Fragments on the history of Antimarkets / Capitalism

The theme of the past day for me seems to center around the history of capitalism. This has popped up in the several books I am muddling through (I mostly have time to read during my daily trolley/subway commute), and then this morning, while trying to wake me up, I happened upon an interesting article by Douglas Rushkoff that touches on the subject by way of discussing how our interests structure our discoveries and indeed the basis of what we consider real let alone valid. The point Rushkoff makes, and it's well made, is that scientists and mathematicians are biased to support the worldview of our economy as if its a given because thats how they make money- by showing how to game the system. However, that bias makes our economic system seem like universal, natural law. I would like to point out that this is not a bias exclusively unique to economics. Regardless, it creates a feedback loop between the "authorities" that re-enforce the system, and the people managing the system itself. Kind of an echo chamber.

There is some extent to which I let serendipity direct the progress of my research; books that people hand to me, things that I come upon online- all the information that we process is sorted based in part on the information we've already been exposed to, it predisposes us, as does our intentions at that time and a million other variables. There are several ways these tidbits fit into what I'm already working on, but I'll leave that for later.

On to these tidbits-

"Credit represented one more form of autocatalytic or turbulent dynamics that propelled preindustrial European cities ahead of their Eastern rivals, eventually enabling Europe to dominate the rest of the world. Credit (or, more exactly, compound interest) is an example of explosive, self-stimulated growth: money begetting money, a diabolical image that made many civilizations forbid usury. European merchants got around this prohibition through the use of the "bill of exchange," originally a means of long-distance payment (inherited from Islam); as
it circulated from fair to fiar its rate of return accrued usuriously. (This disguised form of usury was tolerated by church hierarchies use to the many risks of the circulation the bills of exchange involved.)

--1000 Years of Nonlinear History.

Then, from the Rushkoff article:

The economy in which we operate is not a natural system, but a set of rules developed in the Late Middle Ages in order to prevent the unchecked rise of a merchant class that was creating and exchanging value with impunity. This was what we might today call a peer-to-peer economy, and did not depend on central employers or even central currency.

People brought grain in from the fields, had it weighed at a grain store, and left with a receipt — usually stamped into a thin piece of foil. The foil could be torn into smaller pieces and used as currency in town. Each piece represented a specific amount of grain. The money was quite literally earned into existence — and the total amount in circulation reflected the abundance of the crop.

Now the interesting thing about this money is that it lost value over time. The grain store had to be paid, some of the grain was lost to rats and spoilage. So each year, the grain store would reissue the money for any grain that hadn't actually been claimed. This meant that the money was biased towards transactions — towards circulation, rather than hording. People wanted to spend it. And the more money circulates (to a point) the better and more bountiful the economy. Preventative maintenance on machinery, research and development on new windmills and water wheels, was at a high.

...

Feudal lords, early kings, and the aristocracy were not participating in this wealth creation. Their families hadn't created value in centuries, and they needed a mechanism through which to maintain their own stature in the face of a rising middle class. The two ideas they came up with are still with us today in essentially the same form, and have become so embedded in commerce that we mistake them for pre-existing laws of economic activity.

The first innovation was to centralize currency. What better way for the already rich to maintain their wealth than to make money scarce? Monarchs forcibly made abundant local currencies illegal, and required people to exchange value through artificially scarce central currencies, instead. Not only was centrally issued money easier to tax, but it gave central banks an easy way to extract value through debasement (removing gold content). The bias of scarce currency, however, was towards hording. Those with access to the treasury could accrue wealth by lending or investing passively in value creation by others. Prosperity on the periphery quickly diminished as value was drawn toward the center. Within a few decades of the establishment of central currency in France came local poverty, an end to subsistence farming, and the plague. (The economy we now celebrate as the happy result of these Renaissance innovations only took effect after Europe had lost half of its population.)

...

The second great innovation was the chartered monopoly, through which kings could grant exclusive control over a sector or region to a favored company in return for an investment in the enterprise. This gave rise to monopoly markets, such as the British East India Trading Company's exclusive right to trade in the American Colonies. Colonists who grew cotton were not permitted to sell it to other people or, worse, fabricate clothes. These activities would have generated value from the bottom up, in a way that could not have been extracted by a central authority. Instead, colonists were required to sell cotton to the Company, at fixed prices, who shipped it back to England where it was fabricated into clothes by another chartered monopoly, and then shipped to back to America for sale to the colonists. It was not more efficient; it was simply more extractive.

The resulting economy encouraged — and often forced — people to accept employment from chartered corporations rather than create value for themselves. When natives of the Indies began making rope to sell to the Dutch East India Trading Company, the Company sought and won laws making rope fabrication in the Indies illegal for anyone except the Company itself. Former rope-makers had to close their workshops, and work instead for lower wages as employees of the company."

I've been thinking about this in the back of my mind most of the day, but I seem to be fighting with a sinus thing yet again so I'm not the most clear-headed at the moment. Conclusion is that you either need to enter the game through having enough money to work with compound interest and investment, accept that you will be someone's indentured servant all your life, or build your own trade network and accept that most likely, if you are ever truly successful, you will be shut down or attacked by the powers-that-be as posing a threat to their way of life simply because you provide an alternative to their credit monopolies. (Certainly, if you gather the means to defend yourself from such incursions- as the founders of this country did- you would be even more likely to be branded as terrorist.)

This final scenario was one of the premises I was playing with in fictional form in Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning.

A shitty game. Anything beats option #2.

The Dual Definition of Myth (cont)

The fact that the word "myth" has become synonomous with an untrue belief belies an underlying shift in our epistemological focus over the past several thousand years. To generalize: we have become, as a culture, a great deal more concerned with verifiable facts and less concerned with the existential truths which have a different relation to fact. This progression ties not only into the Enlightenment focus on rationality and the scientific method, but, perhaps more pervasively and certainly more recently, we can see this following from the needs of industrialization. Fundamental business principles rely on actions that are easy to reproduce, and which produce similar if not identical results with each reptition. This promotes an economy of scale that is absolutely necessary for so-called big business.

The dual meaning of myth comes almost as a by-product of this worldview, and provides a certain cultural insight that we will be exploring throughout the Immanence of Myth. In its proper sense, myth has no necessary relation to fact because it relates to our interior and psychological rather than external, physical selves. This is not to say that the former has no bearing on the latter. Far from it. That the inner and outer life appear as mirror images of one another, separated by what appears to be a vast divide, is another issue that we must contend with. (in Deconstructing Our Myths.)

You Are Here: Corporate Mono-Myth

A thought stemming from a twitter conversation with @eve11, not ironically tapped out as I sit here working on marketing materials for yet another porn (or, ok. yes it is.):

It's the initiatory or transformative function of a story that (at least in part) makes it a myth. This is one of the places corporate mythology fails, since the only sanctioned activity within its bounds is consumption or production. That mono-myth has overrun all else in our culture, not the "hero" (with a thousand faces.) Within this framework, I only have "value" based on what I can consume or provide for consumption. Though these things are an obvious necessary element of life, they are the exclusive focus of the first chakra in the Kundalini model of psychic awareness: a worm that exists purely to eat through one end and shit out the other.

(Also note to self, look at this)

Immanence of Myth: Anthology guidelines

Immanence Of Myth To Be Published by Weaponized July 2011

For recent posts and updates on this project, click here. 

CLOSED FOR SUBMISSIONS

Mythos Media is seeking submissions for the (tentatively titled) anthology Immanence of Myth. This project came about through my own experiences, notes & essays on the subject, but I have decided to open the floor to contributors to increase the scope & breadth of the book.

This book will likely be broken into three sections: a deconstruction & analysis of "myth" as a concept, some forms of modern myths, and a section dealing with personal myths & experience- how myths (your own or others) have transformed or affected you. (see below)

The premise of this book is that myths actually have an essential function in our daily lives, as a meaning-creating method of interpreting our experience, rather than being an "untrue but regularly held belief" or a fanciful story from a bygone era. We hope to redefine this idea in section 1 & provide unique examples in section 2 & 3:

For section 1 we are looking for essays that explore the concept of myth outside the "box" of one particular worldview. This can include analysis of existent myths but we are not creating an annotated bulfinch's, and those examples should be used to support your central thesis.

Section 2 - articles on modern mythology, for example in media (movies, TV, literature, Internet), pop culture, and corporate/brand use of mythological techniques.

For section 3 we are looking for personal-essay style encounters with myth. (We may also consider short fiction if it serves the same purpose.) These can be humorous, dramatic, or anything in-between but should not be journal entries-- in other words, you have to provide the reader a means of understanding how myths have affected you, and how the reader can understand their own lives through a mythic lens.

We will also include a shorter section of interviews with artists that have mythological themes or approaches in their work.

In all cases, cite your references, and please proofread & spellcheck your work.

Submit your work as a Word or Open Office document.

Publication:
- We will be releasing this anthology through Mythos media and the new Pilotlite. The first edition will be made available as a free PDF and a (not free) POD hardcopy. We will push this through several online channels but each contributor should also promote it to their network of contacts. If this effort is successful we will push it to in-store publication.

- Your work will be published nonexclusively, meaning you can publish your submission (as submitted) at a later date with someone else if you so choose. If we partner with any publishers in a later edition we will insist on the nonexclusive use of your work unless you say otherwise.

- Submission does not ensure acceptance.

- Your submissions will be edited. The editorial process will vary somewhat depending on the need of the piece, but will always include an edited copy sent to the author for their own revision. We would like to keep the back-and-forth to two passes at most. In any event, we hope that you see it as a collaborative process. Please don't submit if you feel uncomfortable about your work being revised.

- Though we maintain final say on what gets published in this anthology, you will also have the opportunity to OK our revisions. Our goal is to come to a final piece that all parties are happy with.

- We are not maintaining a strict guideline on length. Shoot for between 1500-7000 words per piece.

- The first edition will be unpaid and available to contributors at the base printing cost. If possible we will offer a flat rate on later editions if the 1st edition does well but this can not be assured.

- We are presently planning on laying this out in magazine format, and will also be looking for art to accompany the text, especially later in the process.

- Please include a 250-500 word bio with your submission.


Publication date July 2011

SEND SUBMISSIONS TO: jamescurcio AT gmail DOT com

An early version of the Editor's intro was run at Reality Sandwich. Check it out.

Miopia, myth and analysis.

Pasting up some thoughts I jotted down last night. These often come to me right before sleep...

It's an often recognized fact that two things happen when you focus your attention on the study of a particular concept:

First, you see it everywhere. This is exemplified in the concept of a meta-narrative, whereby reality is reduced to a simple principle like the subversion of subliminal sexuality (Freud). These provide an often useful insight into an aspect of reality while at the same time distorting reality around the contours of the concept. What conceals often also reveals, and the inverse is also true.

Second, you likely deconstruct your core concept to such a point that it ceases to mean what it does for everyone else. For example, "will" to Schopenhauer, Neitzsche, or Crowley: their ideas of "will" in all three cases go so far beyond what is commonly meant by the term that many so-called lay-people will easily mistake their actual meaning. ("Lay-person" in this sense means someone who is simply not familiar with a sufficient whole of their work or worldview, which is actually requisite to understanding a core principle like this.) Similarly, this word "will" does not lead to the same concept in all three cases, but rather is a sort of key to a unique thought process for each.

I am fully aware of both of these factors in my ongoing exploration of the concept of "myth." Rather than attempting to escape them through the posture of "scientific analysis," which itself biases outcome, I do my best to embrace them simply to see what comes out on the other side as a result of the process-- the process of inquiring into a concept such as this one likely loops back on itself time and again, and in that process unravels any hope of being understood in a particular instance without a preconceived familiarity with the whole. An entire book could be written on "myth" or even "hope" or "alienation," and if written by different people the results would vary greatly: this itself is a recursive principle of what myth really is. As a result there is a danger of doing a great deal of work that is only valuable to its author. I don't believe this to be the case, as more remains similar about us than dissimilar in the big picture, but even if it is I'm willing to accept that in this work, if not in my fiction, art-- in the myths that I create themselves, rather than the analysis of the process that is going on behind it.

Dionysus and Spiritual Exile

Yet another fragmentary thought that fits into one of the sections of Immanence of Myth-- this one related to the concept of "spiritual exile" that I work with towards the end of the notes I presently have assembled, which is something of a synthesis of personal observation, Campbell's statements on the subject and Buber's I-and-Thou. However, the solution I see to this problem is different, though how to bring it into modern society without it destroying the already threadbare fabric... I don't know.

The Dionysian impulse is the solution to our spiritual exile not through escape, as in the mystical formulas which come from traditions that helped to invent spiritual exile in the first place, but through re-entry into the body-- not as a suit of flesh bearing consciousness but as consciousness itself-- no distinction, no division, expressed in the outpouring of a present that is so intensely alive that it devours, overflows, consumes.

That this state is only attained through extreme excess in our lives demonstrates nothing more than how ingrained our spiritual exile-- that is exile from the manifest reality-- truly is. Whether and to what extent this alienation is cultural or a biological symptom of our curious self consciousness is somewhat irrelevant.

A bit of relevant material from the IoM notes on this subject:

...This idea of estrangement is particularly worth highlighting.56 Though Christianity ostensibly did away with the need of a Priestly caste to act as an intermediary between man and God, this ideology was quickly brushed under the carpet as the Catholic church rose to power. Thus the early Judaic idea of estrangement or exile remained – along with this growing belief that the physical world itself was a sort of purgatory from the union with God. This myth obviously germinated in the cultural soil of a people who were constantly being kicked out of their chosen homeland(s). This belief most likely begins with one of the oldest monotheistic religions, Zoroastrianism, which originated somewhere between the 9th and 11th centuries BCE in or around what is modern day Afghanistan, oddly simultaneous with the roots of Judaism as well.

In these early monotheistic traditions, God took the role of an absolute Other, which makes a genuine relationship impossible: communication depends on commonality. To the average individual, this relationship continued with the older tradition of patriarchy; God became a father-figure so elevated that we could only follow his commands, but never understand him. Jewish mystics, however, recognized that a
God of this sort can only be intelligently spoken of as a “not,” to identify him as any actual element of being would be to limit him by caging him within our own mortal realm. The Jewish mystical system of Kabbalah in many ways is an intellectual means of making elements of the divine accessible, without limiting “his” essence, at least on paper. However, while there may be many other merits to this system, like the empty logical gesticulations of the Christian scholars to follow (such as Boethius, St. Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas), these intellectual or linguistic games change nothing.

To attempt to relate to this absolute, estranged Father-God, one can only cry up to the heavens in hope of a response that cannot come but through an intermediary – half divine himself – thus sharing part of our essence and part of his. It is of course in response to this need for an intermediary that Jesus, historic figure that he may be, took on the mythic resonance of an age, simultaneously adopting many of the elements of the male agrarian regenerative Gods that the Israelites had discarded. As the Christian cult grew from its early days into an institution, (most notably after the Council of Nicea and subsequent Nicene Creed), their leadership developed many political tools out of their myths. An example of this is original Sin, and as a result of the historic and mythic resonance of this belief, we have this “revolt against nature” which has been with us for the duration of Western Civilization. This is not a linear progression but rather a series of feedback loops, which moves temporally in one direction, but with resonances that can cross cultural boundaries, even inexplicably occur simultaneously in geographically disparate locations.

Read a book with Dionysus as the protagonist.

Vote with your money

The most powerful vote you get in this society is with your $: don't look for "deals", look at sustaining the business models you stand behind.

Though in a less black and white sense you can also vote for one business over another who are equally "conscientious", but where you prefer the methodology or even aesthetic of one over another. My point is we should think less just about the immediate personal benefit (this costs less here) and more about the systems we are sustaining and starving.

An example that comes to mind... there was this awesome cafe with a mini free library, essentially, hookahs-- an awesome place to hang out in what was otherwise a cultural wasteland. But it died because people would buy one coffee & stay 8 hours, whereas at starbucks people buy & leave, buy & leave. Everything about the business, from architecture on out, is constructed to re-enforce this model. You can say the biz model of #1 was flawed, but put the emphasis on the consumers consciousness of their participation in a system, and the resposibility becomes ours.

In other words, if we live in a corporate cultural wasteland, it's only because we have collectively chosen for it to be so, albeit in a passive, seemingly unintentional way. It is the aggregate of seemingly tiny choices that often determines the large-scale changes. The purpose of marketing is ultimately to fulfill consumer need- biz acts to make all elements of the process homogenized & easily reproducable because then it is easier to predict & strategize-- but that only works when human behavior is predictable. This makes cultural homogenization a benefit from a corporate standpoint-- and this ties into a sub-topic of the marketing takeover of the counterculture but that we will return to on another day...

All of this is toppled if individuals are unique, unpredictable & think for themselves. So those traits are poison from the standpoint of big biz sustainability. But for the sustainability of humanity, & the planet--- see where I'm going?

I'm disinterested in showy protest that accomplishes nothing. real change is accomplished through the cumulative, day-to-day actions of everyone.

This is a topic that comes up in the presently fragmented notes and essays I'm currently calling The Immanence of Myth (PDF).

A quote from a relevant section on the topic:

All products and their associated myths, (people in advertising speak fairly openly about developing the “story” of the brand, which is the brand's myth), have to find a home within the lives and thoughts of the market. If people demand organic products, companies will meet that demand. Though the proliferation of Yoga, organic food, specialty food products, high quality imports, and the like are being supplied to an increasing degree by the “evil empire,” it is also a sign that consumers have much more power in their hands than they realize. In fact, within the market framework, they have all the power. They just don't realize it, and often don't seem to have the willpower or where-with-all to wield it.67

(FN 67 Along with that power, of course, comes a responsibility that most consumers are unwilling to take on. For instance, though it is perhaps easy to complain about the quality of Hollywood movies today, if people stopped going to see them, Hollywood would very quickly work to develop a new formula. If people recognize that, good or bad, within a capitalist society your dollar is possibly an even stronger form of “voting power” than what is exercised in the voting booth. How many “green” Americans complain about Wallmart and then go there the next day?)

Instead, many people live as shills to various corporate myths because they quietly choose to. If your life revolves around how the shoes you wear define you as a person, or which line of body spray is most likely to get you laid, you’ve turned yourself into a patsy. The only way out of this cycle for the consumer is to
take control of their choices. The only way out for the myth-maker is to create, and forget about trying to be original.

MURDER THE WORLD

More information will be made available shortly about Murder The World, Inc. We are currently in the studio preparing a completely overwhelming sensory experience for you- our first album, Nothing Is Sacred. This is a taxing process that involves copious amounts of drugs and self-abuse, so bear with us and check out the album when we're done if we don't all OD on cough syrup and fermented yak semen or invoke a wrathful demon that replaces all of our bodily fluids with nutella. (Thankfully we got most of our drummer's material before he left this Earth. RIP Thor Thorsson.

Carl Jung and the absence of myth

I came upon a passage in Jung's autiobiography (Memories, Dreams & Reflections, which I named our little Babalon 1-off demo after) so serendipitously that I feel the need to transcribe it here.

It has equal relevance not only for my past work but one of the fundamental issues I've wrestled with the majority of my life. If anything it is this very problem which has driven me time and again back to the subject of myth, it is what I am again shooting at with the Immanence of Myth, though I feel I am shooting at a hidden target while blindfolded, and to make matters worse the target is moving around on me. But nevertheless it is the same target, and that is the psychological and cultural problems posed by the absence of myth. To many they seem an idea in the background, at the most of secondary importance. For me it has always been an issue of primary importance, to such an extent that as I said it is possibly the fundamental catch 22 that seems to underlie my life, at least from age 16 to the present. I have seen these traits in many of those who have walked aside me at least for a time, as well as, at times, in myself. (Which is to say, I don't think this passage is about me but rather prophetically touching upon a cultural/psychological crisis that he -- and many others -- have seen coming for a long time.)

So, to the passage:

"...It is obvious that in the course of his practice a doctor will come across people who have a great effect on him too. He meets personalities who, for better or worse, never stir the interest of the public and who nevertheless, or for that very reason, possess unusual qualities, or whose destiny it is to pass through unprrecendeted developments and disasters. Sometimes they are persons of extraordinary talents, who might well inspire another to give his life for them; but these talents may be implanted in so strangely unfavorable a psychic disposition that we cannot tell whether it is a question of genius or fragmentary development. Frequently, too, in this unlikely soil there flower rare blossoms of the psyche which we would never have thought to find in the flatlands of society.

...Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good many who in other ages would not have been neurotic- that is, divided against themselves. If they had lived in a period and in a milieu in which man was still linked by myth with the world of the ancestors, and thus with nature truly experienced and not merely seen from outside, they would have been spared this division with themselves. I am speaking of those who cannot tolerate the loss of myth and who can neither find a way to a merely exterior world, to the world as seen by science, nor rest satisfied with an intellectual juggled with words, which has nothing whatsoever to do with wisdom.

These victims of the psychic dichotomy of our time are merely optional neurotics, their apparent morbidity drops away the moment the gulf between the ego and the unconscious is closed. ... The spirit does not dwell in concepts, but in deeds and in facts. Words butter no parsnips; nevertheless, this futile procedure is repeated ad infinitum."

Abstraction and the Real

Last night I was working through several different ideas and hammered them down on my iPhone (because why get out of bed, really?)-- as with a lot of the more 'abstract' work, this deals as much with my personal life and inner experience as any research. However, many people assume abstraction is further away from that, or even disingenuous. So this deals with that, as well as several other points related to myth that I intend to unpack later. Pick up the Immanence of Myth for that.

Abstract questions / solutions (which take on the narrative metaphor form as myths) are at once more pure and multifaceted than the specific or concrete. It is never just THIS problem or THIS person, even when it originates from a personal experience or dilemma. This strength is also its greatest weakness as narrative metaphors are essentially untethered from necessity and thus from what many would refer to as reality.

This method of abstraction or metaphor requires an unfortunately "meta-" approach to an analysis of myth, or else the overrall method may get lost through a particular peculiarity, as with Freud and formative sexuality, or even the folk elements of a particular story about Hanuman. In dealing with myth as a subject I am therefor not entirely concerned with the details of a single story or meta-narrative. These particulars or peculiarities can & should be noted, but if we think that by exploding a single mythic/psychological complex we are uncovering the actual nature of myth, then we will continue to chase our own tail in misleading dialogue about trivial or even obsessive points. This is a methodological shortcoming of Frazier, (& ....)

This may seem an apology for the methodology to follow, and in a sense it is, but it is also a means of saying that both I and the reader must remain absolutely aware of the need to re-tether the abstract (myth) with the necessary. This very quandry is often posed in mythic fashion, for example in stories dealing with the problems of relating the needs of the spirit, or what we refer to as spirit, and the material world. (ref. Also Jesus not jumping, "thou shalt not tempt the lord your god." why?) Neither can be sacrificed for the sake of the other, and if they cannot be aligned, integrated, or otherwise rectified the result is death of one form or another. This particular dilemma- one of countless legions- is considered one of the principle purposes of alchemy, in fact all alchemy deals with the fusion of the substantial and insubstantial bodies (ida & pingala in kundalini for instance). This problem takes on an even more dire importance in our present age, where the material has become the only consideration, and the spiritual backlash is not one of integration but rather one of violent fundamentalism.

---
The conditions surrounding any of the important decisions in our lives can be known through simple observation and logic (and those could be any of them, as often the most trivial decisions lead to the most crucial, defining events). However, the only answers that can answer such questions are actions, informed by mental maps or "ways of being." Logic often does us less good here, or may even confuse the issues as we try to navigate the often conflicting demands of society and the varying systems of our own body. This again is where myth plays its role because our myth is this story, written in the interplay of personal, existential questions and our very lives given as our answer

.

The Escape Into The Forest

More for later digestion and discussion...

Escape may be possible for a favored few, but it usually leads to something worse. Resistance only animates the Leviathan by giving him a welcome pretext for repressive measures. In the face of such conditions only one hope seems to remain, that the process may spend itself like a volcano spends its fiery ashes. But at this point a question arises, which is not at all theoretical, but an inevitable concomitant of every contemporary existence whether there is not, after all, another road that may be traveled, whether there do not exist mountain passes which can be discovered only after a long ascent.

The retreat into the forest (Waldgang) is not to be understood as a form of anarchism directed against the world of technology, although this is a temptation, particularly for those who strive to regain a myth. Undoubtedly, mythology will appear again. It is always present and arises in a propitious hour like a treasure coming to the surface. But man does not return to the realm of myth, he reencounters it when the age is out of joint and in the magic circle of extreme danger. It is not a question therefore of choosing the forest or the ship but of choosing both the forest and the ship. The number of those who want to abandon the ship is growing, and among them are clear heads and fine minds. But it amounts to a disembarkation in mid-ocean. Hunger will follow, and cannibalism, and the sharks: in short, all the terrors that have been reported from the raft of Medusa. Hence it is advisable under all circumstances to stay aboard even at the danger of being blown up. This objection is not directed against the poet who reveals – through his life as well as through his work – the vast superiority of the artistic universe over the world of technology. He helps man to rediscover himself: the poet is a wanderer in the forest (Waldgänger), for authorship is merely another form of independence.

Article

Join My Cult! ebook introduction

Here is the new introduction to the Join My Cult! ebook presently available on Original Falcon's website.

Rewind the tape to 2000, suburban America. Our progress had reached an apex, and while it would in retrospect be seen clearly as Hubris, at the time, there was no end in sight. At this time, it seemed there was the beginnings of a second (or third?) wave American counterculture that never actually completely coalesced, derailed by the conspiracy theories and atrocities that defined the following near-decade.

1998-2000 is when the core of Join My Cult! was written, despite the publication date. I organized and wrote a great deal of it, but really it owes itself to a group of friends that shared a similar experience moving out of adolescence at that time. The bulk of the conversations in this book are real, derived from online and off-line interactions as we delved headlong into exploration of psychedelics, the occult, and sex.

One criticism often leveled at this text has been that "real people never speak like this." This makes me laugh because, although it is a perfectly valid criticism- sane people certainly don't- in this case, we did. And it is with a tongue-in-cheek mockery of our often overly enthusiastic, nevertheless earnest state that I left this material mostly as is, even though I shudder to think some might take it purely at face value.

It has been interesting, over the past six years or so, to receive letters from readers- most of them telling me, to my surprise, how much the book effected them or even "changed their lives." Of course, amongst these were also plenty of people who felt the need to tell me how truly awful it was, and the notable few who actually went so far as to threaten my life. (I take this as the highest compliment.) When I wrote this book, I was unsure it would ever be published, and certainly many of my friends told me it would be for the better if it wasn't. After it was accepted by New Falcon, I had some hopes of it becoming a break-away cult hit.

In the end, it was neither of these, remaining that odd book you might stumble across one day in the corner of an independent book seller. A puzzling, hilarious, train-wreck of an oddity.

I have come a long way since I wrote Join My Cult!, and (I hope) have grown a great deal as an artist and writer since. But there is an intensity that comes with the blind, youthful enthusiasm of a project like this that I doubt I could replicate. New Falcon never properly edited the first edition, and in retrospect, I'm not sure I can blame them. There are many things in this text that seem like grammatical mistakes, that are intentional (particularly changes between tense and point of view with psychotic frequency), and I can only imagine they gave it a go and threw their hands up at the prospect. I occasionally consider giving it a thorough edit myself, but that thought is quickly washed away when I plunge into the text. This edition does have some minor edits from the original which saw its way into print, and you will find some new additions in the appendix, but there is little I could see changing without possibly disrupting the oddly symmetrical whole of this book, which at first glance looks a lot like total chaos.

So I'm offering it for free now, warts and all, to whomever wants to come along for the ride- and I hope in the process I will introduce some of you to a repository of common experience that might seem strangely familiar.

James Curcio
2009

For more of my work, (writing, music, interviews & more) see http://www.jamescurcio.net This free eBook is released under a Creative Commons License. You can share and print it to your heart's content, though you must get my permission for any other use at jamescurcio at gmail dot com

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Myth: Death, and Forgetting

I've taken to jotting down quick ideas and thoughts here, rather than the full-formed thoughts or articles that used to make up my blog posts in the long distant past, (e.g. 2007). This still allows me to breathe a bit more than the 140 character fragments I've been dropping on twitter with alarming frequency.

Here's a thought from the other night, which spun off of a conversation on twitter and thinking about Kundera's Book of Laughter & Forgetting:

Death is forgetting. A central motive in myth-making is the creation of meaning that counters both the meaninglessness of boundless existence (literally existing without meaning, not as a reaction to meaning or anti-meaning- it is a realm in which meaning would be unthinkable, where all thought is unthinkable), and also the forgetfulness which is a symptom of the passage of time, of entropy- death which reduces the very edifice of meaning and recollection to ash. Myth is an agent of an-entropy, all myth-making is heroic and promethean, though also in the long view ultimately futile.

This will obviously make its way into the Immanence of Myth.

Our personal myths

A bit this weekend on personal myth, when I wasn't otherwise immobilized by a migraine. (Or possibly an alien gestating in my skull.)

Whether as a result of these abstract metaphors, or the high-flung hero fantasies of the past or present, it would be all too easy to come to the conclusion that myths are stories told about other people, which in any event have only a transient relation to our lives. Yet the inner voice that creates myth is also the internal narrator that you are listening to, possibly even right now, which serves as our primary interpretor of life experience.
This personal narration may take the form of the stories we tell ourselves, as we narrate or explain the facts presented to us, as we understand or experience them; they also take on a micro-cultural role in the stories that we tell to those around us, which may or may not mirror those internal myths. This point may seem relatively insignificant in comparison to the myths that have captured imaginations for thousands of years, and certainly much of it can hardly be called art. Yet these myths have a profound effect on our lives, they effect how we feel, they put us into a mental framework that determines the nature of the next personal myth we will weave; what is most important, they determine the decisions we make. Personal myths determine how we live our lives.
Many different myths can be woven from the same grouping of facts. Losing everything can be the beginning of a hero's or fool's journey, or it could be the beginning of a descent into the abyss. As we will see, even the descent into the abyss has transformational potentialities.

Join My Cult! audiobook ep 2-6

iTunes long ago picked up this feed but the one from the Fallen Nation blog isn't showing yet so for the time being I guess I will continue to link the mp3s here.

Check 'em out if you haven't already, it's an odd ride.

Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

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