can of course “let oneself be seen” in different ways and layers of the self, not requiring orgasm or literal nudity or physical presence or eyesight. I believe in the healing powers of a good cry, with girlfriend, mom or sister, an intimate correspondence in letters, what we here call ngaji, which is patient conversation about spiritual things, etc. But there is something about orgasm, in its special relationship with vulnerability, which it takes and transforms, that the specific experience of pleasure flays the soul wide open, and will fill however much of yourself you can bear to unlock. Tantric meditative practice is a real thing, or the carnal mysticism of Rumi’s poetry, or Plato’s erotic storytelling, for that matter. These describe vividly embodied experiences of vulnerability as access to insight and/or the divine, as God. I would describe Ashtanga yoga practice in these terms, too (lacking the sex, and there’s a whole other topic). Spirituality as a self-studying practice of vulnerability.
In “the valley below”, which is my blog, I may seek the same register of vulnerability, but the embodiment is different, therefore so is the work. Written communications have different dis/abilities than present bodies, different vulnerabilities and strengths, including that, as a writer, one doesn’t know who may be reading. One cannot see the face, smell the breath or the sweat, or grasp the hand of the person to whom one “speaks”. The reader is, possibly or it seems, completely invisible and therefore invulnerable—So I tell you, “you are safe”. This could be one of the principle jobs of a writer, to give a reader the gratification of vulnerability, with none of the risk (a divine sort of privilege). But as most writers know, that’s a lie. Readers are eminently vulnerable. A reader’s vulnerability may not be through the body, but it is there, through the soul, by way of the imagination. By reading, especially with a certain pleasurable naiveté, we open ourselves to wild worlds of deep psychic alter(c)ation. As a writer, I try to be mindful of that vulnerability, while communicating (or, insinuating myself into a “bedroom”) the best that I can.
In writing the blog, I am unsure of my level of vulnerability. The invulnerability of writing would be another divine-seeming and yet dubious privilege. It helps me feel safe that I live “very far away” from almost anybody who would stumble on my blog, and geographic distance plus an ocean around me gives an obvious appearance (or illusion) of safety. It also helps that I wear a mask, that my blog is more-or-less anonymous, that I no longer rely on employment income (or even, strictly speaking, an open-armed welcome) from the country of my birth, my assumption that not many people read the blog, that “helps”, and a calculated guess that even fewer from my local communities, here where I live, will ever read it. Although I am mindful of that possibility (and incidentally, a few interested folks here are, this minute, passing around this piece, translated into Indonesian). I am also mindful of the fact that I live among vulnerable communities, and I care about them dearly. I wish to protect these people and places, whereas exposure (being seen) is enough to destroy many embodied and vulnerable things. So there are certain protections built into my writing, because of this and related (political, legal, privacy) vulnerabilities. “Freedom of speech” is, here, not even a dubious privilege, but an idiomatic slogan that doesn’t apply.
My writing is always trying to describe or share something possibly true, in a vulnerable medium, with a potential reader who is vulnerable, in a vulnerable world, as a vulnerable person, while doing as little harm as I can manage, with unceasing respect for the ever-glimmering unlikelihood of doing (or being) something somewhat good. So the writing is layers of transparent protection, down to the smallest punctuation mark (the liminal crescent of each parenthetical). The work is composed out of metaphorical veils.
One important thing is, I can control every word on this page, in theory. So I have a great deal of control, in the writing, which can make me feel invulnerable (like a magician, or creator god). But every invulnerability of the author becomes a vulnerability of the communication. For example, the fact that I (in my body) am absent from my written words makes them vulnerable to misinterpretation, misunderstanding, or misuse. The meaning of a message (for example, of truth) may not be vulnerable, but the messenger is. I am at constant risk of being taken out of context, (also, server failure), (which is also a euphemism), while at the same time, I find it genuinely difficult to explain my context, in an abbreviated or explicit way (on the blog). And isn’t this difficult, impossible even, for everybody? How can I describe, in a few simple and customary sentences, what I have failed to comprehend fully myself? When it is my life’s work and responsibility not only to understand, but to communicate what is true. To write a few sentences presents context as cut, dry, and known. Like a fact. Whereas, when you know me in my place, you will naturally understand that my context is… infinite. (Reflecting this, I would guess that I’m more vulnerable, as a reader, than I am as a writer. As a reader, I default to generosity.) It is inherently and notoriously difficult to communicate (about) infinite things, in a straightforward way. Anything infinite, as a message, (selves, worlds, justice, beauty, etc., anything divine), becomes vulnerable to the limitations of the messenger.
Another vulnerability of a written communication is its inherent silence.
One might imagine all kinds of monsters, in that silence. And I do feel vulnerable, or afraid of being dismissed or ignored, or of readers who might think I’m (stupid, “cringe”, arrogant, fake, I don’t know, please fill in the blank), or I’m crazy, (which I am, sometimes, and I’ve decided, that’s ok). This is a natural fear for any artist, not just me (or you). I believe that because I read it in The Artist’s Way, which I think is a lovely and therapeutic book, (although I don’t stand behind everything it says, or anything like that), touching on themes of vulnerability in creation, and I recommend it to anyone struggling with “imposter’s syndrome”, or whatever other names for it there are. An artist is chronically vulnerable to those fears, and they can be entirely crippling.
As for my own fear of rejection, I consider that a sort of sacrificial feeling, so I take a knife to it. (Doubtless it’s to my advantage, that I live in a community where ritual offering is public and commonplace, and is always notably at the expense of “business”.) Part of the sacrifice is letting go of the pride that would make me feel humiliated by rejection, or failure, letting the blood drain out of that part of myself (on the hypothesis it’s not an essential part). It helps that I sacrifice it (fear/pride) for something that I experience and acknolwedge as sacred. Whether the sacrifice is delivered in a (or the) name of God, in gratitude as a translator of my teachers, in gratitude as a translator of earth, or whatever the poetry is that day, if there was to be any real or important message in my writing, I wouldn’t consider it my own.
Somewhere in here is the paradoxical in/vulnerability of the fool, who carries the world bundled on their shoulder as they step off a cliff. After decades of writing in a context of fear, to protect my (embodied) professional, social, and political vulnerabilities, I removed my body, (or at least my face), and invited a fool’s energy (back) into my life. And as it turns out, I am altogether happy having nothing to sell. Blogging brings me joy only if I empty it as much as I can of vanity, or an attachment to reward or response, which devolves (for me?) very easily into fear. Most of us (embodied souls) harbor some trauma, here, and I do, too. The feeling of fear or pain can be an indicator of vulnerability, but a reflexive response also stifles access to vulnerability, and all of its fruits. (That’s a yoga lesson, for me, but easy to witness in “everyday life”, including in sex.) Here, there is work to be done, the aforementioned study and effort, and also the sacrifice. Below the pain, I sing to myself, there will be the deepest and easiest pleasure. There will be selflessness, humility, and also liberation in singing for a possibility more remote than the most distant star, which is also a silence, born into the heart of things. That is the kind of vulnerability that I seek, in writing, the in/vulnerability of a (“god-damned”/“blessed”) fool.
Which I understand also as submission to God, and as jihad, in the context of Islam. To me, in my “old life”, this would have sounded like a very strange thing to say, but Islam keeps encouraging the development and practice of my voice. For which my gratitude is… as yet, by me, uncounted. I haven’t reached the end of it. My belief (or my experimental hypothesis, which I also gratefully engage as part of a living lineage, the vastness of which I am still discerning, which is to say, I’m still learning, from the written and living people in my life, as well as from “the trees”) is that tapping the soul’s deepest vulnerability translates its silence into strength.
All the while, a fool has simpler and more superficial incarnations. I enjoy also the nostalgia of being a teenager, pouring her feelings out into a journal, blogging about ruched tube tops, chickens, sexual feelings, or the rain. (“Silly things”.) But this one, here, is no longer a girl. She is rather an emergent crone, and a savvy (if sappy) old bitch, recreating and rediscovering that joy and that sufficiency, in a historical context that will remind her, constantly, just how vulnerable she is. Especially to fear. I guess the joy (if there’s joy) of the blog is also a certain armor. And nobody’s really going to pierce through that. (Are they?)
One might feel alone, or imagine oneself joining a chorus of the unheard. Every song about war is longing in its heart to be a song about peace. (The flow and the solidarity of Music.)
Experiments in self-compost.
(Lalah is known in the family for being “a little bitchy”. It’s just the way she is. But she’s also sweet and lovely. And none of us wants to put “bitchy vibes” into the world, especially on a Saturday. Salam to all.💖)