Posted by: lettrist on: November 5, 2009
It’s amazing how much people in general can shift their views with enough time and psychic manipulation. “Communism is weakness on stilts” is something I wrote in an online forum four years ago here. I was apparently debating “religion vs. the will to power” on philosophyforums.com. I got the phrase from Jeremy Bentham who once wrote that the concept of human rights was “nonsense upon stilts”.
Yet communism today means something completely different to me than it did four years ago. Earlier this year while I worked in the “paper factory” (as I liked to call it) my co-workers were complaining about Obama’s stimulus package and his alleged communism, and the fact that he is a Marxist. Just to be a thorn, I told them I was a communist and that Obama – if he is communist indeed – was an extremely bad one. I explained that communism is a free association of people working in cooperation to achieve common goals, who collectively own what they use to achieve those goals. A commune, I explained, is self-managed and collectively owned. Hence communism is a way of life that exercises and integrates collectivity, that is, into the organization of the commune. People can live in communes, work in communes, and communes are not reliant on “state power” as they have wrongly been associated with.
Hell, I said, if we decided we did not need our manager anymore and realized we could collectively own and manage this paper factory ourselves, we would be communists too.
A light went on in their heads. Suddenly communism did not seem like such a far-off idea. It seemed reasonable, even possible. Our generation does not identify with the role of ‘the worker’ like our grandparents did, so transcending the worker-capitalist dichotomy is easy. And perhaps this is the reason why many working people have found the idea of communism so salvific: sometimes it feels closer than an arm’s length away. Not communism the way the media talks about it, but communism in the most charitable and basic sense. Without communism life has become alienating, not being able to manage ourselves, not being able to experience those partnerships with other human beings, instead condemned only to fellowship in a stagnant church. The church – as Dietrich Bonhoeffer idealized about a “Christian community” – is maybe the closest thing resembling the commune. It is no wonder people flock to churches feeling depressed about their lives under late Fordist capitalism (yes, late and still Fordist for most people.)
The problem with Zarathustra, however, is that to capitalist pigs he is a capitalist pig. To liberal democrats he is the patron saint of human rights. To buddhists he is a boddhisatva. To communists he is proto-communist.
With four years’ rationalization, communism to me is ultimately an expression of strength: a will to overcome the society locked by modern conditions of production. “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.” Free to associate, but is everywhere dominated by the invisible demands of capital. Communism in our personal lives, then, is a will to power. Free association of any sort is a will to power, but especially in communism, since it is a transvaluation of all values hitherto experienced in modern society. Hence communism is for the stronger willed. Zarathustra calls upon his brethren to have strength. He does not have an ethics, because a system of ethics is a substitute for power. He only has a call to indiscriminate strength. The world is will to power — and nothing besides! You can be weak person anywhere – whatever you do – and you can be strong person anywhere. At a very profound level, the will to overcome a power beyond us and replace it with our own power – is nothing less than the strength of a Zarathustra.
Posted by: lettrist on: November 4, 2009
I lie alone
I lie in my bed
I watch the ceiling
“Take your temperature” it says
OK full body check:
I am still pulled in by the sound
My heart is pulsating
I remember everything even the things
No one else saw
No one else heard
No one else felt
Knowing every cell of my own flesh
Knowing the taste and feel of everything
Knowing
The wild wins
The ocean prevails
Lovers leap
As we encircle Dionysus
And get what this doctor ordered
All I can think about is everyone
At this party leaving
And you and I on the bleachers
Sitting so close
Daaaaam.
I like it when you say things in Russian
I like it when you swim in my direction
I hear the sound of two worlds coinciding
Back on the wave
Here we go
When this dancefloor is burning
So will
Our hearts
Posted by: lettrist on: October 28, 2009
Click here for the automatically-generated insurrectionary anarchist communique. If the one you get is total bullshit, just hit refresh until you find the gem you’re looking for.
This raises a good question. What is a communique supposed to convey? Who are they written for? As the present culture increasingly becomes separated from society and from people’s lives (painters painting only for other painters, revolutionaries writing communiques read only by other revolutionaries about the possibility of revolution) – this culture, insofar as it has any single motivation, is no longer anything but a constant self-denunciation: a seductive denunciation of the society and the rage against culture itself.
Here is a “notice to the un-civilized” — to the pro-revolutionary authors of nonsensical communiques:
Make some fucking sense!
The problem is this. To understand insurrectionary anarchist communiques one needs to have read and understood Deleuze, Foucault, Agamben, and who is fashionable lately, The Invisible Committee, to understand the references. Perhaps this points to the impoverishment of the North American anarchist milieu, clinging to catchphrases and romanticizing its own irrelevance, whilst Greek and French anarchists seem to have little trouble conveying recondite concepts to wider audiences. Why should reading a communication be troublesome at all? It should be clear as day, and speak to all of its readers like the communiques of the EZLN.
How can we be sure the authors of the dumpster-burning communiques even understand the language they use? What would Deleuze and Guttari think of young fire-starters using their schizophrenic language to communicate revolutionary ideas to global audiences? What about pro-situationist applications of insurrectionary tendencies — do we think ‘the insurrection’ requires the deconstruction of language to reflect the total deconstruction modern society, and if so, how can language be useful at all? Is kickstarting the insurrection by using this ecstatic language a successful strategy?
Here is a final thought. If an algorithm like this one can produce a communique indiscernible from that of a human, what makes us think the machine doesn’t understand the seductions of their rhetoric either? (Like the machine that translates English into Chinese by manipulating symbols, does it really comprehend the language? Try to differentiate comprehension from manipulation… and god forbid, should the algorithm really be conscious?)
Kudos to the authors of the algorithm – with some work it could be flawlessly esoteric! Hopefully in the future communiques will either actually make sense to real people, or they won’t be written at all.
Posted by: lettrist on: October 12, 2009
As machines talk to other machines, they may uncover facts and relationships that are not apparent to people. That may enable factories to “learn” and find ways to become more efficient. They may enable the industrial work site to operate autonomously, without the service of human labor. Could these machines also perceive a deep flaw in human life through their work: the social alienation that is manifest in the drama of capitalism, for which the talking head in this video overlooks?
Science is steadily progressing, and new trends are always emerging. The transhumanist trend is fascinatingly overt with regard to pronouncements on the future of capitalism. It is a new capitalist mythology, a new system to plug-in and cement the ideas of material progress and upward mobility into. Pie in the sky. They say, and it is certainly true at this point, that what happens on the factory floor will make its way, in a different form, to office buildings and homes. And what happens to office buildings and homes will eventually make their way into the human body, until our bodies are not only functionally but also physically pieces of the capitalistic machinery. The spreading of exploitation, and the physical manipulation of the commodity spectacle — the forces of spectacular society — into the human brain itself.
We become the capital itself, and that is how — under the transhumanist narrative — we achieve social liberation. We are forced to love our own alienation, because happiness is irrelevant. We become batteries, and our bodies become a mist, a cloud of constant ecstasy. It is their latest and most scientifically fictitious answer to our calls for the destruction of capitalist system. They are sharpening their dialectics against ours. What are we doing?
It is the new “End of History.” They say this how we achieve emancipation from the alienation of work. But in our critique it can only be the ultimate conclusion of capital, because it is how we achieve annihilation into the spectacle of production. When this happens we possibly could no longer oppose the capitalist spectacle. We would be totally included as capital. Human capital? No, complete physical capital. Instead of becoming humanly autonomous, we become automatons of capital.
Transhumanism — and evenually the final stage which is “post-humanism” — should be essential to our new and developing critique of the increasing alienation of society.
With transhumanism we clearly have a materialist interpretation of what the spiritual analyses call “dukkha,” or “sin,” or separation. We can operate on common materialistic ground. But it is a scientific ideology, one in which we are building a society for capital, for its own accumulation, for its own autonomy. As machines talk more to each other, we are talking less and less to one another, we are uncovering fewer facts and relationships about ourselves. Finding ourselves, finding each other, finding our own bodies, less and less.
This is a sense of things to come! Are our solutions becoming any clearer as theirs becomes more demanding?
We observe the attacks made upon our bodies, and describe the shadows that attend disruptive phenomena but there is no critique as such to be made, no protest could be adequate to the continued diminution of personal life in the face of the perpetual throbbing of commodity spread. Power will do what it will, there is little (if we are consistent in our analysis) that we can do to oppose it. Nothing, that is, unless we are prepared to accept the legitimacy of our medium term political objectives and dedicate ourselves to treating symptoms, and it is sure we are not prepared to accept that.
- Monsieur Dupont, Nihilist Communism
Posted by: lettrist on: October 1, 2009
“Reporters are nothing but corporate employees.”
If we take the definition of “the proletariat” as provided by the SI – that anyone not in control of their own life and the creation of their situations is a proletarian – then the majority of the fifth estate is proletarian, too. “Journalism” is an extension of the capitalist superstructure (an extension ruling class ideas).
Could journalists as a professional class ever come to this realization? Then what would “journalist solidarity” look like? Strikes in response to false information? Occupations of radio stations and newspaper offices, indefinitely, until the board of trustees is dissolved, chairpersons are evicted, and the rest of us can re-invent the news? Militants such as ourselves could provide strike supplies, and partake in the deconstruction of the work site, the deconstruction of work, and fight for autonomous journalist communes which will supersede all corporate and fascist powers seeking to re-administer and re-bureaucratize the newsrooms.
Posted by: lettrist on: September 22, 2009
In case you missed it, available here is the powerpoint presentation presented at the Tacoma Anarchist Book Fair. (FYI Some slides in the presented are incomplete, some fonts re-sized incorrectly with Google.)
Key Concepts of the Situationist International (powerpoint)
The video clips shown in the presentation were from the following films:
- Utopia or Bust
Posted by: lettrist on: September 17, 2009
Josh Simpson and Benjamin Lewis from Fort Lewis Iraq Veterans Against the War on Venezuela television:
Posted by: lettrist on: September 13, 2009
According to the bookfair myspace, here is the final schedule for next weekend at King’s Books.
Saturday
11:00 Intro to Anarchism
a discussion on the development of and different schools within anarchist thought.12:00 Radical History of Tacoma
1:00 I.C.E. Detention Center
presentation on the history and plans for expansion of the immigration detention center located in Tacoma’s tide flats.
2:00 LUNCH
3:00 Film: War On The Hill
10 min documentary on the crack epidemic and police violence of the 80’s and early 90’s within the Hilltop community of Tacoma. discusses the CIA’s role in funneling drugs into inner cities.3:30 Crimethinc. Eviction // Racism In Age of Obama
discussion group on the current state of race relations within the anarchist subculture and America at large.4:30 Film: 10 reasons to Oppose the 2010 Olympics
5:00 Key Concepts from the Situationist International
6:00 Power Point Presentation on The Coming Insurrection.
Sunday
11:00 Consent
12:00 Womyns Health
1:00 “Fuck Your Morals” Discussion Group
an exploration of the sources of meaning within a godless existence.2:00 LUNCH
3:00 Anarchy, My Anarchy
a discussion of individual’s anarchist thoughts. how much do we really have in common?4:00 I.V.A.W.
presentation on iraq veterans against the war and the importance of organized resistance within armed forces.5:00 Agent Orange
presentation on the recent outing of John “Jacob” Towery as a Government informant who had infiltrated anti-war groups in Olympia and Tacoma.6:00 Security Culture.
Posted by: lettrist on: September 12, 2009
Pecha Kucha (pe-cha-k’cha) is an fun slideshow series. The rules are that each presenter gets 20 slides to each display for 20 seconds at a time. This format has caught on and some 230 cities worldwide have a Pecha Kucha Night now. Wednesday at the Robert Daniel Gallery in Tacoma about 8 local figures presented on the Pecha Kucha theme of “identity” and I filmed this for my friends at The Melon blog.
Joeski’s slideshow on graffiti identity. This is my favorite one.
sweetpea on genderfuck identity
Sharon Winters on neighborhood identity
Derek Lunde on branding identity
Michael Stoddard on name and place identity
There are also a few other videos that haven’t been uploaded as of yet.
Posted by: lettrist on: September 10, 2009
I don’t usually rant on my blog, but this is an exception!
When I tell someone I can film an hour-long gig and post it online, I want to be able to say that with assurance.
Today I fired up Avid Liquid to export some .avi files to .mp4 (my favorite youtube-quality format) and after jostling with Adobe Premiere for two hours trying to get it to work… now Avid Liquid somehow does not export! It apparently lost its ability to export-to-file, after it took an hour to render that file!
Each time I do a fucking video it’s something NEW!! It’s some NEW fucking error code that I have to deal with each time! And I have to read posts on video discussion forums about other people who have had to deal with the same shit! And their solutions never work for what I am going through! So I have to do it all myself! Ah!!
It’s one thing when you have to wait on other people, but it’s another when you have to sit on your ass waiting for your robot to finish wiping its own ass, and you don’t even get to talk to other people! You just have to sit there in front of it, in an uncomfortable chair, indoors, when it’s sunny outside, while the human children next door are playing gleefully in their water fountain, and it’s almost Autumn, so you know it won’t last, and all you want is to eat lunch, and not worry about any robot issues, but you just have to sit there, and you have to be patient!
And you can’t leave for very long, because five minutes from now the latest process will be finished and the robots will once again need a human to tell them what to fucking do next. You can’t batch process everything!! That’s the worst part. Why can’t I batch process my entire project from start to finish??? From capture to upload? Why, robot! Why can’t you do that!!? I want to have somebody else do that shit while I go and enjoy a nice refreshment from a cafe, or talk about anarchy with my housemates. I just want to be free!! I just want to be human again. But… but the robots are supposed to make us happier right?
No they don’t! They’re fucking useless!
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