short story: understand

"Understand" by Ted Chiang (1991)

This is one of my favorite short stories. Excerpts below:

Initially I am overwhelmed by all this input, paralyzed with awareness of my self. It is hours before I can control the flood of self-describing information. I haven't filtered it away, nor pushed it into the background. It's become integrated into my mental processes, for use during my normal activities. It will be longer before I can take advantage of it, effortlessly and effectively, the way a dancer uses her kinesthetic knowledge.

All that I once knew theoretically about my mind, I now see detailed explicitly. The undercurrents of sex, aggression, and self-preservation, translated by the conditioning of my childhood, clash with and are sometimes disguised as rational thought. I recognize all the causes of my every mood, the motives behind my every decision.

What can I do with this knowledge? Much of what is conventionally described as "personality" is at my discretion; the higher-level aspects of my psyche define who I am now. I can send my mind into a variety of mental or emotional states, yet remain ever aware of the state and able to restore my original condition. Now that I understand the mechanisms that were operating when I attended to two tasks at once, I can divide my consciousness, simultaneously devoting almost full concentration and gestalt recognition abilities to two or more separate problems, meta-aware of all of them. What can't I do?

---

His name is Reynolds. He's originally from Phoenix, and his early progress closely parallels mine. He received his third injection six months and four days ago, giving him a head start over me of fifteen days. He didn't erase any of the obvious records. He waits for me to find him. I estimate that he's been supercritical for twelve days, twice as long as I've been.

I now see his hand in the investment patterns, but the task of locating Reynolds is Herculean. I examine usage logs across the datanet to identify the accounts he's penetrated. I have twelve lines open on my terminal. I'm using two single-hand keyboards and a throat-mike, so I can work on three queries simultaneously. Most of my body is immobile; to prevent fatigue, I'm insuring proper blood flow, regular muscle contraction and relaxation, and removal of lactic acid. While I absorb all the data I see, studying the melody within the notes, looking for the epicenter of a tremor in the web.

Hours pass. We both scan gigabytes of data, circling each other.

---

I'm riding in a mud-splattered taxi to Reynolds' apartment.

Judging by the databases and agencies Reynolds has queried over the past months, his private research involves bio-engineered microorganisms for toxic waste disposal, inertial containment for practical fusion, and subliminal dissemination of information through societies of various structures. He plans to save the world, to protect it from itself. And his opinion of me is therefore unfavorable.

I've shown no interest in the affairs of the external world, and made no investigations for aiding the normals. Neither of us will be able to convert the other. I view the world as incidental to my aims, while he cannot allow someone with enhanced intelligence to work purely in self-interest. My plans for mind-computer links will have enormous repercussions for the world, provoking government or popular reactions that would interfere with his plans. As I am proverbially not part of the solution, I am part of the problem.

If we were members of a society of enhanced minds, the nature of human interaction would be of a different order. But in this society, we have unavoidably become juggernauts, by whose measure the actions of normals are inconsequential. Even if we were twelve thousand miles apart we couldn't ignore each other. A resolution is necessary.

---

In other news, this blog will soon go into hibernation. For a long time I've been wanting to stop using the last few forms of social media I'm still on... and I think I've finally reached the pointy end of my ever-waning tolerance for it. I don't particularly want to be online at all anymore, beyond using it as a reference tool. I could probably list about 20-30 reasons why this is so (about the blogging specifically). I'd rather not be so thorough, though--at least not outside my own head. It's enough to say that all my reasons converge somewhere in the vicinity of "writing here and now, in this particular way, doesn't make me happy and doesn't bring me closer to any of my goals, plus in some ways it actively works against my best interests, so... let's stop."

I might (or might not) post some quotes over the next few days and tie up a series or two, with minimal commentary. Then I'm switching stuff up and moving on.

end of the rainbow

Just wanted to save this FFR.

The drawing:

under the hill

Fleet Foxes - Blue Ridge Mountains

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Just seems to fit this mid-January mood we've got going on here. The people I know can't seem to catch a break lately. More health scares, more bills to wrangle. We personally stand a decent chance of doing some fancy footwork and still coming out of it okay, albeit by eating beans and rice and keeping the first floor at 64 degrees F ... but it pisses me off that this isn't the case for everyone. For most people it's pretty bleak no matter how you dice it.

I mean... if they were to think about it. Which... mostly they seem to be trying really hard not to do. Renaissance of cable TV and all.

That recent NYT article about how shitty America is doing compared with other first-world countries really rings true for my personal experience. Even though my social sphere is fairly limited I still personally know people my own age who are dying young directly because of their socio-economic status. They are doing things like dragging themselves to work at their shitty jobs while bleeding black blood from their GI tract, or knowingly living with untreated cervical cancer because 1) gotta work and 2) they don't want to live with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills hanging over their heads for years to come (I mean, yeah, the hospitals will treat the uninsured in emergency situations, as right-wingers are so fond of reminding us... but at what cost? Their billing department can undo you.)

Me? My insurance is dragging its heels and--due in large part to a simple programming error--I still don't have access to the imaging that a (much) wealthier me would have had last fall. Even after I get the official approval I still may elect not to get the MRI itself. We all have costs and benefits to weigh out. The best I can do in the meanwhile is educate myself on the possibilities and act accordingly. I'll be fine, most likely--that's why I feel fairly comfortable with the gamble I'm making. I pity those in my position who lack the faculties or resources to do what I am doing.

What else is a person to do? Our ancestors' black birds of death--whose names are Overconsumption and Short-Sighted Planning--have come home to roost. A little conniving and shrewdness on your part (and a lot of luck) and you may be able to preserve yourself and your own. I may be able. I will attempt. But--as I keep bemoaning to myself here--any collective resistance is futile. Those expensive wars will continue, along with the expensive blowback (well, until such a time as the fear of automated detection and retaliation is too high to make such acts worthwhile... which is pretty soon). When What's-His-Name-Care goes into effect it will prove dehumanizingly invasive from a personal privacy/autonomy standpoint and profoundly inadequate from a health/longevity standpoint. There's a lot of money to be made in ignoring the root causes of our health and economic problems at the a systemic level, and our head-in-the-sand cultural/religious norms don't permit a realistic, widespread acknowledgement of where all the pieces on the chess board lie as we move into the transhuman age.

(Forget detached theoretical conversations about the pros and cons of social Darwinism and ethnic cleansing. Didn't you see that sign posted above your own front door? It says "ARBEIT MACHT FREI." People who talk about "camps" like some scary future possibility are too retarded to know they already live in one, de facto.)

Whoever's in power--left or right, totally irrelevant--they're going to play ignorant as long as possible. And that's plenty of time for you and your kids to fill up on the devitalized-but-hyperpalatable human dog food you're served up by Burger Bell... and die. :) Not that they actively want you to die. It's just irrelevant to them, at the end of the day, so long as there are enough buyers left to keep Sir Crapsalot's Discount Mart in business until the majority shareholders (who all brush elbows at the same masquerade balls) shift to Plan B.

Of course you know all this already. I know that. I am just angry at the moment and venting. Just havin' a moment.

Have a fantastic day! What a lovely song.

Shouldn't you catch up on Downton Abbey or something?

Actually... perhaps, yes. You should.

It may be true that those involved in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had a higher survival rate than those who complied and went on to Treblinka. But that was 70 years ago.

Today?

Well, Aaron S. That's what. That's a head on a pike, kids, and it's only the tip of the berg. Get the message?

Doesn't matter. Everybody else did. There comes a point when only the stupidest and the truest romantics will throw themselves on the gears; they will be bloodied and crushed, and to no perceptible avail. Turns out I, personally, ain't that romantic.

From Freedom's Orator by Robert Cohen

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PS: BTW, to clarify, I do not intend to suggest that A.S. was literally, physically murdered. I'm seeing that idea pop up now among the doomer-hysterics, especially on Youtube, and I want to distance myself explicitly from them. As always, I believe that conspiracy theories of that sort only serve to discredit and obfuscate the legitimately wrong and enraging reality of the situation, which is this: in a socio-political environment in which power is concentrated and centralized, it is inevitable that idealistic people who take morality more seriously than the system intends (particularly young idealists who experience rude and abrupt awakenings) are backed into corners where they have no choice but to abandon their morals or self-destruct.

This is actually no choice at all.

In our culture we are basically told that our sense of self-worth should be inextricably intertwined with our moral integrity. Remember all the movies and cartoons you saw as a kid where the "happy" ending was for the young man to sacrifice himself for the greater good?

Did you get that memo, Mr. Anderson? You were actually supposed to join the army and be willing to self-destruct for the sake of the nation. But you went and applied those ideals consistently to your everyday life, you dummy.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

1) You've got a young guy who feels he can't back down from the path of righteousness BUT if he doesn't, his government is going to draw and quarter him.

2) If he were to choose to back down, he might as well be dead anyhow because (I reiterate) his core sense of self-worth is inextricably intertwined with his appraisal of his own moral integrity.

3) Bonus to seal the deal: he is very smart and--even if he was a nearly-perfect ever-loving saint!--he almost certainly noticed at some point that 99% of the rest of us animalistic pea-brains do not take any care for our own futures, much less concern ourselves with the social justice issues of our neighbors, and that we furthermore appear to be basically satisfied with our days of wanking to Rachael Ray and foraging for Poptarts up our own asses. Cue resultant despair and loneliness.

4) He's dead. Surprise. No hit-squad necessary. It's just kind of built into the system.

In my opinion the real suicide occurred in the moment he decided to embark on his self-sacrificial deed. Not the hanging. But even that suicide was propelled, in a sense, by the hive-mind at large.

If I appear flippant, just know it's my way of expressing sadness and anger. Also, obviously, I am aware I'm taking some extreme liberties here and could be wrong about anything and everything I've said, etc. etc.

PPS: I was feeling pretty woozy and out-of-it due to illness when I wrote this post. It's the next day now and I'm still not sure whether I really stand by what I said. Mostly because I still feel like crap. But... oh, well. It's already published and life's a circus.

links 1/2012

Wrong season but, hey: "The Halloween Tree" painted by R. Bradbury himself.

"Hey, Look" by Simon Rich, from The New Yorker (2007)

"Hey, look, it’s that kid Simon, who wrote that scathing poem for the literary magazine."

"You mean the one about how people are phonies? Wow—I loved that poem!"

"Dark Ecology" by Paul Kingsnorth, from Orion Magazine (2013)

Is it possible to read the words of someone like Theodore Kaczynski and be convinced by the case he makes, even as you reject what he did with the knowledge? Is it possible to look at human cultural evolution as a series of progress traps, the latest of which you are caught in like a fly on a sundew, with no means of escape? Is it possible to observe the unfolding human attack on nature with horror, be determined to do whatever you can to stop it, and at the same time know that much of it cannot be stopped, whatever you do? Is it possible to see the future as dark and darkening further; to reject false hope and desperate pseudo-optimism without collapsing into despair?

It’s going to have to be, because it’s where I am right now. But where do I go next? What do I do? Between Kaczynski and Kareiva, what can I find to alight on that will still hold my weight?

I’m not sure I know the answer. But I know there is no going back to anything. And I know that we are not headed, now, toward convivial tools. We are not headed toward human-scale development. This culture is about superstores, not little shops; synthetic biology, not intentional community; brushcutters, not scythes. This is a culture that develops new life forms first and asks questions later; a species that is in the process of, in the words of the poet Robinson Jeffers, “break[ing] its legs on its own cleverness.”

I'm also reading a lot of Thomas Merton lately. At some point I will post some lengthy excerpts.

poetry: brian patten - a blade of grass

Been rereading this poem to myself almost daily for the past month or so.

---

You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.

I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed itself in frost,
It is more immediate
Than any image of my making.

You say it is not a poem,
It is a blade of grass and grass
Is not quite good enough.
I offer you a blade of grass.

You are indignant.
You say it is too easy to offer grass.
It is absurd.
Anyone can offer a blade of grass.

You ask for a poem.
And so I write you a tragedy about
How a blade of grass
Becomes more and more difficult to offer,

And about how as you grow older
A blade of grass
Becomes more difficult to accept.