It's all around you, like smog. This train isn't bound for glory.
Background by Deak Ferrand, who pwnz.
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Hackers on Steroids versus Clams with Daddy Issues
So... Anonymous has apparently declared war against the Church of Scientology. For those out of the loop, "Anonymous" is the nom de guerre of, well, anyone who wants to act aggressively online. Contrary to popular belief, Anonymous is generally not a hacker, and certainly not often a very good one, but much more often than not, Anonymous is a Troll. The widespread belief that trolls are evil comes from Scandinavian folklore, and from a widespread epidemic of thin skin and cranio-rectal inversion. Frankly, nothing that involves the manipulation of symbols should be taken seriously - doing so is a disease that must be cured by any means necessary. Here, especially, Anonymousalways delivers.
More deeply, the "theory of anonymous", if you will, is that Anonymous is who we all become as more of us act anonymously online - we ourselves don't necessarily change, but Anonymous emerges as a collective personality that averages out individual moral reservations and individual limitations. "None of us is as cruel as all of us", for example, sums up a fairly clear consequence of the axiom that many people act anonymously online. Anonymous is not necessarily our enemy, and can sometimes be our ally, but, fundamentally, Anonymous is anyone and everyone - and noöne - and, as such, is amoral, ruthless, and lawless. Anonymous made a name for anonself in a notable assault on MySpace, and was promptly demonized by Fox News, who represented Anonymous as "Hackers on Steroids" - much, we may assume, to Anonymous' gratification. Needless to say, there was, briefly, retaliation. Was Anonymous the good guy in this? Of course not. That's not what Anonymous does.
And yet... In ongoing pursuit of Epic Lulz and Great Justice, the Internet Hate Machine next turned its attention to Scientology. After the first salvo (linked in the previous sentence), there was, indeed, epic win by way of DDoS attacks, followed by additional win through the grabbing of the public's attention with artful media trolling and high-tech memetic engineering. There has been a rapid widening and maturation of the movement, greatly enriched by increased communication with older and wiser anti-Scientology activists, such as Mark Bunker, a.k.a. "Wise Beard Man" of Xenu TV. The next phase is to be played out at worldwide demonstrations on February 10, in front of most major Scientology centers. Follow-through may come in coördinated attacks on Scientology's tax-exempt status in the U.S., which would go a long way toward ending them. Anonymous has inadvertently ended up stimulating a mass movement, 99% staffed by neophytes, which has accidentally acquired a moral compass due to being averaged over a larger sample of the general population. But, it could never have happened without the earlier phase of glamorous lawbreaking and the rhetoric of destruction. The paradoxes are, themselves, quite lulzy.
For myself, I have to say that, yes, some Anonymous - particularly OG Anonymous - are assholes. And yes, some innocent bystanders have been harassed (though once the error was detected, apologies were forthcoming). And yes, the whole thing is riddled with violations of law, propriety, good (yawn) taste, and even ethics. But, for Christ's sake, it's Scientology, and what we have here is a rare opportunity to wallow in schadenfreude without feeling at all bad about it. And, in the process, a minor, but still real force for evil may very well be crushed, or at least humbled. And, as a bonus, young troublemakers are getting the opportunity to learn from older troublemakers, which may come in handy if the country actually goes the rest of the way down the shitter.
(Fun tip for the kidz: Mix flour and water. Apply to wall with broad paintbrush. Slap flyer on wall. Paint a thin coat of flour solution over flyer and wall. The flyer will still be visible through the top coat of flour paste if you didn't overdo it. High-contrast B&W always wins. With practice, can be done in under 5 seconds. Takes a fucking chisel to remove it. You're welcome.)
And always remember, the art of the Troll is to always appear more dangerous and irrational than one actually is - I have no fear at all of these tactics being turned against, say, the Latter-Day Saints or other "mostly harmless" groups. At the very least, no equivalent mass support would be forthcoming.
I do worry a bit, though. Between the recent agitprop in favor of the Republic of Lakotah, which elicited predictably militant sentiments from many, and this action, which glamourizes tactics which the gummint is bound to see as terroristic, there seems to be a lot going around to encourage the young, pissed-off, and impulsive to move toward getting their asses busted by the DHS. (And this as we decide on our next President.) The tiny part of me that remains paranoid (I call it my brain) is slightly worried that there may be an element of provocateurism here - let's scare out anyone who might be "militant", so we can identify and monitor them before they turn their attention to anti-government activism. That may be silly of me, but I do urge any and all Anonymous who may read this to think seriously about staying within the law, avoiding honeypot sites that promise to teach you secret skillz of doubtful legality, and regarding as a probable enemy anyone who encourages you to Fuck Shit Up in illegal ways. The recent Anthrax scare - generally suspected to be false-flag black propaganda by the Co$ itself - is an indication of the level to which such things can go...
Well, I have said my part - now, I will let the movement speak for itself.
It's been a few days since my last posting because I've been packing my body into a series of metal cans and arranging for others to throw those cans vast distances, toward the general goal of changing the world as I know it.
Or: I was flying to another state and back in order to prepare to take a new job in a new city. More on this later. In the meanwhile, I've fallen perilously behind the pace of events.
So - I would like to draw your attention to the ongoing, and soon to escalate war between Anonymous and Scientology, and to what's most important about it: My opinion. Allow me to gather my notes, and return here later tonight for epic lulz....
My Flaws Offered in Support of Your God-Realization
To be a "know-it-all" is a very unfortunate thing, and I should know, as this is a flaw which I have on many occasions exhibited. This should come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog, if there are any. What is harmful in this? Many things! I would like to draw particular attention to its role as an obstacle to overcoming ignorance - that is, to learning and growth. One must empty a cup of water before one pours tea into it, or one ends up, at best, with very weak tea, which is rather nasty.
Let us consider prejudice, for example. Racial prejudice, for example (leaving aside racism, which is a partially separate issue, involving emotional as well as cognitive features) prevents one from seeing the actuality of the person before one because of knowledge one supposedly already has about what that person is like. Here, not only learning and personal growith, but also meaningful relations with this actual person are prevented. "Knowing it all" about a person prevents one from aproaching the person from a stance of open ignorance and curiosity, and thereby learning who and what they really are.
Or, suppose one has many firmly fixed notions about economics - say, that unregulated free markets always lead to optimal results, due to the operations of the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith. Believing this may cause one to be uninterested in looking at the actual evidence available of how economic processes work, which may cause one to fail to observe mechanisms (such as the formation of monopolies, or the role of government in the national economy) which would be useful to understand, and ignorance of which may cause one to do great damage to the nation's political and economic life. "Knowing it all" about the economy prevents one from having the constructive sense of ignorance that would compel one to observe, to investigate, and in this way to determine what is actually going on. Even if the final result is that Adam Smith was right after all, one can hardly compare the position of one who knows this from independent and skeptical research to that of one who accepts it on faith and a priori argument. And one is bound to have learned something useful along the way.
Or, consider the notion of God. If one has a firmly fixed notion of what this word means, then one will never enjoy the privilege of undergoing the process of longing, questing, uncertainty, and doubt whereby one interrogates the world and the self to find out what the nature of the Ultimate Ground of Being actually is. One has to be able to ask, from one's blood and marrow, "What the Hell is going on?" before an answer like "God" can have any meaning. If, as some have suggested, the UGB is beyond the categories of human thought, and therefore directly contradicted by any definite characterization, then having a fixed conception of God would actually prevent one from ever coming to grips with God in any meaningful way. (Head small; world big!) And God help us if the notion of an UGB is, itself, incoherent!
Looking at most folks, it appears that God could knock at their door, and all they would say would be "Ah, yes, God - I know all about you!" And from such an encounter, nothing good can come - or at least, not without great trauma.
But whether God (or the UGB) turns out to be matter/energy, or a transcendent triphanic personal spirit, or a red herring after all, the significance of the answer is much deeper and much more richly understood for not having been held tightly - and in the form of a crude cartoon! - prior to the inquiry. And of course, if one was wrong to begin with...
And so, one might say that belief in God is the greatest imaginable obstacle to coming to know God. In the meanwhile, we can only agree that the end of our pursuits - the final answer to the final question - remains the Greatest of all Mysteries.
There is one person from whom I would very much like to hear on this issue, because I am ignorant of so much that is relevant, and likely making a fool of myself. You know who you are!
I am entirely embarassed at how late I am in bringing this up, but it is certainly relevant. I would like to draw your attention to an interesting development, apparently out of the American Indian Movement - who you should remember from Wounded Knee II - or a related faction. If Wounded Knee II is news to you, it may also be news to you that the U.S. government has never completely stopped warring against the continent's orignal nations.
On behalf of the Lakota Nation (though possibly without the authority to speak on their behalf), Russell Means (and some less-flashy associates) have announced the withdrawl of that people from existing treaties with the U.S. government, and the (re)creation of an autonomous Republic of Lakotah covering portions of several U.S. states. The movement apparently has a website.
Per Uncannily Obvious, "The nation would issue its own driver's licenses, passports, and would purportedly levy no taxes upon its citizenry. Means has promised that any who wish to live there may do so, given that they first renounce their US citizenship." Overall, this sounds like a reasonable deal to me. Although the crushing poverty, poor infrastructure, and so on, may drive some off, an influx of immigrants might arguably bring with it the resources and sympathy to help things develop in a more positive direction. Cultural dilution might be a possible danger, though.
A cautionary note is struck by The Wild Hunt - we also may observe very divergent perspectives in their comments section.
Technoccult, as usual, were hip to this all along.
Additional information here (with extensive and useful comments), and here.
From my (all too well-documented) point of view, this could be a positive development IF (1) the Lakota themselves are in near-unanimous sympathy to the idea, (2) they have some support from other presently and historically adjacent or collocated native groups, and, for good measure, non-natives resident in the region, and (3) there is massive "external" support (including lots-o-cash) coming from other native groups, the usual progressive groups, and libertarians and others opposed to the unwelcome imposition of power. I fear that none of these will come to pass, but I fear especially that the movement may become semi-viable, which would be much worse than it not being viable at all. "Worse" in this case means that the Lakota community gets divided against itself, outsiders attempt to impose their vision of what the Lakota "must" want on the probably more pragmatically-minded people at ground zero, and the conflict with the gummint gets escalated to fruitless violence. On the other hand, if this is the start of a new Civil War... I can hear the voices now: "Well, I've gotta die someday, right?"
Ah, but the "militant" fantasies of urban radicals or rural militiamen are not likely to count for much when the inevitable jackbooted thugs show up and start shooting at Lakota. Smart money says that very few white wannabes will actually show up willing to die on the barricades, should it come to that. Nor will the news media. So, I suppose that my greatest fear is that the gummint will be provoked into yet more anti-Lakota brutality, which will go largely ignored or suppressed.
One has to wonder who, in the end, will benefit from this attempt at secession. And there is the approaching Presidential race to consider... Perhaps the best we can hope for is that the flamboyance of this gesture fuels a huge media and memetic flap, focussing world and national attention on the plight of the Lakota and other original peoples - which may very well be the point. In which case: Well played!
I sometimes wonder what would happen if I were to attempt to re-enter academia, and my potential colleagues were to come across this 'blog. I suppose I might be criticized for a lack of rigor, for all the ranting and violent invective, for the abusive tone taken toward opposing viewpoints, and, especially, for all the cussing. The latter is particularly pitiful, because it rests precisely on the notion of bad words. This is a very odd notion, if you squint at it carefully under good light. And by "odd" I mean completely batshit insane. Roll the term over on your tongue a bit: Bad. Words. Words that are bad. What did they do? Steal their grandparents' Social Security checks in order to buy crack, in order to force-feed it to puppies - perhaps puppies with fibromyalgia?
Fundamentally, the restraint of the academic style is admirable - one can't even begin to do philosophy, for example, unless one can dispassionately consider the possible grounds upon which opposing positions might be seen as legitimate. One must perform the analysis of ideas with a surgeon's detachment. However, once the papers have been written, there still lingers a certain excessive delicacy about academics. At the very core of this tender sense of decorum is a patrician notion of civility.
And, yes, civility is nice, of course. But "nice" is not synonymous with "good"! Witness for example the hideous cowardice of British intellectuals in the face of the Rushdie affair - anxious not to slander any Muslim religious leader no matter how vile and inhumane, and totally unwilling to face the fact that militant fundamentalism is a large and in many places mainstream faction of that religion. (Do you know what religion looks like if you don't believe in it? Jonestown.) Subtler than this is the handling of economics, say, or politics - particularly of the policies and activities of one's own government. By its nature, a large government is inevitably involved in much larger-scale atrocities than any terrorist, by virtue of funding if nothing else! And every bit as involved in money laundering, drug running, collusion with Nazis and deathsquads and gangsters...
For myself, I would call this the Neville Chamberlain school of rhetoric. "Perhaps if we speak softly to the monster, it will calm down and come to see how right we are, as evidenced by how friendly we are toward it." Meanwhile, it's killing your students and large chunks of the Third World. But, of course, academia has, perhaps, taken much of its tone - not to mention its leadership and its funding - from priests, artistocrats, robber barons, and suchlike, so let's not forget that the "monster" in question is, as often as not, the people at the foot of whose beds academics often find themselves kneeling.
I have been experimenting with Shelfari recently - it allows you to list and discuss books you have read or are reading (etc.) and compare notes with others. It functions as a sort of cross between a social networking site and a bibliophile's Project Playlist.
Find me there, and tell me what you think! Since I apparently like foisting my views on others, I will regard this as an opportunity to tell you what to read. If you know what's good for you, you will comply. Or, you can regard this as an entryway into an entire network of people willing to help you find the bibliomanic Holy Grail - something good to read, for a change. Find someone who likes what you like, find out what else they like... Well, you get the idea.
Speaking of things to read, I would like to draw your attention to the Internet Sacred Texts Archive. This is a tremendous resource, with literally thousands of free texts available. The site's factotum, John B. Hare, has done a huge amount of strenuous labor, and maintained a respectable level of scholarship in the process. And he seems to be a real mensch. From the FAQ:
Q: Why did you do it? A: To do something nice for people.
What higher calling could there be?
I highly recommend supporting this project, and Mr. Hare's Herculean labors, by buying the archive on DVD, or the less expensive CD-ROM - you will enrich your personal library with most of the core scriptures of all of the major and many of the minor religions of the world, along with all sorts of secondary material on those religions, and on fringe culture, Forteana, esoterica, occultism, folklore, philosophy, history, etc. Even if none of these topics have grabbed much of your attention before, you can and will find the elusive "something good to read" here. Indeed, there is, without exaggeration, enough Good Stuff to keep you busy for the rest of your life, or a significant fraction thereof. Of course, if buying things is not a reasonable goal for you, then, by all means, dive into the online archive itself - you may never resurface!
For those already attracted to such things, I must also mention the extensive translations from the Tipitika, or Pali Canon, available at Access to Insight. The Pali Canon is the standard collection of sacred texts of Theravada - Southern, or "Hinayana" Buddhism, and is Not Crap. I would particularly direct "newcomers" to the Khuddaka Nikaya, where you will find such well-loved texts as the Dhammapada and the Milindapañha ("The Questions of King Milinda"), as well as what may be the original version of the familiar story of the blind men and the elephant. As a matter of principle, the texts are free of charge, as it is not considered proper to charge for the Dhamma - which is a very convenient feature for a religion to have. (Are you listening, Mr. Hubbard?)
And, of course, no discussion of free books online can ignore the venerable Project Gutenberg, which is a very diverse collection of free digitized books, and, well, fucking huge.
So: Go Read Now! And don't say I never done nothin' for you.
Yesterday, my connection to the internet was doubleplusungood, and so I was unable to properly observe RAW Chaos Day - a novel Discordian Holyday instituted by consensus, or rather, by contagion (other methods, such as authority, not being available!) on the occasion of Robert Anton Wilson's recent (actual) death. Now, a day late and a fnord short, I would like to remedy this by offering a few words in memery of RAW.
The most suitable memeorial I can build is to pass on a vision I might have gained by other means, but which I in fact first saw in fullness through RAW's intervention. Because it suits my whimsy, I will borrow a framework, not from RAW, but from the Nation of Gods and Earths (or "Five Percenters"), an African-American Muslim group, of sorts - a doctrine also found, in a different form, in the Church of the SubGenius. It runs like this:
The 85% are those without the knowledge, the mentally blind, deaf and dumb who are bent on self-destruction. The 10% are the bloodsuckers of the poor, those who have knowledge and power but who use it to mystify and abuse the 85%. The 10% include the "grafted" white devil as well as the orthodox Muslims and Christian preachers who preach that god is a "spook" or a "mystery god." And the remaining 5% are the poor, righteous teachers, who are aver [sic] all of the 'dealings' of the 10% and their mission is to rescue the 85%.
(Obviously, the SubGenius variant on this soteriology takes a rather different view of how properly to (ahem) deal with the 85%!) Like most statistics, these numbers may well be distorted - I suspect the breakdown is much closer to 98:1:1 - but the message is clear: Most people don't Get It. Some Get It, but keep It to themselves in order to profit from the unGettingItness of the Flock (let's call them Bad Shepherds). Others Get It, and are inclined to benign or even benevolent use of their Hipness.
I would say that the Five Percent, so-called, may themselves break down into three subtypes (fixing the total breakdown in accord with the Law of Fives), and these are: (1) those who Drop Out of the game, to cultivate their own gardens, and don't interfere with the Flock; (2) those who use the same techniques as the Bad Shepherds, but to the presumed benefit of the Flock - shockingly, I would designate these Good Shepherds; and (3) those who, following the model of the Nation of Gods and Earths, encourage the Flock to become like themselves - thus properly earning the title of Poor Righteous Teachers.
But what's all the fuss over? With what are we in or out of Gettingness? Well, opinions differ! I'll take a crack at what I think RAW's version was - or at least what he sometimes seemed to say that It was. From the point of view of Shepherds Good and Bad, I suppose this means that I am breaking kayfabe again. Shame on me, I guess!
It is widely known, but rarely understood, that all of our knowledge is obtained through experience and reflection - and that the processes underlying these are primarily sensory perception, thought, and memory. All of these, are of course, functions of the mind. And this applies not just to knowledge, but also to beliefs and expectations generally, and to the specific objects to which our hopes, fears, and values become attached. Any new experience is processed by reference to prior mental content. I see an object of a certain size, shape, color, etc., and I recognize it as, say, a cabbage. In this way, it becomes linked to my desire for food, or to my fear of cabbages, and, more than this, seeing the cabbage means experiencing it as embedded in an entire map of the world which includes beliefs about botany, agriculture, economics, gastronomy, physics (I don't expect it to levitate, e.g.), and so on. One might say that experience is conceptually loaded. We cannot have an "innocent" experience of the object as a naked perception of color and form - we are condemned to see it as a cabbage, bearing with it with all that cabbagehood implies for us, and as part of an entire world about which we have a brainful of beliefs, expectations, hopes, fears, moral and practical imperatives, and so on.
That world is not what we think it is - the actual, objective state of affairs; it is, instead, the sum and product of everything that has up to the current moment transpired in our minds. The world we actually live in - the world of economies, of agriculture, of dangers and opportunities - is driven by information derived, via the senses, from the actual state of affairs, (maybe) but is nonetheless located entirely inside our minds. To use the language of materialism, the brain is trapped in the skull and cannot get out of it in any meaningful sense. Or: It's all happening in your head. What we endure or enjoy of life in the world is entirely constructed by us out of the available flow of information (which I agree (probably) derives from an outside source). For each person, that "world" will differ - slightly for people who have lived similar lives, perhaps very radically for people of different cultures or eras. The world in which the Sun and stars travelled 'round the Earth must have felt very different from ours. And so for worlds which include or exclude the afterlife, dangerous sorcerers, justice and other moral imperatives, gravitational and electromagnetic forces, hope, fate, gods, ghosts, the government, the law, race, and please insert your favorite concept here. RAW called these worlds "reality-tunnels" - enclosing spaces within whose boundaries we move.
The art of the Shepherd is to skillfully manipulate the flow of information in order to design and construct the worlds in which the Flock will live. (Read that again!) Shepherds are the architects and masons who build the houses in which we live and the temples within which we worship. It is probably impossible for most (if any) of us to dig our way out of our cave and into the open air above and the light of the actual Sun, except perhaps for a fleeting moment (a.k.a. the Beatific Vision) - I certainly haven't managed it! But the experience of recognizing our condition is quite something - both liberating and empowering, in the full and robust senses of those words.
RAW's peculiar talent was to reveal our situation to us - thus playing the role of the Poor Righteous Teacher - and then (as a Good Shepherd) to deftly manoeuver us into a novel and exquisitely crafted reality-tunnel, only to suddenly tap us on the shoulder and remind us, artfully: "Oh, by the way - none of this is real!" Repeatedly. He was like those master stage magicians who can tell you that they are about to do a magic trick, perhaps even tell you a bit about how the trick is done, and then do the trick so perfectly that it still fools you. He repeated this routine as many times, and in as many ways as he could, hoping, one imagines, that the third (or the twenty-third) time's the charm.
Did he ever succeed? I hope, for all our sakes, that he did.
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