on self sigh

the final frontier of colonialism is the singular spirit (says the white boy, jury is still out on whether we were the first or last frontier of colonialism). i don't even mean this in the dunking-on-hegel way or even the dunking-on-capitalism way, but instead that the project of colonialism has always been that of striating spaces that were perceived as smooth. it has been the separation and individuation of humans, the move away from relation. it is ironic that this is called the networked age when really the digital network is but a postmodern map of relation, the exercise machine of connection. this is to say that i cannot recall a time we were at war with our singular spirit because our spirit is not singular. our spirit -- if it exists -- is in massive excess of even its own category. If there is a war, it is between our spirit and the representation of our spirit as singular. i think that as soon as we frame the question of the "internet problem" as an individual or particular problem, we lose. when it is written "wedded to palm-sized casinos dispensing sonic rings of lust, excitement, jealousy, and contentment," is that preceded by a "we are" or an "I am." does it even matter? even the statement of "we are" is individualized. despite the fact that the purveyors of algorithms think of us very much in terms of the collective, they do everything to ensure that we see ourselves as individuals. the shadow of jung? is there even a collective to make an unconscious? of course, our multiplicity still emerges, and you are right to say that it is sublimated by the same internet, through the idea of the alter-ego, through the idea of the shadow. is this not the username? we try to smuggle in a new identity through our instagram handle, only for it to be collapsed again onto us. now your friends-of-friends call you by your handle. the problem is not that we cannot individuate. it is that we are only individuated and nothing else. it is not that we prefer to spend our time with the Other -- that is inevitable, i am at least a lacanian in that sense -- but it is about our relationship with that Other. the danger of the internet age is that the Other is increasingly obfuscated through technologies that hide the fact that they come from consciousness. for example, ai: it abstracts away the real subjectivities that produced the text it trained on. the appeal of ai is not that it is human but that it is inhuman. you are correct that we are the bot in question: or at least, we use the ai as a mirror to convince ourselves that we are not human. we want to be the bot: to be anything else is to let down lululemon/andrew tate/headspace.
"we're kings of barren palaces." this is exactly the perfect articulation: it is individuation without that which makes us a subject (relation), as the king in the barren palace is power without the relation which makes power. i refuse to believe this is karmic, though i could maybe convinced that it is. but if we are individuated, why is our karma collective?

on satellites yeah

my friend aiden, who you met, told me that cixin liu wrote a series in china about an alternate history where we go down and explore the core instead of going to explore the space. in liu's account, aiden told me there are various era-marking traumas. is the lack of traumas in space not the zone of its unreality? there is no sputnik to spur american science, no apollo fire, no challenger explosion. there are the failures and successes of spacex rockets, so de-libidinalized by their attempt to be the phallus. it's interesting. materially, there are layers of satellites in our atmosphere (capitalism has won!) and yet no libidinal or semiotic attachment to them. at the same time, satellites are constantly producing their own excess in the form of junk that then slams against the satellites and creates more junk after the collision. it seems that satellites can increase linearly but excess can increase exponentially. what if the last frontier of colonialism is the inside of the planet. would that not be its ultimate individuation, that of earth itself? or is the issue that this finity of purpose would cause the opposite, that humans could be united by earth? it seems to me that the infinite of space-spatiality is a much better tool for individuation. how often were we told e =mc2 with no explanation whatsoever, but simply as a signifier that the rules of reality are so beyond us. at that point, individuation appears, miraculously, as the only solution. i feel bad for satellites. it makes them too heavy to upload the ram necessary for scopophilia. and then humans can't even derive the scopophilic from them. yes, there is nothing libidinal in space. this is why so much material on planetary exploration focuses on mating and procreation. still, that seems to not even work. why is the infinite of space not as libidinal as the infinity of the commodity economy? maybe i need to read lyotard. or drive a car.

tell my husband i love her

boyz by m.i.a. at 11:53 on a sunday, alternatively titled "what in losing is lost" i love the articulation of freedom as being the source of an individuated discontent (see, at times, i think this piece is with me in my rejection of the self/individual/etc.). maybe peter thiel says democracy is incompatible with freedom, but isn't that the joy and the point? that democracy yokes us to something other than ourselves, that it, however imperfectly, implies a collective, implies a connective tissue even if it is simply arithmetic. maybe what we need is a rejection of freedom, a reassertion of duty. i often think that freedom as good still permeates american progressive movements in a way that causes them to self-destruct over individuals. i'm not sure i'm quite with the gravity-electromagnetic duality, maybe just because i've finished up my piece talking about how much i hate the dialectic (how dialectical of me! (do you see why i hate this)). i am wary too of the platonic mediation, mostly because i find the idea of reading the greeks politically incorrect and because i am overcorrecting for my lived life of moderation. gravity, to me, seems like badiou's one, yes? but i was about to make a note about thermodynamics dominating gravity-electricity-magnetism, which also seems "one" in its entropy. is internet the acceleration of entropy or its resistance? i'm not sure. in a strange way, i think it probably decreases entropy, because the act is replaced with the image of the act, which creates less entropy at a literal physics level. is the internet our reaction to the fact that our universe is falling apart?

clay

do you think that spinoza really introduced the body to philosophy? that's not a rhetorical question, please respond. it is all about motion. but not free motion, because the beauty of motion is that it is actually not free, but instead related. from einstein, we know that there is no essential or true motion, but only motion in relation. there is no vacuum as long as there is movement. this is the movement of glissant's relation, this is what i see in the halprins that i've met. yes, you are right, we need more bodily connection. enlightenment has been the long severing of brain from body, the long forcing of brain above the body. the internet, really, is the enlightenment dream: it is all knowledge, all information. it is not movement, it is not meandering, it is static individualism. because what is the beauty of the ducks (i have not watched sopranos)? it is that we relate to their absence in a qualitatively distinct way from their presence, a difference accepted as it differs. https://claynewsnetwork.com/2013/12/clay-aiken-tackles-the-duck-dynasty/