Read: [[For a Red Zoopolis]]
I have oscillatory waves of activity on my garden.
Chat with Flancian
Listened: [[Matt Huber, "Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet"]]
One says to oneself that there must be happy people somewhere. Well then! Unless you get that out of your head, you have understood nothing about [[psychoanalysis]].
— [[Jacques Lacan]], Seminar III
Tumblr user erratticusfinch on [[liberalism]]:
q: How would you define liberalism?
a: it’s a few different things, because we’re talking about both an ideology and a system of governance, but here’s the big picture. the key category of liberalism is not freedom, nor is it equality. liberalism has formal versions of both but they’re mostly to secure the existence of private property (equality in exchange, freedom to contract).
liberalism’s key category is security. that is the common denominator running from Hobbes and Locke to Keynes and Hayek, a fundamental anxiety about the inherent insecurity of class society (or civilization, if you’re nasty).
here are some of the things [[liberalism]] is.
- charitably, it’s a worldview and political system based on an idea of endless progress. [[Adam Smith]] and [[J.S. Mill]] conceptualized it as an eternal twin spire of accumulation - of truth and wealth. its purported values are using the self-interested pursuit of one’s personal “Good” as a stabilizing social force; universal equality of moral personhood; consensual governance and the guarantee of certain rights; and efficient allocation of resources through a market system.
- uncharitably, it’s the organizational principles of global [[capitalism]], the developed descendant of [[Smith]] and [[Ricardo]]’s “science” of [[political economy]]. its actual values are security, property, aristocracy, and imperial chauvinism.
- structurally, it’s a legalistic form of [[aristocracy]] (“rule of the best”). instead of informal or arbitrary systems like honor and heredity, liberalism combines positive law (statutes, constitutions, judges) with markets, money, and state authority. this combination creates formalized, predictable results that guarantee the security of property, rather than relying on the arbitrary whims of a handful of egomaniacs who think God appointed them. the possibility for reform is built in to defuse instability. it is the tar pit in which we all reside, because we lack sufficient tools to avoid being ensnared; its dedication to procedural values (like formal equality), and its void of substantive content, means liberalism can consistently absorb parts of other political practices and patterns that would otherwise pose a threat, or force competing worldviews to fight them on liberal terrain.
- economically, it’s the political order that a nascent capitalism birthed to protect itself, the guarantor of private property. universal naked force for accumulating and hoarding wealth and power is ultimately inefficient because it paradoxically gives the repressed something to unify around hating. [[impersonal domination]] - more subtle forms of coercion by market forces, “invisible threads” rather than chains - and personal domination deployed primarily against internal or external enemies (of the nation, of the faith, of the social contract), is a lot more stable in the long term. meanwhile, constant expansion means there will always be new frontiers to exploit. the neutralization of [[class conflict]] is the ultimate goal here.
- psychologically, it’s a deep discomfort with the conflictual character of politics, and with the nature of power. fascists and other reactionaries resent liberalism because they think that wringing the blood out of the weak for the amusement and luxury of a ruling class can be achieved without the need for an impersonal bureaucratic machine [see the conservative-cum-Nazi [[Carl Schmitt]]’s critique that liberals treat politics like it’s a debate parlor]. ironically, this brutish desire to dominate is a lesson that fascists learned within capitalism’s absorption and reproduction of preexisting hierarchies and values along the lines of gender, ethnicity, ability, and religion.
- in the language of [[Tumblr]], it’s an enemies-to-lovers fic between the working class and the owning class.
- personally, it’s a whole heap of shit.
Woke up with a sore throat, didn't feel great through the day but made it through the work day. I think I'm feeling better now, nothing serious it seems :)
Watching: [[Don't Look Up]]
I like Iain M. Banks and I'm currently re-reading [[Look to Windward]] because in [[Red Plenty]] it was described it as an example of a 20th century [[Marxian idyll]]. It's good and all but I'm reading the [[Culture]] now as kind of all premised on [[Prometheanism]] / [[fully automated luxury communism]]. I'm gonna reread [[A Wizard of Earthsea]] (last read as a young teen!) by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]] next as in [[Half-Earth Socialism]] they describe that as [[Jennerite ecological scepticism]] and that is more my bag lately.
I am writing this in the flight from Portland to London.
After my [[dreams]], and the [[poem]], and what happened this weekend, I keep thinking about [[arrows]]. It may sound like an obsession but it feels more like [[inspiration]].
It was my mum's birthday today. I'm happy she's visiting soon!
Started skim reading (ironically?) [[How To Take Smart Notes]].
Joined the [[Bonfire]] playground but haven't got time to do much on there at the mo. But I really love the mission they have around social media so following with great interest.
Reading a bit on [[Antonio Gramsci]] apropos [[site of struggle]].
[[Patrice Lumumba]]
Yesterday we went on a beautiful walk at sunset with [[Chris]], it was great!
At the lookout point we met [[Enrique]] and we became friends.
Haven't written a journal in a little bit. I'm always stoked for the agora-ui frontend I wrote. [[eat your own dogfood]]
Writing this on the flight to Seattle. My connection in [[Charlotte]] was tight but I made it just fine in the end.
(I wonder who you are, you reading this. If you are interested consider leaving an annotation using the Hypothesis side bar or reaching out :)
Thank you for reading!)
Some things aren't meant to be, I guess. Not in this timeline. It is with pain I experience their loss; accepting the pain I let them go.
I met Ritchie again in the streets of Durham. He was no worse off than last time, but not doing great. We had ice cream together and we walked and talked for a while.
Read: [[The Dialectics of Space]]
[[Naked]]
Read: [[Review: People's Republic of Walmart]]
[[Open Infrastructure Map]] is absolutely fascinating. Check out all the power stations, turbines, electricity lines, gas, oil, water pipelines, etc are near you. Built on top of [[Open Street Map]] data (what an amazing project OSM is).
Equally fascinating is [[OSM Landuse Landcover]]. Dead interesting to compare urban areas, agriculture and wilderness. No surprise that near me there is a ton of pasture grazing and crop farming, a bit of urban sprawl, and a depressingly small amount of woodland and forest.
Took me a bit to find https://death.andgravity.com/f-re on verbose regular expressions! Luckily the right search terms were iterated towards...
Listened: [[BACK TO NATURE: tackling the biodiversity and climate crises]]
[[Tipping point]]
I keep coming back to the same refrain: "I will show you the shape of my heart."
(I love you. Yes, you.)
Listened: [[What is true digital inclusion?]]
[[Grover]]
[[Another world is possible]]. But more than that - [[Another world is necessary]].
Learning more on [[Markets vs planning]], finding it interesting how [[Friedrich Hayek]]'s stuff on markets as a decentralised information processing system on the surface chimes with what I like about complex systems. And central planning is discordant with what I like about complex systems.
A veces siento que el [[ágora]] está hecha de luz, de bits en el espacio-tiempo fluyendo arbitrariamente cerca de la [[velocidad de la luz]].
Starting taking [[voice notes]] (again).
Been reading the Winter 2022 issue of [[Tribune]] on my Kobo. [[Tribune Winter 2022]].
[[Flancian]] suggested a [[node club]] on [[utopian socialism]].
Listened: [[Is the UK heading for a recession?]]
Listening: [[How to feed the world without destroying it]]
[[Appropedia]]
I feel as if something is turning. It might not be much longer.