Prophets are the incarnation of a dilemma. Their message is quintessentially esoteric, yet they are driven to make it exoteric. As all dilemmas, this cannot be solved, and the usual outcome is the immolation or downfall of the prophet, unless exceptional circumstances temporarily suspend this predicament. Moreover, that there should be the initiate (the prophet) and the uninitiate (the disciples), has become a rather indigestible concept.
Indeed, traditional values such as the teacher-disciple relationship, training, patience, methodicalness, and constancy, have been lost in the sacred and profane spheres alike. For example, in the figurative arts, think for a moment of Jackson Pollock, who based his life’s work on trying to reproduce in paint the patterns made by his long-lost father urinating on stone. Such paintings, to which I used to refer, perhaps flatteringly, as “unappetising spaghetti”, are on display in many major museums the world over. Clearly, this is not the environment for Cimabue to say to his pupil Giotto, “You have surpassed your teacher.”
And yet, a “prophetic” forum such as this, one that rethinks one’s basic assumptions, feels the duty to promote and divulge esoteric ideas into the public domain. But, what is the state of popular western culture in the year 2000?
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact.
The claims about the Amazon seem, at least on their face, more open to skepticism than what now fairly well known -- that the civilizations of the Americas were more developed, and more populated, than once thought. Though archaeological evidence of American civilization isn't quite as bare as the naysayers seem to be saying -- I've been reading about earthworks and the like found in North America from fairly credible sources for a while. And we shouldn't be surprised how quickly "nature" reclaims our civilizations, though also what an effect we can render on the world.
Either way, this article is admirable in its approach. The author manages to dig into what psychological motivates different factions likely have behind their theories. Though it's not fully explored, this is something I think that needs to get much more attention in the social sciences. Even a passing interest in history will show such a wide range of contested theories by intelligent people. Some might say "they all can't be right," which is true, but given what we have to work on I think our unconscious motives for constructing a particular narrative might play more of a role than anything else. A lot of it we can simply never know for sure. And that's what we will forever butt our heads against -- the intractable and uncertain, lost past, and the ways our narratives can render a very real effect in the world, whether or not they are grounded in fact, after all.
We that walk at nights, looking after our sheep, see many strange sights, while other men sleep, (from the 2nd Shepherd’s Play, Wakefield Cycle)
Surprise and excitement accompanied a note I received from Phil Legard mentioning that Hawthonn was ready for release. As a collection of music that he and his wife Layla recorded in honor of Jhonn Balance, a creative soul who has long been a personal inspiration, I’d been eagerly awaiting the album. As a topic of conversation between my roommate and I just minutes before Legard’s email arrived I was surprised that the first digital release of the collection had come at such a coincidental and timely interval. Yet, so it goes when one walks the borderlands of reality and imagination.
With the song of blackbirds and rattle of fox bones Hawthonn opens an invitation to journey through the imaginal landscape of Jhonn Balance’s post-mortem pilgrimage from Worlebury Hill in Weston-Super-Mare to where his ashes were scattered by his lover beneath a Hawthorn tree which sits on the grounds of St. Bega’s church overlooking an inland lake at Bassenthwaite. Ethereal atmospheres of sound and voice draw the listener to the edge of that summerland beyond the veil, where spirit supplants flesh and all time comes together – a place well walked by Balance long before his transition.
If you kill me, I'd have to live forever,
(Jhonn Balance in response to an audience member at a concert in 2004)
Best known for his experimental sound work with Peter Christopherson under the moniker of Coil, Balance is one of the premier visionary artists of the late 20th century. As a testament to their vision – Coil’s multiphasic amorphous musical assemblage continues as one of the most challenging, primal, and beautiful examples of contemporary sound experimentation by way of “pop music,” despite the passing of both Balance in 2004, and Christopherson in 2010. Hawthonn’s success as a conceptual album can be seen in its eerie evocation of Coil’s underlying themes – ghostly sketches of possibility emerge from these sonic landscapes, a peculiar and specific spirit hovers over the work. Using what can in some sense be described as musical necromancy the Legards have created a series of sound evocations that allow the listener to embark on a mythopoetic voyage beyond the waking world. Diving deeply into the album’s compositional techniques one begins to understand the delicate process which lead to this effective evocation of Balance’s spirit.
Don't believe AE, see for yourself the summer fields. See for yourself the summer fields, before the tractor comes and wakes you, before the cereal is sown, (Beestings, lyrics by Jhonn Balance)
It's hard to believe Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle was first published in the 60s. Consider the world we live in today: a world of social media, where the mediated space is on equal footing with our lived experience. In fact, the virtual seems positioned to entirely replace the material in the course of history, a point at which we can truly say would be the end of history.
Now, these quotations, directly from the text:
In a world that is truly topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false.
The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than "that which appears is good, that which is good appears."
The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having to appearing, from which all actual "having" must draw its immediate prestige and its ultimate function.
The spectacle is the existing order's uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue.
... The fetishistic, purely objective appearance of spectacular relations conceals the fact that they are relations among classes: a second nature...seems to dominate our environment. If the spectacle, taken in the limited sense of "mass media" which are its most glaring superficial manifestation seems to invade society as mere equipment, this equipment is in no way neutral but is the very means suited to its total self movement. If the social needs of the epoch in which such techniques are developed can only be satisfied through their mediation, if the administration of this society and all contact among men can no longer take place except through the intermediary of this power of instantaneous communication, it is because this "communication" is essentially unilateral.
We need not call to mind the PR debacle of Facebook "emotionally manipulating" its users. This is, after all, nothing but the type of marketing manipulation all companies attempt, with varying degrees of success. No. It is the much more casual way that these technologies integrate with our lives that bears the most consideration. It is the business of these platforms to set themselves up as the intermediary, the go-between when you engage anyone in this "topsy-turvy" world.
More anecdotally, (and prosaically), it has been somewhat disturbing to me of late that the few times I've left my Facebook account, many people have ceased contact. When I returned, caving into what has increasingly felt like a Stockholm Syndrome like situations, the refrain was "I'm happy you're back, now we can talk to you again." The virtual is increasingly the world in which we exist in, socially. What then is the fleshy present? The mechanism of mediation is increasingly the "lived world."
To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessity. The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.
Couched in the sort of "pomo speak" that seems to be less in vogue these days, it's not likely to be a top seller anytime soon. The tone almost strikes one as the bullet points read off through a bullhorn at a rally by a chain-smoking Frenchman with a megaphone. There are countless ways that we can critique, interrogate, and ultimately narrate technology. Whether it is our salvation or damnation is almost a literary conceit. But that makes this particular critique no less lucid, or downright prescient.
Next up I'm going to start looking into how Situationism influenced Debord's work. And dig back at the anarchist primitive movement that was fire-bombed in Philadelphia. I'll report back what thoughts seem worth sharing.
First, a confession. I feel uncomfortable reviewing Marilyn Manson's "The Pale Emperor." I mean, I'm thirty six, for christ's sake. Haven't we outgrown the shock rocker of the 90s, and the androgynous king of self indulgence that followed in the 00s, finally bottoming out in almost overnight, Robert Smithesque debauch that spurned on memes like:
Well. Haven't we all outgrown it?
I think that's precisely the point. You get the sense throughout this album of a kind of dawning, bleary eyed sobriety. The album gets more raw as it goes. Seven days? Imagine waking up from a twenty year long binge. And your alter ego once took control of the airwaves, it took over your personal life, and only when that was smoking wreckage did you manage to take a look backward and see the alter ego staring back at you. And on the other hand is the ever immanent grave. Not the Halloween dress-up grave, but the one your friends bodies are starting to OD their way into.
"My dagger and swagger are useless in the face of the mirror when the mirror is made of my face."
I'm not saying that is Brian Warner's day to day life. I couldn't know, because I never met the guy. I'm reading into the narrative I've been given. That's also kind of the point. The "person" I have known over the years was the persona, "Marilyn Manson," not him. The schtick even got tired of itself. So boring, so predictable. The only option left was to try to come clean.
"Don't know if I cannot open up
I been opened too much
Double-crossed and glossed over in my pathos"
And that dawning self awareness is the conflict that seems to lurk beneath Pale Emperor, giving both the album's "sound", as well as the persona it presents, a serious identity complex.
If you think I'm reading a bit too much into what is, even at its better moments, "still a Manson album for chrissakes," graveyard cliche and all... Well, maybe. But it isn't entirely baseless. The dichotomy has between Mr. Bates and Marilyn Manson have created some downright confusing and bizarre articles, such as the following from the New York Times, where he talks a bit about the difference between them,
"They began meeting in Mr. Bates’s home studio, even during daylight hours — a new experience for Marilyn Manson. “Because around 3 a.m. is when my brain starts going really” crazy, he said, using filthier language, “I used to think that that was the time that was best to record at. But I realized that I don’t have that anymore, if I get it out of me early. Daytime is more effective for me to function as a — ah, I wouldn’t say as a normal human being. I would just say as a more effective villain; a more effective, destroying, chaos element in the world. I think that’s what I’m here for.”
Left untethered, Marilyn Manson will go on like this, proclaiming himself chaos incarnate and T.M.I.-ing his way through his life story. (“I tangent a lot,” he said, understating broadly.)
“He circles the drain of an idea for quite a while,” Mr. Bates said. “But if you have the patience, you’ll see that he is making a point, that he is pretty funny and pretty smart at the same time. Sometimes he doesn’t make a point, but I found him to be interesting.”
He also made it clear that there would be no wasting of studio time. “He realized that him walking in the room and being Marilyn Manson didn’t matter to me,” said Mr. Bates, a married father of two daughters, whose email auto-signature is “kindest regards.” For Marilyn Manson, the collaboration felt less like work than a conversation, he said. “I’ve never really had that sort of musical brotherhood in the same way,” he said.
Mr. Bates also provided lyrical direction. “I said, ‘I’m not going to do this with you if it’s an angry manifesto,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘The only thing you have left is to inspire people with your words.’ ”"
New York Times.
That's what middle age is these days, isn't it? The raging monster of your youth has hit a wall, but you're not quite ready to hang up the gloves yet, either. Maybe that's why I felt this album was worth reviewing, and the ironic way Manson has, at least for the passing moment, managed to make himself relevant again.
History is portrayed as a science. And yet popular history remains as much subject to emotion as reason. History may be consciously rewritten; much more often, it simply evolves. ... The present is a consequence of the past. But the past is an invention of the present. (Empires Apart.)
In the process of doing research for the next Fallen Cycle book, I've been taking in quite a lot of history-related books. This has gotten me thinking more lately about race and culture, as all identity and meaning is ultimately historic. (See also: Beyond Narrative: Systems Theory and the Unveiling of History)
One thing keeps sticking out to me, and that is the image that forms of what “whiteness” is. We speak so frequently about the problems and experiences of whites and not-whites, and yet it is arguable if those categories are meaningful beyond the sense that we insist on continuing to use them. I'd like to look at the mirage of whiteness, and the very real history that produced that myth.
Like all Modern Mythology articles, hopefully it'll at least get you thinking about these things in some new ways, all with the point of better understanding the myths (collective narratives) we use to understand ourselves. As always, nothing here is meant to be final or definitive. Productive comments are welcome in the comments section.
Let's begin with a curious manifesto from “Race Traitor,”
By now, you have probably heard some of the outsider outrage, confusion and consternation. "Everyone in Korea wants the same face!"
It seems, pardon the pun, cut and dry, but as you'll see it is anything but. Any cultural slant might be laid bare through similar scrutiny, so beware: those publications that seem to want to the headline to read "Dumb Asians All Want to Look The Same" are incapable of seeing their own cultural bias. We are all, in a sense, blind to ourselves.
Let's try to broaden our view, leading off with one of the better articles I've found on this phenomenon,
"There's a real problem when you make generalizations about a whole country full of women, that they're all culturally duped," Hejiin Lee said in an interview. "There are certain economic situations happening in Korea and America that might impel different choices. We -- Americans -- might not see plastic surgery on the same level here that we see in Korea. But we do see people looking to the consumer market for help in their personal lives. Weigh that through an economic framework, and it's what you're seeing in Korea today." (Atlantic)
The racist stereotype of looking the same may have little bearing in this case -- rather it seems more a matter of shooting for the same standard of beauty. But why should so many people in a culture feel there is something wrong with them to begin with? Is this some kind of nascent, cultural illness?
We are want to react against that. I know my first reaction was to think how sad it is that perfectly beautiful, "normal" people look at themselves like the elephant man and want to get fairly intrusive surgery to meet the ideal in their head.
But hold on a second. Those feelings shift quite a bit when they are applied to those who feel their sex doesn't match the gender in their head. Rightfully so, I think, a recent author on Reality Sandwich who didn't feel there was any difference had been called out for her ignorance.
Yet there is a single thing she may have been correct about: they are nearly the same. Someone feels that their physical self does not match their internal self, and they want to take what measures are available to right that. The issue is the moralizing. The judging from the outside. "Someone that isn't trans, isn't even close to those issues, wants to tell people who are that they're wrong? What gives her the right."
Isn't that what we're doing when we, probably neither Korean nor female, want to say such desires are sick?
Well. Now we aren't quite so fixed in our surety, at least for those of us that are unwilling to throw the Trans- community under the bus as well. Perhaps we can glean un-generalization, albeit unproven, from this tangle: while Westerners oftentimes want to stand out from the crowd, there may be a cultural pressure in Asian cultures to be at one with the crowd. To be the crowd. I can't say for sure, but I think there might be something to that. (Not that either perspective is "right" or "wrong," those labels hardly apply. They are simply different reactions to the problems that face us in the course of being human. As all culture is.)
One thing seems for certain: we have no right to call it wrong. Is it lest our own cultural peculiarities get similar judgement? No. It is because if there is one thing we should all support, it is the intrinsic freedom of an individual to make such decisions for themselves, as we as outsiders cannot, will not ever know their internal experience.
But yet again we must hold off on such certainty. There is a deeper side to this issue -- which I can't hope to truly explore in a short post, though damnit I'll try anyway -- an issue that complicates the idea of personal freedom. You might get an inkling of what I mean from the following quotation,
"A global ideal doesn't stop at the face, says dental surgeon Jung Hak. Dr Jung says he's been fighting a trend. Korean mothers who have been bringing in their toddlers to have the muscle under the tongue that connects it to the bottom of the mouth surgically snipped.
The belief, explains Dr Jung, is that it will help a Korean speak English more clearly. People from the Asia Pacific region have difficulty in pronouncing the "L" sound, says Dr Jung. But he calls the surgery, if it's only for pronunciation, misguided, and caused by the hyper-competitive drive in Korea."
In other words, where is the line between a person's freedom to choose, and the cultural pressures that influence that decision? And where does it lie when we're talking about performing such surgery on children too young to decide for themselves, cultural pressure aside?
Such questions are essential to get a grips on the topic; but in a practical sense, there is little hope for legislation to single-handedly correct the way many Koreans are socially pressured to be "white," in the sense that white does not so much refer to a historic or actual people but rather to the myth of whiteness which represents beauty, wealth, and all that is desirable. (After all many Irish have historically know how possible it is for their light skin to at least at one time, in-itself confer none of these supposed privileges of whiteness.) See also: Columbus-ing around: Columbus, The Borg, And The Great White Devil.)
In any event, legislation aimed at correcting our behavior by making us act in our own best interest almost always damaged what it seeks to most aid: our increased freedom and well-being.
For if we ourselves cannot say what that is, no one can.
Perhaps thanks in part to the Showtime series "Polyamory: Married and Dating," it seems yet another subaltern is coming out of the closet (or bedroom) and into the mainstream.
This season takes viewers on an intense emotional journey as we follow two families as they navigate the ins and outs of polyamory.
It is predictable enough that it would be presented on SHO in a way that is easiest to digest for the American mainstream -- although I am now I suppose a part of this 'common poly' myself, being white, married, and still available to other relationships, I would prefer the actual gamut of possibilities be presented. So, what are White American suburbanites (or urbanites) to make of this new "fad"?
One of the challenges presented by this desire, (as was discussed in an earlier tongue-in-cheek article, "Postmodernogamy"): at its core polyamory presents not an alternate model to monogamy so much as a revolution against all formal and static cultural mores which say "this way and no other."
Now that gay marriage seems to be approaching normalcy, new labels are needed to keep the relationship news cycle churning, all the while missing the only radical point presented by what is otherwise nothing more than the simple result of modernization on outdated cultural edifices: There is no model of "typical" polyamory, as it is and should be specific to every unique individual and their unique interactions.
The central goal is the basis of all koans: that there is no goal. But then how to proceed? We are challenged to let every thing be exactly what it is and nothing else, to eschew labels altogether.
For this reason, the term "polyamory" itself presents a problem. Perhaps it would be best if the label could cannibalize itself, providing only introductory training wheels for people to look again at one another as unique instances, universes with a population of 1, to which no map or guide will provide an altogether satisfactory definition or safe trajectory for discourse (let alone intercourse.)
This is a surprising and terrifying challenge for us, especially for a culture that demands a label so as to make things safe -- after all, "the gays" were made "safe" only when a narrative was provided that contextualized how the mainstream could perceive them (more or less as ideal choices for interior decorators and hair stylists.) This is what is potentially radical about polyamory. Otherwise, it is simply a revision to the old dating guidebook, for those that are at least progressive enough to recognize that serial monogamy is no solution, and that it is perverse -- but in all the wrong ways -- for Atheists to build their morals atop Christian bedrock.
In practice, the primary problem with polyamory, you will quickly discover if you explore it, is precisely the same problem that presents itself in monogamy, just in a different form: people. Other people will forever remain a problem when it comes to them doing what we want them to, or being who we want them to be, and only when we let go of all those expectations, and do our best to simply love them as they are...
But I imagine that is asking altogether too much.
Some past Modern Mythology articles on the topic that you may find interesting, useful, or absolutely annoying, depending on our outlook:
Most of us are convinced that we excel at being clearheaded, humane thinkers when it comes to sex. We appeal, and admirably so, to notions such as harm and consent. But since most of us aren’t anthropologists, we W.E.I.R.D. people (the anthropologist Joe Henrich’s apt acronym for “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic”) often assume a false obviousness along these lines of harm and consent that, interestingly enough, simply isn’t there. Scientists have found that since we would be harmed by a certain sex act,we presume others would be harmed as well.
In fact, cultural relativism is the most glaring sign that the lion’s share of our sexual ethics is arbitrary, given that our intuitive feeling of what’s “normal” and “deviant” hinges largely on our cultural indoctrination. In the past, for instance, a proper Crow gentleman wasn’t expected to simply woo the object of his desire over a slice of homemade juneberry pie. Instead, the tradition for a man so smitten involved his crawling up to the woman’s tent in the middle of the night and fishing around with his hand under the flaps for her body. And female Crow informants explained to the anthropologists inquiring about the tradition that this manual search in the dark for her orifices was an especially romantic first move. “If he is successful,” wrote the researchers Clellan Ford and Frank Beach, “a man may by this device persuade the woman to have intercourse with him later on.” If he were successful in our society, he’d be signing his name to the sex offender registry before dawn, if he still had a hand. But in the cultural context of these Native Americans, most women, presumably, favored this custom. (Scientific American.)
In evaluating dysfunction or illness, we have long followed the seemingly straightforward model of diagnose, treat, evaluate, iterate.
Studio Gibli
However, diagnosis has long been the secret -- or not so secret -- Achilles heel of the psychiatric establishment. Many philosophic issues arise, issues of cultural relativism, ethical issues of financial interests in pharmaceuticals, to name a few. These are issues that 'by the book' psychiatrists frequently dismiss as 'merely philosophical.' Indeed, it's been a relatively long time since Freud or Jung were taken entirely seriously by the establishment doling out the meds.
"By the book." What is "the book"?
Since DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association 1980), disorders have
been defined in terms of syndromes—that is, clusters of symptoms that covary together (see the section following, titled “Need to Explore the Possibility of Fundamental Changes . . .”). ...
The major focus of field trials for DSM-III was establishing the reliability with which multiple clinicians could come to the same diagnostic conclusions when presented with a patient’s expressed signs and symptoms. In this manner, it was possible to demonstrate that an atheoretical, descriptive approach could result in a reproducible diagnosis in multiple clinical and cultural settings. Following the publication of DSM-III in 1980, data began to emerge by 1983 from some new studies that were not consistent with the syndromal definitions in DSM-III. ... A Research Agenda for DSM V.
This is not to argue that there is no need for a standard, or that the DSM is entirely bogus. I have neither the background nor experience to make those claims. However, it is fairly well established that the diagnose for disorder model is plagued with these "philosophical issues." The issue of culture is one that comes up most frequently, next to quandaries of brain and consciousness, body and mind, which we have already touched on.
Anthropologists have become increasingly interested in embodiment—that is, the ways that socio-cultural factors influence the form, behavior and subjective experience of human bodies. At the same time, social cognitive neuroscience has begun to reveal the mechanisms of embodiment by investigating the neural underpinnings and consequences of social experience. Despite this overlap, the two fields have barely engaged one another. We suggest three interconnected domains of inquiry in which the intersection of neuroscience and anthropology can productively inform our understanding of the relationship between human brains and their socio-cultural contexts. These are: the social construction of emotion, cultural psychiatry, and the embodiment of ritual. (Full article.)
Another example:
There is little consensus on the extent to which psychiatric disorders or syndromes are universal or the extent to which they differ on their core definitions and constellation of symptoms as a result of cultural or contextual factors. This controversy continues due to the lack of biological markers, imprecise measurement and the lack of a gold standard for validating most psychiatric conditions. Article.
These are indeed philosophical problems. But that doesn't mean that they don't need to be considered seriously. Philosophy is, in many ways, at its worst when applied to itself, and at its best when applied to the rest of the world. There are deep rooted philosophical issues inherent in many methodologies that are simply painted over with staid narratives.
There is so much variance from culture to culture that in some, disorders present themselves that exist nowhere else. It's been loosely classified as "culture-bound syndrome."
In medicine and medical anthropology, a culture-bound syndrome, culture-specific syndrome or folk illness is a combination of psychiatric and somatic symptoms that are considered to be a recognizable disease only within a specific society or culture. ... Even though the concept is controversial, the term culture-bound syndrome was included in the fourth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) which also includes a list of the most common culture-bound conditions (DSM-IV: Appendix I).
In early 2012 I was 26 years old and burnt out. I wanted a break from modern life — the hamster wheel of an email inbox, the constant flood of WWW information which drowned out my sanity. I wanted to escape.
I thought the internet might be an unnatural state for us humans, or at least for me. Maybe I was too ADD to handle it, or too impulsive to restrain my usage. I'd used the internet constantly since I was twelve, and as my livelihood since I was fourteen. I'd gone from paperboy, to web designer, to technology writer in under a decade. I didn't know myself apart from a sense of ubiquitous connection and endless information. I wondered what else there was to life. "Real life," perhaps, was waiting for me on the other side of the web browser.
My plan was to quit my job, move home with my parents, read books, write books, and wallow in my spare time. In one glorious gesture I'd outdo all quarter-life crises to come before me. I'd find the real Paul, far away from all the noise, and become a better me.
[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]
As I have come to accept my (relatively mild) disability as a permanent part of who I am, it has nevertheless forced me to look differently at myself as well as the world around me.
It is possible that it will not be healthy for me again to work a "normal" 9-5 job, at least one that follows mainstream American norms, and it makes me wonder if that work is in fact ever healthy for anyone.
I am still more than competent at what I'm good at, but our society puts expectations on allowing us to work that demand we be in every way able-bodied. It makes sense that if you have a chronic back injury and chronic pain, you can't work a stocking job -- but why shouldn't we be allowed to adapt to our own strengths and limitations rather than not be allowed to be productive members of a workplace at all?
Even if we are allowed the "right" to enter the workplace, the disabled are likely going to be subject to teasing or outright abuse. I know because for the years that as I tried to fit myself in, at the behest of family, peers, and necessity, I accumulated more trauma from workplace abuse than anything else. And it is likely far worse for those with more immediately apparent challenges.
Never again.
Similarly, it is possible that our concept of individualism makes it difficult for most people to conceive of being in any way disabled, and being a sexual commodity.
Moving beyond my direct experience, I'd like you to consider some of these:
"Artificial limbs are usually designed to be as inconspicuous as possible. Yet here was an amputee proudly stretching her bejeweled leg before a stadium of flashing cameras and millions of TV viewers across the world.
"Generally the whole technology is moving towards trying to recapture a lifelike limb that looks realistic and also acts realistic in motion," said de Oliveira.
"In this instance I'm doing the complete opposite and I think it does capture that whole childlike imagination -- it's like being a superhero with super powers." http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/24/world/europe/alternative-limb-project/
...
"How we judge ourselves is inextricably linked to how we think others perceive us. This is a problem because – and this isn’t much of a secret – disability isn’t sexy.
Open almost any magazine and you’ll find an article about what makes for an attractive partner. We all value different qualities – whether it’s intelligence, sense of humour, looks, or financial security. No one ever says disability. Whatever – who wants their disability to be a sexual commodity? The problem is, we never talk about disability and sexuality in the same sentence. And the result is that people often fear their disability is an active turn-off." http://buff.ly/11vSuf8
The fact is that even if you are in the prime of health, this is a temporary condition. You will with absolute certainty come to face either injury, chronic illness, or death. Age will reduce some capacities, in this culture that idolizes youth and ignores the benefits of wisdom. How much thought have you given to cultural ideas of ability, injury, and sex? What about your personal perspective?
[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]
Marvin Harris argues with such an even-toned sense of consideration that he could probably make the outlandish seem plausible. However, that sort of radical sophistry doesn't seem his aim in this work. Rather, he lays out the varied topics of cultural anthropology along with his thoughts on those matters in a casual way that eschews even the radical framing of his Cannibals and Kings. I found all of his points both worth making and quite possible, even if there is always plenty of room to be incorrect in such matters, no matter how sensible you may sound. (Nor how correct your argument may be -- nature observes no particular need to heed all elegant arguments.)
Regardless of the relative "age" of this book, it is still in my opinion a must-read in any introductory course (academic or otherwise) dealing with the issues of the overlap of culture, biology, evolution, and environment.
"Popular in Mexico, and sometimes linked to the illicit drug trade, the skeleton saint known as La Santa Muerte in recent years has found a robust and diverse following north of the border: immigrant small business owners, artists, gay activists and the poor, among others - many of them non-Latinos and not all involved with organized religion... The saint is especially popular among Mexican-American Catholics, rivaling that of St. Jude and La Virgen de Guadalupe as a favorite for miracle requests, even as the Catholic Church in Mexico denounces Santa Muerte as satanic, experts say." - ‘La Santa Muerte gaining in popularity in the U.S.’, Associated Press
A friend of mine, (of dubious character but capable of remarkable scholarship), once told me that the more marginalized a people, the more powerful their magicks will be. If true, few figures must be more powerful than Santisma Muerte, the death saint of Mexico.
A grim but widely revered figure, the cult of Holy Death is increasingly popular in this impoverished land whose very notions of law and community are daily threatened by underworld gangs and entrenched government corruption. Slightly resembling the Hindu Goddess Kali in her attributes, the affectionately nicknamed 'bony lady' is alternately described as either a nun who committed suicide after being abandoned by her lover, the Virgin Mary’s shadow aspect, or an Aztec underworld goddess returned to the modern age.
Whatever her origin, this Grim Reapress is always depicted using European imagery of the skeletal and undead. Her chief icons, the owl and the human skull, underscore her nocturnal, necromantic nature, yet she manifests in peaceful white-robed forms as well as terrible aspects clothed in a darker hue. Her devotees claim that just as death comes to all humans rich and poor alike, so to will Santisima Muerte accept devotees from all walks of life, including persons whose lifestyles fall outside the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church's approval, including gays, sex workers, and those in criminal trades as well as those who fight them.
Although woefully gringo in my ethnic background, I have had the opportunity to visit some of the better known botanicas in Brooklyn and my native Philadelphia. Latin Folk Catholicism is a colorful, incredible stew of African, European and indigenous spiritual influences, with saints and powers reputed to provide help with any worldy (or not-so-worldly) problem.
The privacy behind one's eyelids is only going to hold out for so long - pretty soon even that will be a branded secondary screen for social engagement. For the last few weeks these lyrics have been looping through my mind:
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long. - Source
The lines are eerily evocative of the bentham-ic obsequious present granted us by the contagion of our intertwined cyborgian selves.* Privacy is what you write in your journals, at least when you're not wearing your google glasses. The myth that privacy is possible is partly what empowers the belief by a moral entrepreneur that the behavior they personally might find distasteful can be policed back into a private space - that individuals should be hustled off stage when they divest themselves of the trappings of heteronormativity. Privacy and the myth of privacy is used as a space to silence and smooth away any abnormality. The private individual is somehow fixed within an invalidating role, kept from the public sphere.
But to my mind, the private self and the public self are both performance pieces an individual embraces because of an inculcated awareness of the possibility of encountering the equivalence of a liquidity event - winning the social media lottery somehow. Being discovered. Going viral. Turning up as a meme - then embracing that identity as a platform to.. what, more public selfdom?
After a nice group meditation session tonight, I was thinking a bit about Buddhism, and watching several documentaries on "his" life. I thought I'd make a little joke:
@IDMclean it was the cultural dimension he had to transcend, that we have to transcend to be ourselves
After transcending that dimension presented by his child and wife, he was presented by Maya with his future: he would become a great king of men. This too he had to go beyond, and at this point he entered the spiritual realm and was then presented with temptations there after demonstrating his attainment.
The tests under the Bo tree are almost beat for beat similar to the tests of the Christ. It is the way that the Christ and Buddha myths were differently interpreted that spelled the primary differences between these narratives. The cultures that bore the stories into existence were different, and the future mutants of those stories were also different. It is interesting then that there is so much overlap between these redeemer/savour myths, though of course that cultural different winds up producing such different practices.
It's also worth noticing that if you're planning on marrying someone that is to become a religious figure, you're pretty shit out of luck. Cause it really didn't go well for the women in Siddhartha's life, nor Jesus'.
As all the chatter about the “2012 end of the world” dissolves back into the white noise from whence it came, we are still presented a unique vantage point. We can look at once backward and forward on cultural trends, cresting and falling so quickly that in mere decades we can see patterns emerging that may have taken hundreds of years to arise before the advent of digital communication.
Of course, there’s no way a thorough investigation of any trend is going to happen here in the length of an introduction, within the time it takes me to sip my way through a mocha. But that is telling of these times as well. As Palahniuk observed through the mouthpiece of Tyler Durden in his seminal book Fight Club, we are all “single serving size friends, here.” (And is it also a sign of counter cultural mentality that a reference to a book and movie just a decade out of the gates might be considered hackneyed or out of date?) Our observations must also be single serving size, crammed into a 140 character tweet, or a 350 word blog post.
Alright, there is far too much that could be said on this topic for one blog post. It would fill twenty books. So please don't mistake brevity for lack of consideration.
Geekology has presented us a great example to look not just at some of the newest trends in body modification today, but also to make a point about latent or mainstream standards of beauty, and the backlash it can cause.
I'd like to provide for you exhibit A, a Ukranian girl who has surgically modified herself to look like a barbie:
Note the tone of the post:
This is 21-going-on-6-year-old Valeria Lukyanova (links to her Ukranian Facebook-y thing with LITERALLY 10,000 more photos of Little Ms. Vain). Valeria always dreamed of being a real life Barbie doll. And now, after numerous surgeries, she's finally realized her dream AND CAN HOPEFULLY MOVE ON TO ACTUALLY DREAMING ABOUT SOMETHING WORTHWHILE. Wow, of all the dreams in the world to come true of course it's squandered on the girl who wants to look like Barbie and not everybody hoping for a cure for cancer. "That little bitch." *pointing* That girl said it, not me!
Can someone please point me to the place where this sort of body modification differs from cat man?
Or even our resident Satanic freakazioid, Rex Church.
(Tangent alert: I met him at Esozone, a sort of "alternate culture convention" where a lot of totally freakish knowledge was done dropped. I was on a panel with him about ritual magick and artistic creation or something and he leaned over and said "you smell nice." Ookay. So yeah, that's not relevant to this post but it's my one personal interaction with the guy. I really can't figure out if my smelling nice is a good or bad thing in this context.)
Look, don't get me wrong. I think Barbie girl is creepy too. And I'm not entirely sure it isn't a hoax and those are all actually photos of RealDolls. (Did you know they used to make Dark Elf RealDolls? I can't seem to find them on Google anymore so that must mean they don't anymore.)
But I think we need to be incredibly vigilant about our bias about these kind of judgements. All of these are cases of people modifying their physical body to in some way match some internal mental image. Whether you think you should physically appear as a dragon or a dark elf or a barbie doesn't matter, it's just that
Barbie is mainstream and has a lot of associated cultural baggage. Like the fact that part of Barbie's marketing programming has been about making little girls want to look like fucking Barbie. That is how a lot of marketing psychology works, because companies want to figure out how to sell and the best way to do that is to reverse engineer the psychology of your market. Surprise! Your little daughters brains are being scoped out by corporations as living breathing targets for their product development. That's just life in the world / society we live in.
We totally. TOTALLY support Obama's right to
turn himself into....whatever the fuck this is.
(Photo by Photoshopaganda.
USED WITH EXTREME PREDJUDICE.
I mean permission. Permission.)
So if we want to change that we can change what sort of messages we're broadcasting to our youth to you know, sell different products, because every little girl wants to be genetically modified to look like a robot with arms made out of carrots or something, right?, no actually most marketing is based on the biological predelection of humans living at a particular place and time, so there's actually a reason that Barbie looks like she did when marketing to the youth of 1960s America rather than a vampire squid with rotating tentacle biolumanescent arm attachments. But that's subject for another article!
[As is any discussion of the fat / thin issue.]
So, point is, accept that your judgement of Barbie girl as freakish is the same as calling cat-man freakish, I mean, hey, it's OK to think they're freaks but at least own it across the board so you're not a damn hypocrite, right? Because there is something culturally abnormal about actually going through with it and doing something like this, or else everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't be abnormal anymore.
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