ephemerality.
This moved me this morning.
From the point of view of the nonlinear dynamics of our planet, the thin rocky crust on which we live and which we call our land and home is perhaps its least important component. Indeed, if we waited long enough, if we could observe planetary dynamics at geological time scales, the rocks and mountains which define the most stable and durable traits of our reality would dissolve into the great underground lava flows of which they are but temporary hardenings. Indeed, given that it is just a matter of time for any one rock or mountain to be reabsorbed into the self-organized flows of lava driving the dynamics of the lithosphere, these geological structures represent a local slowing-down in this flowing reality. It is almost as if every part of the mineral world could be defined by specifying its chemical composition and its speed of flow : very slow for rocks, faster for lava.
Similarly, our individual bodies and minds are mere coagulations or decelerations in the flows of biomass, genes, memes and norms. Here too we would be defined both by the materials we are temporarily binding or chaining into our organic bodies and cultural minds, as well as by the time scale of the binding operation. Given long enough time scales, it is the flow of biomass through food webs that matters, as well as the flow of genes through generations, and not the bodies and species that emerge in these flows. Given long enough time scales, our languages are also momentary slowing-downs or thickenings in a flow of norms that can give rise to a multitude of different structures.
[Manuel de Landa, entire text of 'The Geology of Morals' here]
writing a thesis
[still writing, rewriting, rigging, shaking]
It isn’t easy to define a pebble.
If you’re satisfied with a simple description you can start out by saying that it’s a form or state of stone halfway between rocks and gravel.
But this already implies a concept of stone that must be validated. So don’t blame me for going even further back than the flood.Francis Ponge
saturday afternoon musings.
“[S]ome evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and a variety of reasons for nonadaptive evolution? They do, to be sure, but we make a different point. In natural history, all possible things happen sometimes; you generally do not support your favored phenomenon by declaring rivals impossible in theory. Rather, you acknowledge the rival but circumscribe its domain of action so narrowly that it cannot have any importance in the affairs of nature. Then, you often congratulate yourself for being such an undogmatic and ecumenical chap. We maintain that alternatives to selection for best overall design have generally been relegated to unimportance by this mode of argument.”
— The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 205 (1161): 585.
Came across Stephen Jay Gould in my wanderings on biology and evolution. Great stuff, but how on earth can I incorporate it into the article. Hope to figure that out next week.
The article will be something on history and anthropology…
Stay tuned for exciting developments. Muhahahaha.
yeah!
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
i. finally. know.
gibran:
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
boussole.
peu à peu j’arrivais à comprendre quoi au juste m’accablait.
la soudaine absence de repères pouvait être tracée à ton départ.
en guise de protection, mon corps s’alignait à la mémoire du tien.
je dors mieux ainsi. tu reviens quand?
nuestra lucha es epistémica y política.
after the weekend of flirting with disciplines that are not my own i am back to struggling with detail in the thesis. i wondered whether the shift toward the right will be marked in a decade or so by historians as the beginning of the demise of representational democracy, and the start of either great tyranny or something more worthwhile that i cannot as yet name that responded to this awful result.
i wonder.
i hate making up my mind about epistemology and general vocabulary today, because my agenda here is not political, but also bound to achieve drawing the phd to a close, so it’s absolutely interested.
the idea that i will be given shit if i choose particular words to describe a phenomenal world drives me a little mad.
postliberal? neoliberal? ordo-liberal?
peasants? villagers? rural dwellers?
political economy? power? asymmetry? inequality?
all index, in my little anthropological world, different bodies of literature that would send particular messages about what my intellectual project is. how i dislike being nailed down to one interpretation.
must write other things, less fixed, when i finish this. looking forward to that.
when in doubt, turn to him.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Sonnet 24, William Shakespeare
dinosaurs on the window sill.
i like summer. even though it is only a semblance of summer in aberdeen, i like it.
i want to spend it with you. what did they say in that film? you make me want to be a better person.
