Hollywood Garbage: The Mechanization of Desire

I might be in the minority on this, but so many movies these days feel like they should at least be mindless fun, but instead they're just mindless.

Pacific Rim, Superman, Transformers part who-gives-a-fuck, Teenage Mutant Ninja Whatever, etc. It's a little depressing that we're all hailing Guardians of the Galaxy as the artistic and spiritual apex of humanity because it wasn't just a 3 hour long lens flare, though it does serve as a terrific case-in-point for how the vacuity of recent Blockbusters is not in the concept. Even a talking Raccoon can be relate-able if handled right.

This is where "long form" (what else can we call TV shows that often aren't aired on TV?) has been stepping up to the plate. True Detective, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, etc. have been capitalizing on the desire for stories that are, well, stories. Something more than a Pavlovian repetition of set up, conflict, resolve over and over again.

That is all most pornography aspires to, and that's what makes the new normal tent-pole movies pornographic. Clearly it's not nudity or cum shots. No, it's the reduction of desire to a machine like repetition. The mechanization of desire is its own annihilation. The same metric that is being used to gamify all human behavior creates the deep structure of Hollywood screenplays. There's a reason, after all, that all these movies begin to feel the same, despite the fact that the concepts are different on paper. The underlying structure is fundamentally the same, with increasingly minor variations.

Of course we can expect this, with the amount of financial risk that is presented by movie production. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to reduce that risk, by falling back on predictions we can make from our own hard-wired responses? This basic idea is of course nothing new, it goes back to Aristotle, possibly before. And there is, thankfully, a great deal of uncertainty about the big picture in terms of those hard-wired responses. What, after all, is "human nature"? That's a surprisingly complicated question in the macro-scale abstract, but it's fairly straight-forward and easy to test on a micro- scale.

Adorno was skeptical about the implications of myth and propaganda, as all of us ought to be. And yet when you search for analysis of gamification, script writing, and game design, you will mostly find Utopian visions of gamification as method of "hacking our own nervous system." Yet, restrictive as it may be, we may want to look to Adorno's analysis of television and ideology, critical models, myth and the Dialectic of Enlightenment before we proclaim our ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in such a way. (There is nevertheless some irony in the "long form" being one of the most open and creative entertainment mediums at the moment, considering stereotypes of television that existed, and which were more or less accurate, as recently as a decade ago.)

Flipping this on its head, we might wonder about literal pornography. If it is the application of mechanical commodity that makes pornography, rather than the presence of sexual content, then we have a handy shorthand for the much sought after dividing line between erotica and pornography. It is not the presence of sexual content, it is not whether ones desire is engaged, but rather whether that desire is an end in itself, and whether that end, ultimately, has been mechanized as the root commodity of the media-as-product. There's some difficulty in discussing erotica, let alone producing it, without some patina of pretension, and yet there it is: erotica exists as something more than just its own ends. Perhaps what that is will remain as nebulous as the distinction between self, soul, and brain matter. But if we ignore it, then there is nothing in this world to keep us from nihilism, and nothing that might keep us from the horror of the simulacra, the anonymous self-less repetition, every one of us nothing more than a mask strapped atop a void.

Also, it's pretty hard to argue with a good pair of tits. Even the most craven pornography has that on the average PG-rated Hollywood Blockbuster.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Beauty Under The Knife: Cultural and Personal Standards

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. 

Doll-house Narratives

gordie grant

The recent "Married To A Doll" piece on the Atlantic highlights a story that has been going around for years, about "iDollators," those that take on dolls as love partners.
Rather than do the usual gawking and commenting about how "weird" it all is, I'd rather comment on something that occurred to me as I was reading the interview: when the other person is removed from a relationship, and their shell remains, you get a clear view of just how much projection is involved in all so-called "normal" relationships. So many of us are taught to make a possession of our lovers or mates, to evaluate ourselves, even our value, based on their perceived value.

This is something less than hyperbole. A December 2013 "Psychology Today" article asks, "Is Your Partner Good Enough?", going on to explain,

In the book Passions Within Reason, Robert Frank writes about a woman who asked her friend the following questions: Why do I fall in love with people that are not interested in me? And why don't I care about those that fall in love with me? Her collegue replied, "you're an 8 chasing after 10's and being chased by 6's." How could this woman know she is an 8 and not a 7 or 9? And should she stop dreaming about 10's?

Once you evaluate your partner is inferior to you, you are faced with making a romantic compromise. The concession here does not refer to whether the person loves you or is a suitable partner but whether -- in your opinion -- he or she is above, below, or equal to you or to the other partners available to you.

We act as if this behavior is somehow normal, and Davecat's is abnormal, but both of them show the exact same kind of thinking. He has merely applied those needs and the narratives that feed them to a synthetic proxy. And moreover, as dolls don't have agency, what he is doing isn't reducing a person to the status of possession in the process.

The narratives that we tell ourselves about our partners are in many ways realer to us than they are. What if they are so satisfying that we in fact live within a relationship to those narratives, rather than to the people themselves?

Both Sidore and Elena have two backstories. One in which Sidore is the daughter of a Japanese father and an English mother, and was born in Japan and raised in Manchester, England. Elena's is similar; she grew up in Vladivostok, Russia. The other backstory they have is that they're Dolls. Self-aware Dolls, but Dolls nonetheless. In one backstory they have favorite foods; in the other, they don't eat, becaus they don't have digestive tracts... because they're Dolls. You get the idea.
I've had that dichotomy for as long as I've had Shi-chan and Lenka, and it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. As I write their characters, they each express themselves through the Internet; they both have their own Twitterfeeds, and Shi-chan has a Tumblr. Playing up the Doll aspect allows me to get comedy from the situation, such as when Sidore wonders why I don't just remove my sinuses when my allergies flare up, but writing detailed histories for them exercises my creative writing skills, and makes them more 'human'. Like I said, the dichotomy probably won't be solved any time soon.

Isn't the goal of a relationship to take, accept and love them as they are? Certainly not to evaluate their value as a commodity... except of course that the entire history of marriage is based on property and ownership. Perhaps it is little surprise that we should still be carrying around that cultural baggage.

To let a relation be what it is, enrich and challenge our lives, and pass on when it is their time. These are a few the assumptions that let me to polyamory, because I noticed a trend in myself when I was in monogamous relationships that I tried to change the people I was with, tried to make them "the one," because, after all, if you only have one partner they had best satisfy those needs. But other people don't exist to satisfy our needs.

Dolls, perhaps, can do that. But not human beings.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Huffington Post Polyamory

Wed night, 11pm.

Co-wrote an article for Huffington Post UK: 

All of a sudden, polyamory is everywhere.
Articles flood the internet, many of them opinion pieces written by people who (so far) identify as monogamous. One of the reasons this is happening is to keep the news cycle churning now that gay marriage seems to be approaching normalcy. The clue is in the name; news is characterized by an obsession with the "new".
But in the process of giving polyamory a make-over that everyone can identify with, the only truly radical thing about the ideology is completely lost. To sugar-coat an unspoken truth: polyamory seeks to upend a many thousand-year-old narrative about ownership. We don't own our daughter's virginity. Husbands don't own their wives. Wives don't own their husbands. We may seek to avoid hurting those we love -- any healthy person (poly or otherwise) with a conscience does - but we do not own one another, and at the end of the day, our decisions, and our lives, are our own.
The prevalent made-over polyamory picture for the mainstream is of a hetero-normative couple that likes to swing on the weekends as shown in US Showtime series "Polyamory: Married and Dating". This is arguably one version of poly depending on your definition of 'love'. But so are many other versions. So much so that there is no true picture of polyamory because every instance is as unique as we are, and unique as our most intimate relations can be. We are no longer mere commodities.
In recognizing that we cannot own others, we give up our claim on other's bodies, but at the same time gain a new claim on our own freedom. The radical potential of polyamory is actually that might shift our entire societal structure. 

Full article. 

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

What Will The Mainstream Make of Polyamory

Keeping with our recent topic of sex and sexuality... 

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:

• Time Enough For Love
• 7 Unrules of Polyamory
• The Goddess Cult, What's Wrong With Charlie Sheen
• A Post-modern Analysis Presented Against Marriage, Poly

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Sex and the Lustful Animal

Following up on yesterday's post, here's another you may want to look over,

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.)

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Subjectivity and Sadism

There's a paragraph in what is an otherwise mostly remedial article on the subject that I think bears inspection, as it's a sentiment that needs to be repeated more often,

Sadism isn’t the only paraphilic category for which the question of harm can get murky for psychiatrists as well as for anyone who has ever contemplated another person’s unusual sex life. As the lovely Kate Upton reminded us earlier, a universally objective reality simply doesn’t exist in the present domain; what’s harmful to me isn’t necessarily harmful to you, and vice versa. It will change as soon as I put this comma right here, but as of this very moment there are exactly 7,088,343,858 people on the planet. If all but one of these individuals were to experience harm in exactly the same way from a certain sex act, that solitary person is nevertheless just as right (or just as wrong) as all the others combined. This is because there’s no “correct” way to experience a sex act, only individual differences in subjective realities. It may be a moot point, since it’s not logic that guides culture but instead sheer social mass shouldering into it with brute force, but nonetheless 7,088,343,857 shared subjective realities do not add up to a single objective fact. What was harmful to them was not harmful to him, and that, as they say, is that. Or to rephrase: one person’s horror story is another’s erotica. And I’m quite sure our vorarephile Bernd Jürgen Brandes would tell you so too, if only he were still around.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Disability, ability, and bow-chicka-wow-wow.

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.]

Going non-verbal: Art Break!

It's been established that I'm one verbose and sometimes abstruse motherfucker.What's less known is that sometimes I cast off the verbal and just art. Here's the latest: art with meta-meanings.

Kairos II: La Révolution Post-historique

Oh no! It's Da Bomb!

         Arnold Gehlen, in ¨The Roll of Living Standards in Today´s Society¨ (1952) and Hendrik de Man (Paul´s uncle), in Vermassung und Kulturverfall (1952), present another “end of history” scenario emphasizing das Posthistoire [1], the-post historical period; that period into which we entered after the Second World War (and of modernity, see exhibits: a) the unprecedented scale of the war, b) Auschwitz, and c) the Bomb), and made possible by the post-war economic and technological acceleration, which ensured that all could enjoy a high standard of living as compared to before (this parallels Kojève´s footnoted suggestion that the classless society was in fact American consumer capitalist society). 

 

Hiroshima, Post-Bomb

The mathematician A. A. Cournot had envisioned, as it was about a century before the phrase post-histoire was coined; then, Cournot wanted to designate the position that emerges when any human invention or innovation has been so perfected that every further morphological change appears closed off...the conclusion that our culture has filled its “archetypal” sense and is thus has entered a phase of meaninglessness; the alternative was then, viewed biologically, death or mutation...Post-histoire is not concerned with the lethargy of a culture in which its vital powers have been extinguished, rather with the entry to a phase of world-events occurring overall outside of the framework of History because they lack any noticeable historical connection between causes and effects. [2]

The Goddesses Cult Polyamory and Charlie Sheen

What Is There Not To Like?

By James Curcio
It should be of little surprise to anyone that the jealousy surrounding Charlie Sheen's two goddesses in their "unconventional home life" stems more from the public than from within. And if there is jealousy within their lives, it isn't any of our damn business. This is all part of the looking glass of voyeurism that obsesses American pop culture. We use finger wagging and judgement as a means of getting off. I get an image of a Priest scolding teenage girls for wearing too-short skirts and masturbating later behind the pews. But maybe that's because I've been up all night and have decided that my brain is not of terrestrial origin.

Listen: this is how it works. The oldest saying in PR is "all PR is good PR." And there are times it is proven wrong, like all "truisms," and indeed all truths, it is contextual. But it is being demonstrated true right now. You can't turn on a goddamn TV, or twitter feed - whomever you are following - or facebook page, and not find discussion about Charlie Sheen and Winning and all the pull quotes which I assumed would have a shelf-life that would expire 12 midnight last night, but it's still going strong now. Which means one thing: crazy motherfucker, the guy is winning. So you like, you can pull a few factoids from this phenomenon about how this machine works, such as that the success of his show might have as much to do with his being a "rock star from mars" (translation: living the lifestyle many Americans privately wish they could, and publicly want to tear down) as any sort of creative content. OK, that's a fucking given. Look at this page and tell me who is "winning."

Just Smoke And Illusion, Kids.

Let me get back to the point. The point, thank the Gods, has very little to do with Charlie Sheen. Or even the puppeteers of pop culture which dangles the carrot with one hand and wields not a stick but a bloody steak knife in the other. It is that pop culture itself seems to take a view that absolutely everything is weird or outlandish. How common has it been throughout history for a man, especially a successful ones by the standard of the culture, to have more than one wife? (Very. We can talk about the "Patriarchal" and "Heteronormative" overtones another day, ok? And this post isn't about Charlie Sheen, the man. God. I'm sure most polyamorous people feel they've dodged a bullet that the news media hasn't picked this up. All it takes is a few keywords to associate with one another... and suddenly he's the posterboy.)

It is only through a complete lack of contact with other cultures and with history itself that mainstream American pop culture has any sway over the populace. It makes us look at one another askance, it makes us all try to normalize ourselves, it makes us insecure, and yet it doesn't make us do anything. No. If we do any of these things it is we who are doing it. The only mechanism of brainwashing is the veil of ignorance.

Let's suppose that there really is an open and free, communicative dynamic between this group. I could give a fuck. But let's suppose. Then the term they should be dropping in all their stories is polyamory. But they're not. (I'd be even happier if major news outlets started using my concocted postmodernogamy but I don't expect that in a million years.) And if it isn't that, then it's just polygany, or an unmarried version of it, which is an ancient Greek word. We don't need to put a date on it, the point is, there's nothing weird about it. The way we do things is far more weird. The modern idea of romantic love itself derives from the Troubadour tradition of the 13th century, if we're to believe Joseph Campbell's scholarship on the matter, and his work on Love and the Goddess details not only this but also the various elements of the Goddess tradition and how it has been all but erased from Western spirituality. Though it forces itself through time and again, because you simply cannot have spiritual thought without a Goddess any more than you can have humanity without a Mother.

How We Roll

I realize that most of this isn't news to the types who would frequent this site on a regular basis. But it still drives me nuts when these kind of tactics are successful when a simple Google search could dispel anyone's illusion about there being anything unusual about his love life. Again, it is a matter of the distorted mirror of fame. I lived with two lovers, and lived with my ex-wife and a lover, and so on. I guess to some it made me "that weird poly guy" but it certainly wasn't a news story. And there are tens of thousands of other people who openly identify as polyamorous, and there would probably be plenty of polygamy as well if it was legalized.

So you know. Get over it guys. The sooner people stop buying into such simple tricks, the sooner maybe we can infuse some more interesting themes into this shithole of a culture.

Finally, way to "win," Mr Charlie Sheen. For today, at least. The plebs are forever thirsty for blood, but you'e dodged the bullet for now, by making it all a joke. And if you ever decide to rethink this sobriety thing, maybe after you get your 3 mil an episode, fuck it man. I'll go to Mars with you. Give Robert Downey Jr a call, maybe he'll kick in. We can ride around on tricycles pulled by Thai prostitutes and have midges with plates of cocaine strapped to their heads. (If that story about you waving around a knife is true, let's cut that out, huh?)

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

Cut To The Chase: Eating, Fucking and Dying

By James Curcio
Much ink has been spilled about the relationship of sex and death. I've contributed to it in some small measure—if we can call pixels "ink"—although I don't think any intellectual or academic investigation has ever fully cut to the heart of the matter, and I doubt any ever will. Because, quite plainly, it would be impossible to do so in a satisfactory manner. 
The sex-death connection lies outside the realm of dialectical ideas, although we may choose to come at it from the angle of biology or religious symbolism, the interrelationships of iconography and psychology, and so on. 
But the truth of this connection still seems to lie somewhere in the visceral. Our ideas are in our biology but not of it, which is a turn of phrase a friend used recently that I found memorable. So, like much of our awkward relation to our own sexuality, at least in public, we also find an awkward relationship with death. And when we see that there is a juncture between sexuality and biological sex, a juncture that transcends reproduction, that links in fact into eroticism itself—which is an activity that has transcended its own function, if we are to consider sexuality to be functionally a reproductive act—then we really have to admit our blind ignorance in the face of what must either be taken to be fact, or not. It is said there is a link between sex and death, and it has been spun a million ways, but what can we actually trust in this relation? Who can entirely rule out that there is no link between sexuality and death beyond reproduction, and we're all just incredibly perverse? 

So, as seems to be my inclination, I find myself wanting to throw another variable in the pot when I've realized I can't even come to grips with the two that are already floating around in there. (Look, I like threesomes, alright? Shoot me, but it really helps to have an extra pair of hands. Slender, female hands. Because a pair of bear claws popping in there out of nowhere would be really—Wait, what were we talking about again?) That's just my way, and it has always been. Who am I to question what it is that I am? 
I've been thinking about this recently because I have seen a further linkage in here, I felt it, chewed on it, worked it around my body. These ideas only came up after the fact. This is the rare kind of idea I'm more prone to trust. There is a connection between sex, death, and food. Not just a one-to-one relationship. Many have noticed the connection between food and sex. Or sex and food. For some reason I've rarely seen the complete chain actually pieced together when it is really quite obvious. It is between all three of them that we see a clear picture of primal life. 

Lilith: The Original Vampire

By James Curcio
There is going to be a lot of information for you to delve into on Lilith in the forthcoming Immanence of Myth anthology, as well as a fictional portrayal of her - or someone who thinks she is the present incarnation of Lilith, anyway - in Party At The World's End. (To be released 2014)

Here is a little from the section on Lilith in Immanence of Myth, to get us started:

Lilith begins not as a Goddess, but as a demon, a malevolent force that you can hear when the wind howls in the desert, carrying with it the sharp sting of sand. The distinction between Demon and God is somewhat in the eye of the beholder; it isn't so much a matter of power as of function. Demons are that which is cast out, at the same time divine themselves. I'd like to point attention to the way that Lilith represents forces that are cast out of the social sphere, a force that must be banished to make domesticity possible, at least when conducted within the confines of the paradigm of marriage-as-ownership. From within that circle, she would certainly look frightful. Consider that, moving forward.       She appears in the screenplay I working on concurrently (and collaboratively) with this project. Or, at least, we find there a woman who believes she is the modern incarnation of Lilith. When she has led a number of would be initiates (nubile girls themselves) to a hot tub with her, she reveals this, explaining,

Women told tales of me...I would steal the men away from them. I would devour their children. I was an abomination. I lived inside mirrors to seduce the vanity of nubile girls. Can you imagine?

Lilith concept drawing for Party At The World's End

    Lilith, the first Eve, is first recognized by her defiant nature; she is another anti-patriarchal, anti-authoritative symbol. At least, this is the form we encounter her in as she left Babylon with the Jewish exile.       So on the one hand we have Lilith as a spirit of the desert, a creature that could slip into your house and devour your children. This is how she would be presented to women, a bogeyman to keep them in place. Of course, this fear tactic isn't often capitulated consciously; it is something that all the members of a cultural domain participate in unconsciously.      On the other, there is this idea of her as the seductress, luring men away from their societal commitment to the “good mother.” This is an element which some superficially similar symbols, such as Kali, lacks. Without needing to return to textual source, it's easy enough to typify “this sort” of woman. She has the audacity to do what she wants, and it very well might not be what you or the society wants. There is something impetuous and child-like about her, which can manifest as a resolute defiance when placed within the context of a system of rules. So long as she's cast in the role of villain, this arouses the suspicion and fear of the wives of men, and their shameful observance to whichever force is the stronger.

No, not quite. 

    This is an important point: Lilith often appears in a different guise to men than women. Of course, there are personal and cultural factors. To women, especially within sexually restrictive cultures, we see more of the “devourer of children,” aspect. To men, she appears as the seductress, the dark anima. The kind of girl that you don't take home to mother. But in either case she represents a direct threat to the established social order, especially the order of marriage and monogamy. She is an enemy of stasis, of duty and societal bonds. In modern contexts, the threat posed to women is re-enforced by the ad and fashion industries efforts to increases competition and insecurity, as well as the conflict of the myths of domesticity, “slut shaming,” and so on. In a softer, more romanticized form, it is not surprising that Lilith has re-appeared as a potent symbol in bi-, lesbian, and polyamorous communities, especially amongst those who might have some derision towards “breeders.” However, Lilith is not simply a symbol of liberation. She also represents a point of contention between personal senses of restriction and freedom.  

However, there is a thread I didn't have a chance to cover in either of those books, and I thought it would be interesting to delve into another element of this symbol. Despite many modern vampire myths fixating their origin story the idea of the Brother's myth, either Cain and Able or Osiris and Set, or some cases Judas being the first vampire (not the least of which being the White Wolf: Vampire / World of Darkness setting), it is actually more likely that we can find the very first origins of this story coming from two sources. And one of these, you guessed it, is from ancient Babylon and Sumeria, in the complex of demons called the Lilim, Lilitu, or Lilith, the queen of them all. Though we may not expect to see Lilith popping up in True Blood lore anytime soon--though I wouldn't rule it out--you can't really look at the romanticization of the vampire without her. (This is a process which we all pray can't be taken any further than the glittering-in-the-sun Twilight vampires.)
[Editors note: Season 5 of TrueBlood focused heavily on Lilith! Go figure.]

More Lilith...

Though historical records are scarce on this account, there is a fair amount of research, "Lilith: The First Eve" being a paramount source, that the succubi myth originated with Lilith as well, and in all of these complexes you have the core idea of vampirism: whether through blood, or another vital essence such as semen or breath itself, these beings, or this force, sustains itself through feeding off our own. Definitely check out that book if this is a subject that interest you ("Lilith: The First Eve.") 
Let's not forget, of course, that at the most basic level all life sustains itself off of other life, and the only way to cut yourself out of this web entirely is to slit your own throat here and now. 

But that's not what Lilith is really about, is it? That's not what the vampire myth is about, either. At least not since the 19th century. No, we don't actually care that vampires must "feed" off blood. The vampire myth transformed from fear to lust, from terror to sexual desire, because the feeding that we're actually talking about is sexual. When you tell a lover "I'm hungry for you," you aren't telling them that you plan on feasting on their flesh. (Unless you're from New Guinea.) And what you're talking about can't simply be reduced to carnal desire, although it certainly informs that. It has to do with that unnameable chemistry, that almost uncontrollable pull that attracts two (or more) people. Joseph Campbell recognized that demons, angels, gods and goddesses are all symbols referring to the forces that we experience. To a great extent, these are psychological forces. Then Lilith represents, among other things, that hunger, that attraction, which says, "to hell with the details. I want you now." 

[Take a Trip with us. Mythos Media.]

The Wandering Underpants Circus of Hedonism

This was from an email I sent this morning that was a response to an upcoming travel adventure being the beginning of the "wandering underpants circus of debauchery." I'm sharing it because it's something I've been thinking about a bit lately, and because I'm busy with a hundred other things and have nothing better for you today.

 "First: Branding!

"The Wandering Underpants Circus of Debauchery" has one problem. Debauchery has the unfortunate connotation of excess-- it's not self regulating. (Look at the 7 of Cups in Crowley's Thoth deck, sometime. It's all droopy and syrupy and fucked up looking.) 

I propose "The Wandering Underpants Circus of Hedonism." Hedonism, unlike debauchery, puts pleasure as the highest virtue. But one of the variables involved is time as well as quantity. If you drink TOO much, that isn't pleasurable. If you get yourself hooked on heroin, that isn't pleasurable. If you fuck over the people you care about strictly in the pursuit of pleasure, it also won't likely lead you to pleasure. At the least, eventually word gets around and you're drinking alone in a bar somewhere. The most fun is the fun that is shared. And, at least in my experience, the things I can give to other people -- pleasure amongst them -- tend to have a more lasting effect for me than the things that I experience or consume alone. It's forgotten. Just like meals. How much less fun is it to cook for yourself every day? 

Of course, no matter WHAT you do, there are unpleasant things that occur in life. That can't be avoided, and in fact even many forms of discomfort lead to heightened capacities for pleasure -- for instance, yoga, especially at first, can be very unpleasant, but it increases capacity for pleasure. So I'd consider it hedonistic. Avoiding all pain and displeasure compulsively leads to an increase of those things in the future, as well as an increased possibility to run into disaster because you have your blinders on. So increasing awareness is also hedonistic, as is self improvement. However, on the flip side, if you go too far with that, it also ceases to be fun. And so you have a constant self-regulation process, where maybe at a given point you're not necessarily at the ideal "state" but if there are regulation mechanisms in place, short of those things that knock you way outside the range and take a long time to regain stasis (if it ever occurs)-- death, death of a loved one, a horrible disease, etc-- you're always operating in regard to that ideal state. Basically what I'm describing is any basic self-regulating system, like a thermostat. 

Hedonism, in other words, is actually a MIDDLE path. And, though I'm half kidding with all this, the truth is that I'm starting to realize that it's the most simple and direct guiding principle in my life. 

Well. Anyway, that was weird."

Indeed.

The Dark Side of a Culture: Thoughts on Abu Ghraib and the Pornography of Cruelty

“The torture? A more serious blow to the US than the 9-11 attacks. Except the blow was not inflicted by terrorists but by American citizens.” --Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo. 

(This is an update of an article that ran on Alterati in 2007. It appears  in the Immanence of Myth.)

    Several months after the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were first reported, a porn was produced, somewhat unsurprisingly, based on the events that took place there. Some of the copy accompanying the video reads: “I'm sure you've seen the news where they had those prisoners on top of the box with electrodes and a hood on the person's face, and if they fell off they would get a zap? Well we did just that. We put her up on the box with the electrodes on her fingers and hood on her head and did everything imaginable to her in her jail cell.”
    In bad taste? Certainly. But it goes deeper than that. This is a brief investigation of the psychology of vicariousness, which seems to underlie much of the “evil” perpetrated through passive rather than active participation, often revealed through art-forms that confront us with our cultural “dark side.” In this case, the revelation was embodied in the form of pornography, a simulacra based on actual rape and abuse, which itself doubtless didn't have the self awareness to recognize the power of its inadvertent satire. I’m not talking about the “dark side” from Star Wars. Evil rarely identifies itself as such. Instead we come face to face with the dark side of the moon, psychologically, which is never revealed to us unless if we ourselves go there. As Nietzsche rightfully recognized, this is not a safe exploration, you can’t do it entirely from behind a windshield; the “abysses we look into also look back into us.”
    This confrontation, and even the idealization of fascism and oppression as a means of demonstrating their opposite, are very closely tied to what such art seeks to bring about. It is a realm that does not just accidentally lead to misunderstanding, it provokes it. It demands it. Let me provide a long quotation from the introduction to the book Interrogation Machine, which I think makes the point quite elegantly:

In his reaction to the photos showing Iraqi prisoners tortured and humiliated by US soldiers, made public at the end of April 2004, George Bush, as expected, emphasized how the deeds of these soldiers were isolated crimes which do not reflect what America stands and fights for: the values of democracy, freedom, and personal dignity. If this is true, how, then, are we to account for their main feature, the contrast between the “standard” way prisoners were tortured in Saddam’s regime, and the US army tortures? In Saddam’s regime, the emphasis was on direct brutal infliction of pain, while the US soldiers focused on psychological humiliation. Furthermore, recording the humiliation with a camera, with the perpetrators included in the picture, their faces smiling stupidly alongside the twisted, naked bodies of the prisoners, is an integral part of the process, in stark contrast with the secrecy of Saddam’s tortures. When I saw the famous photo of a naked prisoner with a black hood covering his head, electric cable attached to his limbs, standing on a chair in a ridiculous theatrical pose, my first reaction was that this was a shot of the latest performance-art show in Lower Manhattan. The very positions and costumes of the prisoners suggest a theatrical staging, a kind of tableau vivant, which cannot but bring to mind the whole scope of American performance art and theatre of cruelty. (Interrogation Machine, Monroe.) 

    Antonin Artaud’s approach to theater was based directly on shedding light on this unpleasant “cultural dark side,” and the reference here, though speaking of American performance art, surely is in fact speaking to the French surrealist movement that Artaud started, the Theatre of Cruelty. This is not a strictly American issue, it is a psychological one, and one which has throughout history played its role in the definition of in-group and out-group — initiation and all other rituals which bring us in to the social circle, or which thrust us from it — the enactment of taboo, by which societies define their relations to one another and the world around us. In other words, the debasement of the “sacrifice” is not merely, as the quotation would imply, an expression of our dark half, our defining “dirty bits,” it is a psychological demand of the modern, narcissistic cultural identity.

Not that this particular pornographic artifact has any value, but its underlying impulse shows us more about ourselves than we might like to see. Nor is vicarious participation in sadism or masochism quite as simple an act as one may assume, (as a tangential note, Foucault was well known in the BDSM scene.) To continue with the quotation:

…It is in this feature that brings us to the crux of the matter: to anyone acquainted with the reality of the US way of life, the photos immediately brought to mind the obscene underside of US popular culture- for example, the initiation rituals of torture and humiliation one has to undergo in order to be accepted into a closed community.” (A note, again: this is not at all isolated to American culture: only its mode of expression is. Continuing.) “Do we not see similar photos at regular intervals in the US press, when some scandal explodes in an Army unit or on a high school campus, where an initiation ritual goes too far and soldiers or students get hurt beyond a level considered tolerable? … Abu Ghraib was not simply a case of American arrogance toward a Third World nation: in being submitted to these humiliating tortures, the Iraqi prisoners wee effectively initiated into American culture. They got a taste of its obscene underside, which forms the necessary supplement to the public values of personal dignity, democracy, and freedom.

…In march 2003, none other than Donald Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur philosophizing about the relationship between the known and the unknown: “there are known knowns, There are things things we known that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we known we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” What he forgot to add was the crucial forth term: the “unknown knowns,” things we don’t know that we know — which is precisely the Freudian unconscious — the “knowledge which doesn’t know itself” as Lacan used to say. If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq are the “unknown unknowns” the threats from Saddam which we do not even suspect, the Abu Ghraib scandal shows where the dangers are: in the “unknown knowns,” the disavowed beliefs, suppositions, and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, although they form the background of our public values. … So Bush was wrong: what we get when we see the photos of the humiliated Iraqi prisoners on our screens and front pages is precisely a direct insight into “American values,” into the very core of the obscene enjoyment that sustains the US way of life. (ibid.)

    Now to the central point: what better example of our unknown knowing is there than a brutal, even horrific, re-enactment of the Abu Ghraib incident, shown on a porn website as a form of entertainment, for people to masturbate to from a safe distance — safe from the potential shame of participation, but allowed to engage with it by proxy, like drivers rubbernecking at an accident? Nothing could be more to the point than this vicarious violence, enacted upon the degraded subject of our (supposed) desire. What better demonstration of precisely what is hidden behind our collective cultural mask of civility, or the outstretched hand of our “foreign diplomacy”? What better way to see it than in something so absurd?  
    At the same time movies like this have an unintentional element of the comedic. Even this kind of analysis of such a subject is, in its way, nothing more than comedy. Yet we shouldn’t let this mislead us: it is often only when we laugh that we are taking something seriously. To find amusement in the horrific is one of the “secrets” of many so-called Secret Societies. The alchemical process deals with the unification of the dark and the light, of the transformation of the dross, of base materials, to a more refined form. Shit to gold. But properly understood, this process does not mean we should support the horrific, it does not mean condone it: it means that we must identify the darkness, peel it back, look into its eye, and laugh. He who is illuminated with the brightest of lights will have the darkest of shadows. As Heinlein recognized, man is a creature that laughs at wrongness. Does this laughter transform? Does tragi-comedy relieve us of complicity? Perhaps not, but it does allow us to approach it without fear of being taken in by it, and this proximity allows for further transformation to occur.
    Only then can we change. Only then can we change others.

Postmodernogamy, Polyamory, and the Marriage Narrative

By James Curcio
Postmodernogamy is a "playful perversion of language," a "facetious neologism" that I've been using for several years. (I'll explain the quotation in a second.)

I mostly used it because I've often gotten into pointless arguments with strangers on polyamory forums for reasons passing my understanding, perhaps having to do with not kowtowing to some kind of imaginary party line, or because my sense of humor is very easily taken the wrong way by strangers that are, in my opinion, clearly over sensitive about being politically correct, whatever the hell that means. (Who knew that the term "tarded" isn't acceptable? I mean, fuck!)

I've also employed it because I'm just a patently absurd being, and the term "Postmodernogamy" is patently absurd. That's not unlike Kierkegaard's ultimate justification for Christianity. (If we choose faith we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason. In fact we must believe by virtue of the absurd.) We are meant for each other, like two soul-mates. Or something.

Let me explain it to you in my usual round-about way.

A conversation sparked up on a friend's Facebook, off of his use of the term Postmonogamy, a different term altogether though I was only half awake when I read it so I somehow assumed that he had said "postmodernogamy." And a conversation ensued which went somewhere both insightful and absurd, doubly so now that I realize it was all based on a misreading on my part. I in fact have very little to contribute to the idea of postmonogamy. I think it's unnecessary, and I'm sure we'll have a faux debate about that any day now.

But in the meantime I'd like to share my thoughts with you on the transition of relationships from the archiac to modern to postmodern age. Hopefully I needn't spell the general narrative of that obvious mythically implied linearity. It was the stuff of most of our education, formal and otherwise. De Sade foretold the death of the social convention of marriage, a "slap in the face to the Apollonian man." De Sade was, arguably, shaking his cage bars and fighting the formality of his age in the only ways he knew how. But there does seem to be a hysteria evident throughout much of the populace today, evidenced by the conflicts over gay marriage, and the forecoming arguments about progressive group marriage (as opposed to the regressive forms as seen in Mormonism) that are only beginning to hit the News.

The argument goes that marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman, and should this be contested, should it be sufficiently compromised, the entire fabric of society will collapse. We will revert to man-apes. Jesus will rise from the dead (again?!) and unleash his zombie hoards. Horrific stuff. Unless if you like zombies, which apparently some people do.

If our society hangs from such a fragile thread, if we're dangling so precipitously from the edge of the cliff, then it seems inevitable that we will slide to the bottom. I say we do it champagne glasses in hand. But let's back up a moment. Isn't it plainly apparent that marriage has nothing to do with biology? My wife and I kissed (and did other things) with several wonderful ladies at our wedding after-party, and I've yet to see a single zombie. (Though we should really get married more often, it seems to produce excellent parties, not to mention apparently getting women riled up. Even though that was unlikely the cause, it's still fun to attribute wildly.)

The restrictions applied to marriage, or applied through marriage, are representative of culturally normalizing forces within the society itself. They do not represent some kind of natural, let alone categorical, imperative. Though, of course, the pair bonding of mammals for the purpose of procreation does represent a biological imperative and I'll get to that in a moment.

This is EXACTLY what being polyamorous is like.
ALL THE TIME. Right, Charlie Sheen?

I don't say this as some kind of opponent of monogamy. My contention is with the de facto expectation that it is enforced as the norm in all cases, and I have a reservation about the heirarchy that is formed in modern life: rampant promiscuity when "dating" and "free" to either an ongoing string of serial monogamous relationships, or "settling down" which also implies "shutting out." I've lost more friends, at least practically speaking, to marriage than cancer or any other disease. I would not like to confine myself to this strict narrative.

What are the alternatives, and what the hell does this have to do with postmodernism? Often the accusation leveled at bisexuality and polyamory alike, when other options are expended, is that it is selfish. This accusation is meant to immediately carry a negative connotation, I imagine, thanks to Abrahamic morality. (Which so often uses piety to mask various forms of selfishness, but that's another thing.)

Though any relationship that endures can't be based entirely on selfishness, I still have to question the underlying logic being employed here. What does it mean to be selfish in these cases?

There was a speech given by a Canadian author and playwright whose name is eluding me at the moment called "The Virtue of Selfishness." It was directed at the graduating class of a specialized school -- they were all going into social work. And he asked, in a nutshell, "how can you help others if you cannot help yourself?" (Ayn Rand also had some things to say about the virtues of selfishness but I don't like her politics so I'm biased.)

If we shut ourselves down or make ourselves in the image of what our partner wants us to be, strictly, then we can't be of any service to them. I have often seen a pattern in the most claustrophobic relationships that partners fall for something in someone, and then suffocate it and find themselves dissatisfied with the person they helped engineer. I'm not talking about compromise here, that is an essential part of any relationship. As always it is easy to paint abstract pictures in absolutes when reality tends to fall somewhere in-between.

There isn't, on the flip side, an inherent virtue in selfishness, either. Without any regard for anyone else, the only alliances we can forge are along the axis of very temporary mutual best interests. However, in less extreme cases, if we're being honest, it is the maintenance of mutual best interest that any relationship is maintained. Without that it coasts on inertia only until such a time that a stronger gravitational force, so to speak, pulls it to a new course.

Finally, I can get to my actual point: 

Based on the ideology of those that oppose gay as well as open marriage, the ends towards which marriage are directed are progeny and the maintenance of a certain social order. This is the biological imperative I spoke of conjoined with a set of social rules and expectations which, though they vary by place and time in some ways -- for instance arranged marriages are no longer the norm in the Western world -- they tend towards a fairly similar pattern, with the exception of cultural outliers. (Such as matriarchal Native American tribes, etc.)

This is the archaic and modernist marriage, which implies teleology as the establishment of progeny as successors is a movement towards an end, one's own end, and in terms of time as well a stratification of life is implied.

Let's look at the pattern. birth, childhood and play, young adulthood -- experimentation and social training, college and breaking off from parents, the period of dating which is a code word in many cases for casual sex and genetic sorting (finding a suitable mate), marriage, and a shift of emphasis then on creating a platform for the life that is to come. Then, the long period of toil until the "golden" period when the young have left the nest and the now elderly can reflect before death. This pattern changes slightly by society but it is ingrained by various mythologies and seems mostly constant world-wide. It is re-enforced by the myths, by the laws, and by the possible presecution of the rest of society, should anyone contest these "God given" rules. Women are still stoned to death for adultery in some places of in the world, hard as it is to believe.

The "end of history" that harkens postmodernism is easily reflected in a skeptical attitude towards these patterns; hierarchical methods of time and behavior categorization are replaced with more fluid nonlinear approaches. The jumble can remain a jumble, chaos is striated through its own self organizing principles, and our task becomes simply being wherever we are, recognizing, responding, seeking to be aware-- sometimes to suffer and fail miserably but, we hope, fearlessly -- rather than trying to organize the process of our lives through an imposed order that comes from without. Life is a series of flows. There are heirarchies and orders, but they are self-structuring, and tend to collapse and reform on their own whims. To put it far less abstractly, we aren't the ones in control. We never were, we never will be. The conscious mind is a little air bubble in a giant block of jello, and yes. I know this post has nothing to do with squirrels that are also whiskey bottles. But look at them. They're fucking awesome. What do you want from me?

This is what defines the post-modern condition, as well as skepticism towards meta-narratives, one of which could well be called the "sanctity of marriage." Yet, I don't contest its sanctity, in fact I'd like to see more of the sacred in all of our lives. Instead, let's say that it is a skepticism towards the teleology of our existence as birthing machines, of beings that must always follow the same narrative, the same progression; that our futures must self-organize to the whims and dictates that come from without rather than within.

Now that I think of it, I hate the term post-modernism, too. Damn. Well, some day I'll find a categorization I can live with.

Nah. Probably not. ... Look, schoolgirl maids!

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