Dance, Anyone?

We seem to be the blind leading the blind, which might be an interesting way to go given the darkness, from singularities to various apocalypses and catastrophes offered at this time, loosing sight as we are to gain some kind of double vision, drunk and sinking into the quick sand falling into the emptied oil fields through the hour gassing, passing glass bubbles of what is left, being our total denial of, our lack of respect for and addiction to cheap oil.

I have been reading the stories of Thomas Barnett who is offering us some kind of direction for our military reflected by a holistic view for enterprises by Stephen DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions, for the top downers of the managerial corporate set.  Their reasoning is well-presented, comprehensive, better and more inclusive than any put forth from the stagnant, often toxic ecologies in which they swim, indeed thrive, rich as those waters are.  Frankly, theirs are the only ones with which I would bother in their fields, with tactical backup from Robb and Lind .   Available as starters, we need them to lift and hold our reach for more, much more to get to breathable air, heirs to first stage wind down from industrial hyper strength, Leviathan sharpened and focused, SysAdmin crafted out of our wobbling bureaucracies.  We must remove some, not all, of our armor, get out of our cars, look around at what we are missing in our speed and greed.

My aesthetic sense moves with the tight and excellent criticism of Zuboff and Maxmim of managerial capitalism being dead and killing as it is and that we can change up into a new episode of this form, pointing to distributed federations of business, bundles of supporting entities.   Their work is The Support Economy.  Coupled with Barnett and DeAngelis', theirs are moves worth making.  Mixed in with a shot of naturally stepping capitalism, this might remedy hangovers we will have at the onset of our break through denial of our cheap oil addictions.  Oil has been our great friend and has fueled literally all kinds of frivolities and fantasies.  Now we must find our sober legs once more, pick up the beat and bogey, man, dance with this bogeyman.  In doing so we learn to respect this substance and use it both with care and fully, to find new equilibrium.  We will also find that our imaginations will be fired with tending to the everyday and not dissipated in trying to literalize delicious morsels better tasting for being left in the air. 

Yet, I could not just sit with any of these frameworks in the stunning light of the most intriguing and articulate William Irvin Thompson and the down on earth work of Christopher Alexander, John and Nancy Jack Todd, Allan Savory, Elaine Ingham, Paul Stamets among myriad others describing exciting realities. 

In the realm of story, Thompson poetically offers scope seldom seen in our midsts, through mists sensing a huge shift in epochs, condensing the worst and best of our civilized ecoplasm into form and watching it dissolve into larger patterns, revolve into smaller fractals, evolve into noetic polities, resolve into suggestions for reform of our system of governance to guide us thru instability.   In his view we are in an end time of oceanic nation states moving in vortexes to planetary biospheric consciousness, with others past and present.  I might add that this comes through heavy handed military globularization at the hands of systems, many politicians and business leaders who are at best dinosaurs, at worst active agents of the Borg Queen and Ahirman, cubing about in star studded space, numb to the beauty of even our Milky Way, much less humbled by Hubble.  In, of and from that destruction, through the attendant dark age accompanying such transformation, may arise a planetary finery able to feed off pollution and thrive.  We can build toward that if we will, build on the Visons of a Living World offered by the others. 

I'll refer and weave summaries of each in relation to this shift, in subsequent pieces.  Yet now we must take the best from the largest and most ample body, Thompson's, and hang the rest either on and from it, for its hugeness.  Barnett is a wishful kid in relation to the others, important, yes, making the moves to dynamism that are needed, putting the software in place with DeAngelis, yes, up and coming thru the military, yes.  Yet if DeAngelis means architecture, let him come to Alexander's quality reflected in his software.... But in larger scope, in light of everything else, no.  Moving, definitely, yes and not deeply grounded, that being a wider disease than either can handle.  Yet if grounding in air is what they can do, then I give them great credit for what they do.   SysAdmin can be used as war becomes impossible to maintain and gives way to the intensity of natural disasters, software running to keep up with shortages that flood both core and the gap.  We need more on which to pin our shredded and suppurating hope, maybe just letting it de-integrate, moving from the terrible cycles of false hope and despair to continuity of story and small daily mores, one at a time, small animal moves thru withdrawal and refocus on closer diets for once again a large, very not flat planet.

With great apologies to those in summarizing, thereby reducing, the imagination fully present in their individual works.

 

Comments

[Kim McDodge]

PS. Please know that these notes are from ones whose experience and training are in the arts, homemaking and soil foodweb gardening. We are amateurs, making our ways with calligraphy and photography, computers. We do not think that the decisions that need making now should be left to the conventionally rich and powerful. In an ecology of mind we must have diversity in techniques, ways thru daily tasks and our life-death-life cycles, to discover what really does work and what does not, to find moral bearings from the mores we hold, admit our mistakes and change up when necessary.

That said, I do not like to see Barnett looking at E.O.Wilson's program of consilience without knowing that our best poets and thinkers have seen the implications of his thought and found it dangerous. I specifically refer to William Irwin Thompson's study "We Become What We Hate" in his collection Self and Society (Imprint Academic, 2004) pgs 68 and 69, at least. As well, Wendell Berry's wonderful little book called Life Is A Miracle (Counterpoint, 2000) is even more precise in its address to Wilson. Barnett and DeAngelis are using the language of Complex Dynamical Mentality which cannot be reduced to "a political ideology, but is an ecology of consciousness in which opposites are constitutive of a larger system." (WIT, 2004) Barnett plays his work thru this way, yet Wilson wants to eliminate complexity and close for uniformity of belief. Be really careful and do not loose the soul of your creativity to yet another seemingly easier way thru, you two. By opening yourselves up to a wider audience than bureaucracies of business and military, you are inviting comments from those who do not play the power of those forms well, yet have managed to see ourselves this far and notice your work. I hope that you are willing to take some of this to heart and not just go for the pettings of the powered. Thompson once paired up the pristine and pure Mr. Berry with funky, mousey Walt Disney in a moves to include the unlikely, to show the scope of the American experience. You have managed to get thru your choosen fields with humility intact. The vision we need is bigger than you can handle so please consider reading more widely to compliment your work with more practiced and mature vision. Good Luck in your important works.