A New Year, a New Era

It’s not only a new year but a new era.

We’ve survived a quarter of a century into the first century of the third millennia of the Common Era. This is approximately the two-thousandth anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection that supposedly brought salvation to all of humanity. Praise be! More prosaically, it’s Donald Trump’s second (and final?) term and the fascist takeover or techno-feudalist butterfly revolution is well on its way, whatever that portends.

Certainly, all the MAGA evangelicals and other fundies are worked up about the End Times, the Rapture, the Tribulation, the Second Coming, and, of course, the Anti-Christ. It doesn’t occur to them that the demiurgic Anti-Christ — The Beast, Man of Sin, Son of Perdition, Lawless One, The Adversary, The Wicked One — might already be here and in power of the largest empire on earth, as the present president of the United States or rather the god-emperor of the American Empire.

Then there are other visions.

If misunderstanding the Star Trek philosophy and worldview, tech oligarchs like Elon Musk who claim admiration for Star Trek seem to be pushing us into the Star Trek timeline of a future history that is rapidly becoming the future present and tumbling into future past (Star Trek Over Time & Snow Crash vs Star Trek). This is the year, by the way, when World War III is narratized as beginning with it’s predicted culmination being in 2053. It’s supposed to involve nuclear apocalypse, ecological destruction, and a final death toll at 600 million.

One worries that these deranged and Machiavellian tech overlords, with the full support of their fundy authoritarian followers, are pushing events in that direction on purpose as part of a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are doom-mongering accelerationists, after all.

Various other thinkers — Neil Howe (The Fourth Turning Is Here), Peter Turchin (End Times), Walter Scheidel (The Great Leveler), etc — have their own theories of what’s happening, what’s causing it, and what’s to come. In any case, the dire state of omni-crisis we find ourselves in is undeniable. It does get one thinking and puts one’s life in perspective.

Almost anyone alive right now is likely wondering about how the present might relate to the future, about where ongoing events are leading us, assuming there will be a future for humanity at all. As it’s been put, the light up ahead is either the end of the tunnel or an oncoming freight train. One way or another, we’ll soon find out.

* * * *

That leaves us ordinary folk in a quagmire.

Most of us are just trying to get by. We don’t have the capacity to affect major events. But we are forced to face them, no matter what we think about it all. Up to this point, it seems the average person was hoping to make it to the end of their life before the shit hit the fan — probably no such luck, unless you plan on dying immediately.

We’ve all sensed bad things coming and most would rather not think about it, just pass the buck down to the next generation. Now it seems the buck stops here. We the living are that last generations in the cycle (death spiral?). We are forced to suffer the consequences and, if we can, to clean up the mess made by those before us (pull up from the impending crash at the last moment?).

So, what does one hope to achieve in a world that is threatening catastrophe, chaos, and collapse? What is the point of doing anything at all? What kind of future, individual and collective, do we dare to hope for?

Or for some people, “What, me worry?”

For all my pontificating, I’m often in that latter camp. I spent decades in crippling depression. I’ve been waiting for the end of the world my whole life, having grown up on post-apocalyptic movies. In elementary school, back in the late 1980s, my class was given an assignment to write a story. My choice was to describe a post-apocalyptic earth where a few survivors wandered the ruins. The narrative was internalized.

It was plausible and realistic at the time, with the Cold War posing threats of doom. But so far, that outcome has not come to pass. Nor have I had to deal with quicksand, as was a scenario in nearly every television show of my childhood. So much for fiction predicting reality. But then again, there is still plenty of time for predictions to be proven prescient.

It’s just all the fear-mongering at some point becomes numbing, a defense mechanism of hazy PTSD. At this point, maybe I just have fewer shits left to give.

Even with possible apocalypse once again at our doorstep, such as a third world war, my psychological response is often: Meh. Whatever will be will be. But I’m not so detached as to not care about life, my own and that of others. It’s just my concerns have been narrowed down, as the larger world is just a bit too much at the moment. The anxieties of life, even when overwhelming, can become dulled down after awhile. It’s like working in a noisy factory that causes hearing loss.

Yet it’s not that I don’t plenty obsess over the fate of humanity, if my preferred frame tends to go in other directions, such as what the social sciences tell us about the meaning of humanity. Concerning myself about whether Trump or some other idiot decides to launch nuclear missiles, whether climate change brings on a new ice age, or whatever else — it’s a fruitless activity. I want to keep my focus on what matters most, specifically in terms of what’s in my power to influence.

The immediate world is bad enough as it is. And each of us has our personal challenges that will keep us preoccupied for the rest of our lives.

* * * *

I don’t normally do New Year’s resolutions.

It’s not because I never resolve to do or not do something, philosophical debates of free will aside (Robert Sapolsky, Determined). Nor is it that I fear I won’t be able to commit to and maintain my resolutions. I’m typically fine with making changes and sticking to them when such seems needed and desirable, attainable and worthwhile.

My unconcern, though, is just that the New Year is an arbitrary time. There is nothing about an artificial point on a calendar that inspires me to reassess my entire life and aspire to change things, to do better.

But as often happens, a friend asked if I had a New Year’s resolution. I did not and said so.

Nonetheless, there have been niggling thoughts on my mind about the state of my life and of society. It’s not like there aren’t endless opportunities for improvement all around.

And as my birthday is at the end of the year, it’s hard to ignore the fact that I’ve now reached 50 years old, the half century mark; with the two halves of my life split between two separate centuries, two separate millennia. So, I do have to decide how to spend the rest of my life, although that’s always the case. For hunter-gatherers, the average individual hits their physical peak in their fifties. But for modern Westerners, most are already showing major decline by that point, or often much earlier — healthspan being a different issue than lifespan.

Admittedly, if far better off than typical, I am feeling my age. And I can’t deny that my choices, actions, and behaviors affect not only my physical health but, as important, my mental health.

With that in mind, maybe I do have a New Year’s resolutions of sorts, if something I’ve already been long struggling with. As has caused much public concern and debate, there is the effect had by the new media and its corresponding technology, specifically with a tech oligarchy having taken over the United States that has aspirations of globalizing techno-feudalism, maybe akin to the dystopian future of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

It gives one pause.

If I can’t stop this weird breed of authoritarian accelerationism that hopes to bring on an End Times to give birth to the Second Coming of a strange AI dark lord (with Jesus replaced with a Sauron-like figure), I can at the very least make decisions and commitments about how to relate to it all. So, I resolve to be more aware, intentional, and discerning in my media usage.

* * * *

I’ve long realized this is important and I’ve acted on that realization. So, it’s not exactly a resolution to start something entirely new. Just to bring an old concern to the forefront and to recommit to this change.

For the past decade or so, I’ve steadily broadened my curtailment of social media, along with having boycotted tech behemoths like Amazon. I’ve also unsubscribed from the streaming service companies that bowed down to MAGA fascism by paying bribes or tributes to Trump. At the very least, I don’t have to give these evil corporations my money, time, and attention.

Yet the allure of the online world, especially YouTube (a weakness of mine), keeps drawing me back in. I need to go the route of Alcoholics Anonymous — once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. These media platforms are designed to be addictive and manipulative. I need to go cold turkey. As one drink leads to another for the alcoholic, the same is true with one click on a video or whatnot.

I need to double or triple down on my resolve.

I had to learn that with my decades of sugar addiction, having developed it in childhood. I have enough self-control to not take that first bite of candy, potato chips, or whatever other kind of junk food. But once that first bite is taken, once the taste is in my mouth and the sugar is flowing through my veins with my serotonin spiking, I very well might not have enough strength within me to resist the second bite and the third, fourth, etc. Then a binge will likely follow, possibly along with regret and misery, shame and self-blame.

But the thing is that it’s not a matter of being personally weak. And so we have to be more intelligent and wise by understanding where resolve matters and how it can work, as opposed to when it’s a counterproductive, unnecessary, and futile struggle. That is to say one needs to locate points of leverage, rather than bashing one’s head into a wall.

As with tech media, ultra-processed ‘food’ products (UPFs) are carefully designed by corporate-hired scientific researchers to be extremely addictive, such as being more intensely tasty than any natural food with that sought-after mouthfeel and the triggering of the reward system (Robert Lustig, The Hacking of the American Mind). This stuff isn’t ‘food’ in the normal sense. It’s closer to a drug.

Your biology, your brain is no match against the trillions of dollars plutocrats have invested in the knowledge of how to pull your strings like a puppet.

It’s good to be a bit paranoid in such a scenario, when in enemy territory. They really are out to get you, to use and abuse you, to suck you dry. You can’t directly fight against that. It’s more about awareness, knowledge, and insight than self-control. Just don’t put yourself into situations where you know the table is tilted in their favor, where the game is rigged against you. In recognizing you’re outmatched and disadvantaged, don’t meet them on the battlefield of their choice. Know that the house always wins.

Don’t take that first bite. Reclaim authority over your own life. Take control of that initial decision of where and how to engage. If you’re not in control, then it’s likely you’re being controlled by tools and systems of control. This is capital ‘C’ Control, as William S. Burroughs described it.

* * * *

That is where my own resolution comes in.

I find myself irritated and frustrated, emotionally jerked around whenever I’m on these corporate media platforms, at least the popular ones. They mostly or entirely disallow personal autonomy and control. The algorithms determine your feed as a ‘user’, the content you’re recommended, and the advertising you see. The bots monitor everything you do, determine what others can see of what you do (along with what you can of what others do), and control how you’re allowed to interact: filtering search results, disappearing comments, shadow banning, deplatforming, etc.

It generally operates in the background and so goes unseen, which makes it all the more nefarious and insidious. All that they allow is an illusion of free choice in a public-like space. But in reality, it’s all controlled and determined, shaped and influenced by big money and powerful interests; with endless propaganda of capitalist realism, American imperialism, Zionism, etc. And they do their best to trap you in an echo chamber, to keep you ignorant, disinformed, and clueless, or else irate and reactionary; to keep us all at odds with divide and conquer.

If you think you’re smarter than these forces of perception management and social control, then you are stupid and a fool. Intellectual humility is in order.

I’ve seen too many people fall prey. The tactics of manipulation are always several, if not dozens, of steps ahead of public media literacy. It could take generations for we the citizenry to catch up to where big tech is right now and so to catch on to how the game is played, although we are gaining insight. But public knowledge that is actionable will be too late for almost anyone alive right now.

[As a side note, this manipulation happens in many ways.

As shown by research based on cultivation theory, repeatedly viewing media portrayals of violence will elicit mean world syndrome, that is to say exaggerated threat perception and punitiveness, social conservatism and right-wing authoritarianism. This is true even for exposed liberals. One study found that, after watching continuous footage of the 9/11 attacks on tv, liberals later became more supportive of right-wing policies: Homeland Security, Iraq War, etc.

Similarly, I’ve known of leftists who explored reactionary alt-right literature out of curiosity. Then they begin to exhibit reactionary attitudes and express reactionary thought. These were highly intelligent and informed people who thought they were above the power of such rhetoric. They went into it knowing what it was and yet, as mind viruses, it still slipped past their intellectual defenses and infected them.

Choose your media consumption carefully as it might consume you. None of us is above being vulnerable. Always be on guard by developing intellectual self-defense (Normand Baillargeon, A Short Course in Intellectual Self Defense: Find Your Inner Chomsky).]

Furthermore, it’s also how these tech companies intentionally promote what elicits engagement, what incites and riles emotion, at any cost. That usually means the worst demons of our nature: fear, anxiety, alienation, anger, hatred, bigotry, scapegoating, and worse still like cruelty, vengeance, schadenfreude, and on and on. This is how we’re led down a dark path of doomscrolling, idiotic online pseudo-arguments, trollish antisocial behavior, and superficial ingroup bias of polarized partisanship, identity politics, victimhood Olympics, etc.

All of this is exacerbated by how electronic media elicits and antagonizes the destabilizing and deranging conditions of a post-literary culture. This is seen with both the tribalism of Marshall McLuhan’s global village and the agonism of Walter J. Ong’s secondary orality. The literary-based culture, as it’s operated for centuries, no longer fully applies (Jeff Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis).

And so the whole world is thrown up into the air, with an accompanying sense of weightlessness until we hit back down again. With no way to get our bearings, no chance to catch our breath, it makes everyone feel on edge, constantly agitated and exhausted, as we brace ourselves for the coming impact.

* * * *

One doesn’t need to intellectually understand all that, if the context helps. Nor does one have to sit around worrying about the larger implications and long-term consequences. But one should take seriously that one is up against forces that are outside of individual control. There is a vaster field of action far beyond you and, to those in power, you’re just another pawn to be sacrificed, a data point to be sold, a user profile to manipulate.

That is all the more reason to prioritize what we do control, while avoiding as much as possible what we don’t.

Personally, this means that I’m picking my media usage with great wariness and care, weighing the pros and cons with each option. I don’t want to become a luddite and hermit, hiding from the big bad world. As I’m a writer, I need or rather desire a platform on which to publish and hopefully to gain an audience. But I want to stay away from any platform that doesn’t allow me to control all major aspects of my experience.

That is why I got off Medium and returned to WordPress, even if the latter might be a dying platform. I’m going back to what I know, at least for the moment while I reassess my situation and determine my options.

WordPress, if nothing else, offers much direct control, in terms of what matters to me. I can set all my pieces or a single piece to no comments, moderated comments, or open commenting. Also, I can entirely block individuals from leaving comments at all. This allows me to proactively cultivate my audience and hence my experience. I don’t need to ever engage with trolls, the mentally disturbed, bad actors, or simply people who irritate me and offer nothing of value.

It’s a rare breath of fresh air, as compared to most elsewhere on the internet.

It reinforces the sense of my writing space as being my own personal space. I’m given the tools to determine for myself how I wish to engage with the online world. Fewer platforms do that anymore. Hence, I prefer the old school design of WordPress that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t yet fallen to enshittification (Corey Doctorow).

In addition, WordPress brings me straight to my own page, not the main WordPress page. Without any extra steps (e.g., signing out), I can see my page as others see it, which isn’t an easy option on Medium. When I go to Medium, I’m first confronted with recommendations, mostly of articles from people I don’t follow. Medium is telling me what they think I should read, not what I want to read. In that, it’s more similar to social media like Facebook, Twitter/X, and YouTube.

I want the freedom and demand the right to curate my own experience. And I’ll accept nothing less. I’m not going to lower my standards to turn myself into a mere product of big biz, as part of their scheme to control the internet and hence control the public mind. I’ll only deal with businesses that treat me with basic respect, that seem to hold true to the old vision and ethos of the internet as an equalizing force.

* * * *

But also I require dependability.

I’ve been on WordPress a little less than two decades. In all that time, they’ve never once jerked me around or caused me problems. WordPress simply works almost seamlessly. It’s simple and perfunctorial. It just works. Apparently, WordPress management and designers see it as their job to make my life easier and to incentivize my participation. Whereas some other major platforms act as if they’re doing us peons a favor by allowing us to produce free content for them to profit by.

That is because, specifically on social media, we the users are the product being sold. I have no interest in being a product placed on the mind-slave block. I’m the human here. Corporations should serve me, not the other way around. That is true of the system in general, from a leftist perspective of freedom and liberty. Humans should always be front and center.

That is what, after initial positive experience, finally sent me jumping the Medium ship. Out of the blue without any warning, they one day suspended my account. I no longer could publish articles or comment. I made a formal complaint and my account was quickly reinstated. But with opaque bureaucracy, they never gave me a verbal response, never explained, never apologized. I have no way of knowing what happened or why. And worse, I have no way of preventing it from happening to again.

The Medium staff acted like arbitrary gods from up high, an impersonal and faceless force that will-nilly determines your fate. They owe you nothing and make sure you realize you’re inferiority, your utter dependence on them. Make the wrong move and you’re done. There is no fellow human to appeal to, as could be done with a local brick-and-mortar business.

I had no desire to have that hanging over my head, to be in that kind of non-relationship of power disparity. So, I left Medium and don’t regret it. I demand to be treated with basic human decency. That’s non-negotiable.

Now I’m back on WordPress. But as I explained, it’s not about just this one issue. I’m in the process of curating my entire online experience. I’ve decided to be more careful of where and how I spend my time, to guard jealously my personal autonomy in this attention economy, ruthless and manipulative as it is.

On a simpler note, it’s partly just no longer wanting to waste my time. And as anyone knows these days, that’s easy to do. One post, tweet, video, link, etc leads to another, often as part of an endless feed that mindlessly leads one along. Before you know it, hours of your life may have disappeared and you hardly remember what you did.

It’s demoralizing. Just whittering away your precious moments of life.

* * * *

Even when not mere pointless and mind-numbing distraction, something like a long intellectual discussion on a YouTube video can, nonetheless, feel like empty calories. During that same time, I could’ve been reading a book or finishing one of my thousands of drafts.

It’s not only the quality of the content but the quality of the engagement. It’s what it’s doing to me. A video is passive and so it instills in one a sense of passivity, of just letting life slip by. With endless opportunities of preoccupation, there never needs to be a moment for boredom, contemplation, people-watching, or whatever. The online world can absorb one’s entire awareness and there will never be an end to the content on display.

We need moments of downtime when nothing is happening, when the mind wanders and daydreams.

That is what turns on the default mode network. It’s in this state that the mind can process and gain perspective. It’s why there are so many anecdotes of scientists, inventors, and such coming to some great insight while going for a walk or taking a bath. Research has found something as simply 15 minutes of doing nothing causes people to come up with more creative solutions.

That’s the thing. As a GenXer, I remember the world before the internet. I know what it feels like to be motivated into creativity because I had nothing better to do — for example, sitting in front of a blank piece of paper waiting for inspiration or just writing down whatever came to mind. I haven’t done that kind of writing in a long time, truly emergent creativity.

And it will never happen as long as I let the tech lords own and possess my mind.

I can come to the end of a video that may have had some value and yet still wonder why I watched it. It’s the unfocused nature of simply clicking on something that captures my attention but without any conscious intention on my part. One loses the sense of making a choice. Indeed, the algorithm has us all figured out. Even for us intellectuals, it knows how to grab hold of us, and then it can be so hard to pull back out. The claws pierce deep into our psyches.

Besides the severe alienation of it all, the demoralization and depersonalization, mediated reality can swamp an individual in so many ways. It’s a race to the bottom where the the lowest common denominator rules. It will drag you down with it and keep you mired.

The more time I spend online the more I realize that the best people likely spend the least amount of time online. Those actually accomplishing something meaningful and worthy, generally speaking, aren’t to be found on social media and in comments sections. That creates the sorry state where those who have the least maturity, depth, intelligence, understanding, knowledge, insight, creativity, humility, compassion, and moral concern are those with the greatest presence and the loudest voices. It’s mostly, if not entirely, the dregs of society with the time to dedicate their entire lives to non-stop opinionating, sparring, trolling, and shitposting online.

This includes troll farms and mercenary paid trolls. Not to mention the growing tide of bots and AI content; a significant portion of it being pushed as part of propaganda campaigns serving diverse nefarious interests. It’s a fucking nightmare. We are entering what many describe according to the dead internet theory.

Actual humans interacting normally with other humans is becoming a thing of the past. Our very humanity is disappearing into the morass.

One comes across entire comments sections that very likely were produced entirely by non-human entities spamming and spewing out advertisements, talking points, or whatever other bullshit. Data analysis has already found that, in some countries, most of the internet activity is no longer human. I’ve seen arguments in threads where I suspect both sides were bots, or else people have become so influenced by bot talk that they’re starting to sound like them — the latter would be a truly dark turn.

To make matters worse, with deepfakes, it will get harder and harder to determine what is real and factual. We’re being buried alive in a post-truth world.

* * * *

It can make one feel defeated, as if the only option is to give up and retreat. But I don’t want to.

There is little point to writing without an audience. And, for good or ill, it’s hard for the average or even above average writer to find an audience these days while abstaining from online platforms. Sadly, it’s nearly impossible for most people to maintain their own websites, as everything has gotten too complex. And opportunities of publishing in physical venues are declining, as local newspapers and magazines close down.

There is another complaint I have about the internet in general and most writing platforms in particular. I developed my love of writing long before I got my own internet connection in 1998. The internet, though, has changed the equation and can cause me to forget why I came to enjoy writing so much in the first place. If it’s hard to imagine now, I used to write all the time without any audience in mind, as I had no audience other than close friends. There was a freedom in it, as one didn’t feel a compulsion to constantly tailor oneself according to the responses, demands, suggestions, and complaints of others; much less conform to algorithmic machinations that determine if you’re seen or buried.

That relates to another problem with Medium.

To get any major exposure, a writer had to get pieces accepted by a ‘publication’, each with its own focus, requirements, and style; all of which has been shaped by internet weirdness. I found that I had a talent for writing great pieces that could get published and sometimes drew in large audiences. Decades of experience have honed my skills in knowing how to shape an appealing piece, and the constraints in some ways brought out the best in me. I further learned what works in the online world, how to break up texts with subheadings, quotes, pull quotes, images, videos, and links.

To the credit of Medium, they do have an impressive platform in many ways that is user friendly. I don’t regret my time spent there. But in the end, I want to write on my own terms. That is what WordPress has allowed me. Last decade, I was averaging 80,000 clicks per year on WordPress with no need for any ‘publication’ to promote my work. I did my own thing in my own way and gained a large following.

I don’t know, however, if that’s possible now.

I’ve been inactive on WordPress for a while and so have lost most of my active followers. Plus, though WordPress used to be a heavy-hitter that was prominent, I have a suspicion that Google and other search engines now push WordPress articles further down in results. It has the stigma of being an old ‘blogging’ platform and that is no longer fashionable, if technically there isn’t any fundamental difference between it and the newer writing platforms.

I’m not sure what I want to do or how I should go about doing it. Many writers left Medium for Substack. All the cool kids, public intellectuals, and celebrities are on Substack now, at least until another new and popular platform comes along. I just have no interest in platform jumping with the eternal hope of catching some wave. Rather, I simply want to plunk down somewhere and have a solid, if not necessarily massive, following of interested readers — more emphasis on quality than quantity. Better yet, I’d like to be part of a community of writers, as I did find on Medium to its credit.

For the moment, I’m holing up here on WordPress and licking my wounds. Maybe I’ll eventually venture out to some other platforms. Even in that case, I think I’m going to keep WordPress as my home base, for as long as possible.

As such, here I am and here I will remain.

But how do I make the best of a bad situation? I want to be more proactive, selective, and discerning in how I spend my time. I want to get back to focusing on my own aspirations, in particular my vocation as a writer. I want to get shit done. And in what I do, I want it to matter. I write because I care about the world, about humanity. That is what I need to keep front and center, the whole reason that helps me remain motivated and inspired, curious and interested.

I’m an intellectual in a media environment where intellectuality is being downgraded in value. All I’m trying to do is find my niche, a place where I belong and possibly even can be respected. I have something unique and worthy to offer. That is what I need to stay focused on. All I can do is what I know how to do and do it to the best of my ability.

That is my New Year’s resolution. Or just call it a resolution. It’s my recommitting myself to what I’m already committed to but with renewed focus and intention.

* * * *

Resolution aside, much of last year was spent pondering how media affects me. To that end, I’ve been studying the history of media and research of its impact on mentality, behavior, and culture. This was the topic of one of my recent writings: The End of the Age of the Masses.

It’s with all of that on my mind that I felt like writing this piece. I do have many further thoughts on the matter. So, it’s probably safe to suggest more such pieces will be on the way. But for now, I’ll end it here with a book recommendation list:

Public Opinion
by Walter Lippman

The Image
by Daniel J. Boorstin

The Gutenberg Galaxy
by Marshall McLuhan

The Sensus Communis, Synesthesia, and the Soul
by Eric McLuhan

Amusing Ourselves to Death
by Neil Postman

The Shallows
by Nicholas Car

Stolen Focus
by Johann Hari

The Gutenberg Parenthesis
by Jeff Jarvis

The Science of Reading
by Adrian Johns

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess
by Leonard Shlain

The Spell of the Sensuous
by David Abram

Kafka On Parables And Metaphors, Writing And Language

I was contemplating the difficulties of communication and the attendant frustrations of the media and methods through which we seek to express. Or, to put it simply, I was annoyed at goddamn words, the slippery little devils that won’t say what I want them to say. And so I was reminded of Franz Kafka.

Instead of offering an analysis and personal reflection (which would be boring), I’ll just let Kafka speak in his many voices.

* * * *

PARABLE:

Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross over to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.

Parables and paradoxes by Franz Kafka, tr. by Clement Greenberg and als., Schocken Books, 1961, p. 11. Available online.

* * * *

FRAGMENT:

How many words there are in the book! They are meant to be reminders! As though words could ever be reminders!

For words are poor mountaineers and miners. They collect treasures neither from the mountain heights nor from the mountain depths.

But there is a living remembrance that gently brushed across everything memorable as if with a coaxing hand. And when the blaze arises from these ashes, glowing and hot, massive and strong, and you stare into it as though under a magic spell, then–

But into this chaste remembrance, one cannot inscribe oneself with a clumsy hand and blunt implement; one can do it only in these white, unassuming pages.

Kafka, Franz (2013-09-11). Abandoned Fragments: Unedited Works 1897-1917 (Kindle Locations 36-41). . Kindle Edition.

* * * *

DIARIES:

Metaphors are one among many things which make me despair of writing . Writing’s lack of independence of the world, its dependence on the maid who tends the fire, on the cat warming itself by the stove; it is even dependent on the poor old human being warming himself by the stove. All these are independent activities ruled by their own laws; only writing is helpless, cannot live in itself, is a joke and a despair.

Kafka, Franz (2009-01-16). Diaries, 1910-1923 (Schocken Classics Series) (Kindle Locations 6607-6610). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Diary entry, December 6, 1921

Have never understood how it is possible for almost everyone who writes to objectify his sufferings in the very midst of undergoing them; thus I, for example, in the midst of my unhappiness, in all likelihood with my head still smarting from unhappiness, sit down and write to someone: I am unhappy. Yes , I can even go beyond that and with as many flourishes as I have the talent for, all of which seem to have nothing to do with my unhappiness, ring simple, or contrapuntal, or a whole orchestration of changes on my theme. And it is not a lie, and it does not still my pain; it is simply a merciful surplus of strength at a moment when suffering has raked me to the bottom of my being and plainly exhausted all my strength. But then what kind of surplus is it?

Kafka, Franz (2009-01-16). Diaries, 1910-1923 (Schocken Classics Series) (p. 384). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Diary entry, September 19, 1920(?)

I don’t even have the desire to keep a diary, perhaps because there is already too much lacking in it, perhaps because I should perpetually have to describe incomplete— by all appearances necessarily incomplete— actions, perhaps because writing itself adds to my sadness.

I would gladly write fairy tales (why do I hate the word so?) that could please W. and that she might sometimes keep under the table at meals, read between courses and blush fearfully when she noticed that the sanatorium doctor has been standing behind her for a little while now and watching her. Her excitement sometimes— or really all of the time— when she hears stories.

I notice that I am afraid of the almost physical strain of the effort to remember, afraid of the pain beneath which the floor of the thoughtless vacuum of the mind slowly opens up, or even merely heaves up a little in preparation. All things resist being written down.

Brod, Max (2013-04-16). The Diaries Of Franz Kafka 1910-1913 (Kindle Locations 3829-3836). Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
Diary entry, October 20, 1913(?)

If one patiently submits to a book of letters or memoirs, no matter by whom, in this case it is Karl Stauffer-Bern, one doesn’t make him one’s own by main strength, for to do this one has to employ art, and art is its own reward; but rather one suffers oneself to be drawn away— this is easily done, if one doesn’t resist— by the concentrated otherness of the person writing and lets oneself be made into his counterpart. Thus it is no longer remarkable, when one is brought back to one’s self by the closing of the book, that one feels the better for this excursion and this recreation, and, with a clearer head, remains behind in one’s own being, which has been newly discovered, newly shaken up and seen for a moment from the distance. Only later are we surprised that these experiences of another person’s life, in spite of their vividness, are faithfully described in the book—our own experience inclines us to think that nothing in the world is further removed from an experience (sorrow over the death of a friend, for instance) than its description. But what is right for us is not right for the other person. If our letters cannot match our own feelings— naturally, there are varying degrees of this, passing imperceptibly into one another in both directions—if even at our best, expressions like “indescribable,”“inexpressible,” or “so sad,” or “so beautiful,” followed by a rapidly collapsing “that”-clause, must perpetually come to our assistance , then as if in compensation we have been given the ability to comprehend what another person has written with at least the same degree of calm exactitude which we lack when we confront our own letter-writing. Our ignorance of those feelings which alternately make us crumple up and pull open again the letter in front of us, this very ignorance becomes knowledge the moment we are compelled to limit ourselves to this letter, to believe only what it says, and thus to find it perfectly expressed and perfect in expression, as is only right, if we are to see a clear road into what is most human. So Karl Stauffer’s letters contain only an account of the short life of an artist——

Brod, Max (2013-04-16). The Diaries Of Franz Kafka 1910-1913 (Kindle Locations 2171-2186). Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
Diary entry, December 9, (?)

* * * *

LETTERS:

But it’s good when your conscience receives big wounds, because that makes it more sensitive to every twinge. I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for ? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Friends, Family and Editors (Kindle Locations 380-385). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Letter to Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904

Despite all this, writing really is a good thing; I am now calmer than I was 2 hours ago outside on the balcony with your letter. While I was lying there a beetle had fallen on its back one step away and was desperately trying to right itself; I would have gladly helped —it was so easy, so obvious, all that was required was a step and a small shove— but I forgot about it because of your letter; I was just as incapable of getting up. Only a lizard again made me aware of the life around me, its path led over the beetle, which was already so completely still that I said to myself, this was not an accident but death throes, the rarely witnessed drama of an animal’s natural death; but when the lizard slid off the beetle, the beetle was righted although it did lie there a little longer as if dead, but then ran up the wall of the house as if nothing had happened. Somehow this probably gave me, too, a little courage; I got up, drank some milk and wrote to you.

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Milena (Works) (Kindle Locations 333-340). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Leter to Milena, Meran, 1920

Now I have expanded my life to accommodate my thoughts about you, and there is hardly a quarter of an hour of my waking time when I haven’t thought about you, and many quarter-hours when I do nothing else . But even this is related to my writing, my life is determined by nothing but the ups and downs of writing, and certainly during a barren period I should never have had the courage to turn to you. This is just as true as it is true that since that evening I have felt as though I had an opening in my chest through which there was an unrestrained drawing-in and drawing-out until one evening in bed, when, by calling to mind a story from the Bible, the necessity of this sensation, as well as the truth of the Bible story, were simultaneously confirmed.

Lately I have found to my amazement how intimately you have now become associated with my writing, although until recently I believed that the only time I did not think about you at all was while I was writing. In one short paragraph I had written, there were, among others, the following references to you and your letters : Someone was given a bar of chocolate. There was talk of small diversions someone had during working hours. Then there was a telephone call. And finally somebody urged someone to go to bed, and threatened to take him straight to his room if he did not obey, which was certainly prompted by the recollection of your mother’s annoyance when you stayed so late at the office. 26 —Such passages are especially dear to me; in them I take hold of you , without your feeling it, and therefore without your having to resist. And even if you were to read some of my writings, these little details would surely escape you. But believe me, probably nowhere in the world could you let yourself be caught with greater unconcern than here.

My mode of life is devised solely for writing, and if there are any changes, then only for the sake of perhaps fitting in better with my writing; for time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror , the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers. The satisfaction gained by maneuvering one’s timetable successfully cannot be compared to the permanent misery of knowing that fatigue of any kind shows itself better and more clearly in writing than anything one is really trying to say.

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Felice (Kindle Locations 800-817). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Letter to Fraulein Felice, November 1, 1912

Poor, poor dearest, may you never feel compelled to read this miserable novel I keep writing away at so dismally. It is terrible how it can change its appearance; once the load (the ardor I write with! How the inkspots fly!) is on the cart, I am all right; I delight in cracking the whip and am a man of importance; but once it falls off the cart (which cannot be foreseen, prevented, or concealed), as it did yesterday and today, then it feels excessively heavy for my pitiful shoulders; all I want to do then is abandon everything and dig my grave on the spot. After all, there can be no more beautiful spot to die in , no spot more worthy of total despair, than one’s own novel.

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Felice (Kindle Locations 3346-3351). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Letter to Felice, January 5 to 6, 1913

How is it possible to write at all if one has so much to say and knows that the pen can only trace an uncertain and random trail through the mass of what has to be said?

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Felice (Kindle Locations 3398-3399). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Letter to Felice, January 6 to 7, 1913

Help me, dearest, I beg you, to put right the damage I have done in the last few days. Perhaps in fact nothing whatever has happened, and you wouldn’t have noticed anything if I hadn’t shouted about it, but I am driven by this feeling of anxiety in the midst of my lethargy, and I write, or fear I may at any moment write, irresponsible things. The wrong sentences lie in wait about my pen, twine themselves around its point, and are dragged along into the letters. I am not of the opinion that one can ever lack the power to express perfectly what one wants to write or say. Observations on the weakness of language, and comparisons between the limitations of words and the infinity of feelings, are quite fallacious. The infinite feeling continues to be as infinite in words as it was in the heart. What is clear within is bound to become so in words as well. This is why one need never worry about language, but at sight of words may often worry about oneself. 57 After all, who knows within himself how things really are with him? This tempestuous or floundering or morasslike inner self is what we really are, but by the secret process by which words are forced out of us, our self-knowledge is brought to light, and though it may still be veiled, yet it is there before us, wonderful or terrible to behold.

So protect me, dearest, from these horrible words of which I have recently been delivering myself. Tell me that you understand it all, and yet go on loving me. The other day I wrote some offensive things about Lasker -Schüler and Schnitzler. How very right I was! And yet they both soar like angels over the abyss in which I lie prostrate. And Max’s praise! He doesn’t actually praise my book; after all, the book exists, and his judgment could be examined, should anyone feel so inclined; but it is me he praises, and this is the most ridiculous of all. For where am I? Who can examine me? I wish I had a strong hand for the sole purpose of thrusting it into this incoherent construction that I am. And yet what I am saying here is not even precisely my opinion , not even precisely my opinion at this moment. When I look into myself I see so much that is obscure and still in flux that I cannot even properly explain or fully accept the dislike I feel for myself.

Dearest, what do you say when you come face to face with such chaos? Is it not sadder and more repellent for the observer than for him who experiences it? Certainly, incomparably sadder and more repellent. I can imagine the strength it must take not to run away from it. While I, as I freely admit, write it all down quite calmly.

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Felice (Kindle Locations 4524-4542). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Leter to Felice, February 18 to 19, 1913

You are right, Felice; recently I have sometimes had to force myself to write to you ; but writing to you and living have drawn very near to each other, and I also have to force myself to live. Shouldn’t I?

Moreover, hardly a word comes to me from the fundamental source, but is seized upon fortuitously and with great difficulty somewhere along the way. When I was in the swing of writing and living, I once wrote to you that no true feeling need search for corresponding words, but is confronted or even impelled by them. Perhaps this is not quite true, after all. 68

But how could my writing to you, however firm my hand, achieve everything I want to achieve: To convince you that my two requests are equally serious: “Go on loving me” and “Hate me!”

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Felice (Kindle Locations 5080-5086). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Letter to Felice, March 17 to 18, 1913

Writing does make things clearer, yet at the same time worse.

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Felice (Kindle Location 6214). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Leter to Felice, June 27, 1913

I did not say that writing ought to make everything clearer, but instead makes everything worse; what I said was that writing makes everything clearer and worse.

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Felice (Kindle Locations 6458-6459). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Letter to Felice, July [presumably August] 1, 1913

Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That’s why the only way I can keep going, if at all , is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Felice (Kindle Locations 9113-9115). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Letter to Grete Bloch, June 6, 1914

Last night as I lay sleepless and let everything continually veer back and forth between my aching temples, what I had almost forgotten during the last relatively quiet time became clear to me: namely, on what frail ground or rather altogether nonexistent ground I live, over a darkness from which the dark power emerges when it wills and, heedless of my stammering, destroys my life. Writing sustains me, but is it not more accurate to say that it sustains this kind of life? By this I don’t mean, of course, that my life is better when I don’t write. Rather it is much worse then and wholly unbearable and has to end in madness. But that, granted, only follows from the postulate that I am a writer, which is actually true even when I am not writing, and a nonwriting writer is a monster inviting madness. But what about being a writer itself? Writing is a sweet and wonderful reward, but for what? In the night it became clear to me, as clear as a child’s lesson book, that it is the reward for serving the devil. This descent to the dark powers , this unshackling of spirits bound by nature, these dubious embraces and whatever else may take place in the nether parts which the higher parts no longer know, when one writes one’s stories in the sunshine. Perhaps there are other forms of writing, but I know only this kind; at night, when fear keeps me from sleeping, I know only this kind. And the diabolic element in it seems very clear to me. It is vanity and sensuality which continually buzz about one’s own or even another’s form— and feast on him. The movement multiplies itself— it is a regular solar system of vanity. Sometimes a naïve person will wish, “I would like to be dead and see how everyone mourns me.” Such a writer is continually staging such a scene: He dies (or rather he does not live ) and continually mourns himself. From this springs a terrible fear of death, which need not reveal itself as fear of death but may also appear as fear of change, as fear of Georgental. The reasons for this fear of death may be divided into two main categories. First he has a terrible fear of dying because he has not yet lived . By this I do not mean that wife and child, fields and cattle are essential to living. What is essential to life is only to forgo complacency, to move into the house instead of admiring it and hanging garlands around it. In reply to this, one might say that this is a matter of fate and is not given into anyone’s hand. But then why this sense of repining, this repining that never ceases? To make oneself finer and more savory? That is a part of it. But why do such nights leave one always with the refrain: I could live and I do not live . The second reason— perhaps it is all really one, the two do not want to stay apart for me now— is the belief: “What I have playacted is really going to happen. I have not bought myself off by my writing. I died my whole life long and now I will really die. My life was sweeter than other peoples’ and my death will be more terrible by the same degree. Of course the writer in me will die right away, since such a figure has no base, no substance, is less than dust. He is only barely possible in the broil of earthly life, is only a construct of sensuality. That is your writer for you. But I myself cannot go on living because I have not lived , I have remained clay, I have not blown the spark into fire, but only used it to light up my corpse .” It will be a strange burial: the writer, insubstantial as he is, consigning the old corpse, the longtime corpse, to the grave. I am enough of a writer to appreciate the scene with all my senses, or— and it is the same thing— to want to describe it with total self-forgetfulness— not alertness, but self-forgetfulness is the writer’s first prerequisite. But there will be no more of such describing. But why am I talking of actual dying? It is just the same in life. I sit here in the comfortable posture of the writer, ready for all sorts of fine things, and must idly look on—for what can I do but write?— as my true ego, this wretched, defenseless ego, is nipped by the devil’s pincers, cudgeled, and almost ground to pieces on a random pretext—a little trip to Georgental. […] The existence of a writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer .

Kafka, Franz (2013-06-26). Letters to Friends, Family and Editors . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

* * * *

ARTICLE:

Franz Kafka on Writing – Whistling Shade
By Bob Blaisdell

Faith in the Power of Knowledge

I was continuing to think more about knowledge, learning and communication.

I’m always reading and researching. One thing I love about my Kindle is that it allows me to do a search of terms across all of my books, excluding the physical books on my shelves. I have enough ebooks now that doing searches is more fun activity.

That is how I was wasting my time recently. I was doing various searches just to see what would come up. I was looking up terms like “Anti-Federalism” and “Articles of Confederation”, but also terms such as “eligible” combined with “vote”. Doing this kind of activity reminds me of how much there is to know and how little I know in comparison.

With those last search terms, I found my way to Liberty in America’s Founding by Howard Schwartz. I always have so many books I’m meaning to start reading or finish that it is nice to have books brought back to my attention. This particular book I had almost entirely forgotten about. My search first brought me to a section on Jefferson and Locke, and then looking at the table of contents I noticed the author had a section on John Dickinson. Oh, what a lovely find/rediscovery.

Just reading a few short sections really did get me excited. The author was presenting a very original perspective. The guy is obviously well informed and he brings so much together. It is books like this that demonstrate the power of knowledge to shift one’s perspective. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if knowledge were to shift the perspective of our entire society, a shift to a new understanding, maybe even an entirely new paradigm.

That is why I so often return to the Axial Age, the Enlightenment, and the Revolutionary Era. Those were fulcrum points in history when entire worldviews shifted like plate tectonics. At the heart of those shifts were new understandings and perspectives. Beginning with the Axial Age in particular, books were what much of that hinged upon, books as a technology to transfer knowledge and insight from one mind to another, across boundaries of nations, religions and ethnicities.

I read and write so much because I have this genuine faith in the power of knowledge. I wish I had endless amounts of time to do nothing but read and write.

Trinity In Mind: Rhetoric & Metaphor, Imaginal & Archetypal

Story. Culture. Knowledge.

Two elements: pattern and communication. What are the patterns of our communications along with the patterns of cognition and experience underlying them? How do we communicate these patterns when our very attempt is enmeshed in them?

It’s not just an issue of rhetoric and metaphor. It’s a stepping back and looking for a pathway to higher ground. A meta-language maybe is needed, but not meta in a way of making language abstract and detached. Death can’t speak for life.

I’ve never been in love with language. This could be seen as a flaw of mine as a self-identified writer. Admittedly, language is sort of important to writing. What I appreciate is communication, the essence and the impetus thereof, the desire to express, to be heard and possibly understood.

I have nothing against language. It just is what it is. My lack of love isn’t a hate; it’s a wariness. I’ve often found too superficial writers who’ve fallen in love with language. There can be a trap in linguistic narcissism. Even great writers can get caught up in their own cleverness. In these cases, it’s not always clear they’ve fallen in love with language itself or just the sound of their own voices.

Compelling language takes more than catchy phrasing and aesthetic sensibility. A writer or any other user of language has to first and foremost have something worthy of being shared and to be given voice. Language, however rarely, can touch something deeper. Then language isn’t just language.

It’s not the writer that matters, but the Other that is speaking through the writer. This deeper level is the imaginal and archetypal, the creative source.

Along with my lack of verbal romance, I have other ‘failings’ as well.

I’m prone to anti-climactic conclusions. This is because most of life feels anticlimactic to me. What can I say, I write what I know. The anti-climactic relates to another ‘failing’.

I’m also prone to a passive voice. Every writing manual I’ve read warns against this, but good advice never stopped me. It seems to me that a passive voice communicates something an active voice can’t, and that something obviously isn’t readily accepted by modern mainstream society or at least the English-speaking portions.

An active voice requires someone or something that takes action, but as I see it not all or even most of life involves action that is willed, directed or otherwise caused by actors. Still, the active voice is rooted in traditional storytelling. The question is: Are there other stories to tell and/or other ways to tell stories?

Our language determines our reality. So, what consensus reality is being reinforced by writing manuals? I’m not arguing against standard English writing. Certainly, I’m not arguing against compelling language and the active voice is more compelling; rather, I’m considering what we are being compelled by and toward.

The standard of compelling shouldn’t be its own justification. A soap opera is compelling. In fact, the average soap opera is more compelling to the average person than the greatest of art. Most people are compelled, usually mindlessly, by ideas and beliefs, metaphors and narratives that aren’t necessarily of much worthiness.

How do we judge worthiness? What is good writing versus what is great art? Does ‘good’ writing imply communication that is moral and true, whatever that might mean? What exactly is good and bad about the active versus the passive voices?

The most dangerous part about rhetoric is that we forget it’s rhetoric and mistake it for reality.

What if everything you knew was wrong?

Posted on Sep 17th, 2008 by

Marmalade

I noticed an interesting thread question in the QaR group.

What if everything you knew was wrong?

I must admit I didn’t resonate with many of the answers. That is a very profound question, but many of the answers seemed to take it lightly. I don’t get how people can answer with confident certainty to a question that asks about the possibility of the complete disappearance of the very foundation of all certainty in your life, in your very sense of reality. Its quite obvious that I have a very different read on that question.

I can only guess that anyone who answers with confidence is someone who has never had the type of experience implied by the question. I have had experiences that undermined my sense of reality and my sense of self, and my experience is that there is no answer to this question. Any answer would be a further claim of knowledge which according to the scenario would be wrong. My sense is that most respondants in that thread weren’t interpeting that questioning in its deepest meaning. Some even seemed to just take it as a linguistic game rather than as a soul-wrenching inquiry.

I’m not surprised by the responses. As this is Gaia, it was unsurprising that they largely were typical New Agey viewpoints. This makes me think of the research on optimism. From my understanding, an optimist (almost by definition) can’t take such a question seriously. The question presents a non-optimistic scenario, and so the optimistic response to it is how to reinterpret the question. The research I’ve looked at concludes that optimists tend to not accurately see reality as it is but instead as it might be. There is a correlation between optimism and extraversion, and so an optimist generally desires to turn outward. This question, on the other hand, offers us to turn within to the very ground (or rather groundlessness) of our being.

I’m not saying that the answers in that thread are wrong, but they are quite different than my own view. The main point of my writing all of this is about how much our experience determines our responses. Experience comes first and the responses we give based on that experience come after. In that sense, our verbal explanations always carry an element of rationalization. We feel such a strong need to explain and justify our experiences to ourselves and to others, but ultimately our experiences are non-rational. Our experiences can’t really be explained or even communicated. Our experiences seem to be at best their own justification, but the tricky part of the question is to consider that maybe our experiences aren’t justified.

I have felt frustrated by this recently. The most deeply genuine experiences I’ve had in my life seem impossible to communicate. In fact, they bewilder me to the point I hardly understand them. As implied by the question, they undermine my very sense of being able to know anything at all. I partly get annoyed at others’ confident certainty because I lack it. Then again, I’m grateful for my lack of confident certainty because it allows me to more easily see multiple perspectives.

The real frustration comes because I do want to communicate. I identify as a writer… and, yet, the most important experiences of my whole existence can’t even be touched upon by words. So, I spend a lot of time talking around in circles never coming to any satisfactory conclusion. The reason I write so often about ideas is that I can write about ideas. That is relatively easy. However, related to the question, that which exists beyond all ideas forever nags at my awareness.

I’ve been feeling a desire to instead turn to fiction. In some ways, fiction can get at these non-rational experiences better than other modes of verbal expression. But I don’t know if even fiction can capture or satisfactorily allude to my confused sense of reality. The challenge as I see it isn’t how to answer the question. What I want is to find a way to get beyond the question itself.

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