Go for it! I'm not using them and don't quite believe in intellectual property.

You don't have to share your secrets, I guess. Thanks, though!

"A Day in the Life" by The Beatles

☮︎!

In my younger days, my way of convincing people of creating a culture that respects personal autonomy and that has a certain degree of care for cultivating a good community was with an aesthetic that I had lifted off of a set of second-wave gentrifiers and termed "slacker punk". While I do still contend that there was absolutely no reason whatsoever not to let this become either a cult or global phenomenon, as there is not a person in the world who wants to be subject to the cult pathology that their style of dress ought to indicate their social standing, even among the arbiters of the fashion industry, and to have called me a "poser" for merely taking cultural influence from said group of people and putting their own plan of action into operation, as this would have relied upon me landing a job at a coffee shop, which I have come to accept as an impossibility, I am willing to let go of that.

What I will say of this now is that how to get any number of left-wing Liberal hipsters, Anarchists, and other so-called "bohemians" to come to the set of realizations that they should so as to let everything go well for all of us, is that what you should tell them is something to the effect of that it would be cooler for a person to go to art school than it would for them to attempt to land themselves in the New York City underground. I know that this is what to say because I have put an extraordinary amount of thought into how to do this, as I have found that the kind of community that I should like to participate within just simply does not exist yet. Literally posting that anywhere on the internet will have the effect of liberating kind of a lot of people from kind of a lot of cult pathology.

I've come up with a lot of ideas like this in my life and what I can never seem to get across is that someone just taking me up on one of these easy way outs is probably what there is to do about any of this. I may have still called it Noise Rock at the time, but there having been an Anarcho-Pacifist Experimental Rock and Roll band of moderate success in the late oughts would have made it so that there wasn't anyone in the world who felt too much of a need to pay too much attention to Vice News. I've let go of that, too, though.

That's all of the advice that I have to give about any of this. Thanks for readings these lengthy ramblings if you do. I'll talk to you when or if ever, I guess. 'Til then!

I will also note that I have, in part, been inspired to conceptualize this because of a dig that Guy Debord made of the ruling class when he talked about "people that don't know how to live" in Panegyric. I think that that is one of the more effective and poignant insults in all of human history, and one that he earned the right to level. When you think about something like the traditional Japanese society that culminated in the cinematic brilliance of Yasujirō Ozu that was as much of a critique of such a society as it was a lament for cultural loss, you do have to wonder as to just what the rigid form of social order was really for. Who, in Japan, really was let to the kind of ascetic discipline to develop the way of life that Zen philosophy was thought to have offered? It was ultimately just a few poets and artists. The rest of Japanese society had to focus upon retaining the social order. In Japan, there's, of course, a very complex history of the Meji Restoration and political fallout of the Second World War, but I think that Japanese traditionalism is somewhat exemplary of what can become absurd of the serendipitous aristocracy of wisdom put forth by Arthur Schopenhauer.

Being said, Debord's dig hurts me too. For all of my youthful rebellion and whimsical bouts, though there is much that I should prefer to remember well, I have to wonder about what kind of life I lead. There'a part of town next to the park beneath a bridge on a dead-end street that I once considered setting up kind of an Anarchist flop house in. What kind of existence is that!? It'd be a good thing to do to give people a place to crash, but it was ultimately fairly despairing of me to have romanticized a setting from the film, Children of Men, like that.

In ways, I feel very torn by my pursuit of an academic career and my general opposition to the social order enforced by the beau monde, but, having made such a mistake, myself, I do think that it could stand to be said that people, particularly those who are poor, really ought to aim a little bit higher than mere survival on the so-called "bohemian dregs".

I've worked with a lot of black dishwashers and bussers who sell weed. Because I'm the sort of person who cares about things like the status of black people in American society, I've put, at least, some thought into their general living situation. People in the service industry tend to get on very well with them because they tend to be some of the more agreeable drug dealers in the world. They don't really care about them, though. The reason that a person sells weed in the back of the house of a restaurant is because they're too intelligent for any other form of criminal activity and, as you would know with any experience in the service industry, people who are good enough at washing dishes or bussing tables for managers not to want to fire are so few and far between that they have almost no chance of ever being promoted, which is how they end up having to sell weed in order to live in a fairly decent neighborhood. The realization that they should come to is the same one that I did as a bar-back, which is that the service industry is a losing game for anyone with a fair amount of intelligence and common sense and that they should probably enroll within a community college. People can only come to such realizations by their own accord, however, and all too often, as in my case, it takes until you're nearly middle-aged before you figure things like that out.

In a way, it's really kind of an issue with hopelessness and a lack of self-confidence. People revel in despair because they just don't believe that they have a future. To continue with the metaphor of the black community, as ridiculous as A Tribe Called Quest can be, the promotion of black positivity and cultivation of common wisdoms with "Can I Kick It" really probably did a lot of people more good than the near nihilism of something like Trap music. Trap music is a reflection of the Postmodern condition, however.

I don't know. Within sets of society that I do actually frequent, namely local music scenes, I think that there's a certain poverty to that people almost devote their lives to maintaining their status at certain shows. You'll meet people who can give you an entire cataloged history of Punk who have just the right set of patches and obscure band t-shirts who have never even played an instrument or engaged in any other form of creative pursuit whatsoever. If the situation is to where people feel as if they have no future, then, from this, what conclusion there is to draw is that they should create one. Perhaps, that's kind of a platitude, but what I think is particularly tragic of the Postmodern condition is people assume for social apathy, or even antipathy, to be a kind of state of affairs that they just simply have to accept, when they really ought to care to cultivate and create communities that would feign prove otherwise.

I do feel like I have gone on about this for too considerable of a length, but, to return to The New Sincerity, Jason Pierce, with Spiritualized, has a song that was thankfully popularized by Radiohead, who doesn't do as good of a rendition of it, called "Hold On". As much as I can appreciate avant-garde aesthetic, I do feel kind of like the generalized appeal to some sort of arcane chic does have the effect of producing a culture where people don't really understand that it takes kind of a lot of courage to create works of art out of genuine care for a community and what effect that it is that you have on it. It's not an overly simple, cliché, or banal. It's a beautiful song that probably got kind of a lot of people through difficult times.

Infinite Jest, I think, focuses on addiction because of that you only really find these examples of what he calls "overcredulity" and "softness" within communities in recovery. All art doesn't need to inspire some form of catharsis, but I think that it's ultimately fairly tragic that the only people in the world who seem to have any idea as to how it is that they should live their lives have almost all somehow destroyed them already.

Well, thanks. I am just very excited to talk about this idea, but, as I don't think that it has really been put forth before, find it somewhat difficult to explain.

To expostulate on this idea that, perhaps, only I am interested in, I should like to share an anecdote of a rather one-sided conversation that I had with an old friend about what it is that men ought to think that they should be like. They had concluded that men ought to think that they should be ethical libertines, which I agreed with, as you do want to be intelligent, charming, cultivated, well-travelled, a good romantic partner, not lacking in social grace, quick witted, and kind. I also, however, found for their conclusion to be absurd, as being let to cultivate such a way of life was already how the aristocracy would manipulate their respective populaces. There's a certain poverty to aristocratic conduct in that, in order to use such people so as to retain order, only they are let to live as the aristocracy believes itself to be better for doing. The rest of their regimen becomes subject to a set of cult pathologies and neuroses concerning codes of conduct and the attempt to organize society in such a manner that would let their regimen survive. If you watch the film, Ludwig, you will find that being an aristocrat was not this grand whirlwind adventure undertaken by a cultivated intelligentsia so as to cross the threshold of the perceived boundaries of the human experience, but, rather, a maddening and quixotic attempt on the part of any person who would find for the various forms of psychological repression insufferable to liberate themselves from the very social order that granted them their somewhat illusory status in the world. Luchino Visconti casted the Swan King, Ludwig I of Bavaria, as an Absurd man. Given Visconti's role within the aristocracy of his day, I think that it would be safe to assume that he took a certain degree of poetic license. Nevertheless, I think that the presentation of Ludwig I as someone who had waged a mad revolt so as to be let to live an authentic life was just simply to the point.

To bring us back to the Postmodern condition, as, though they are still around, the role that the aristocracy has to play today is largely symbolic, what I will say of this idea of an ethical libertine is that there is no reason to convince a person that, in so far that they should so desire to be as in any British Invasion band, they should choose to be within either The Small Faces or The Kinks as something like that is already what people have implicitly believed for centuries.

The mistake that people make, however, is to assume that, because of existent forms of class, and all that "class" is is some form of social order or another, it would require extraordinary circumstances for just about anyone to cultivate an authentic way of life. Authenticity really is for everyone. From Pete Townshend destroying his guitar on stage to the riots that occurred during shows in the early days of The Jesus and Mary Chain, it should not take such forms of personal revolt to get that point across.

Primal Scream sampled The Wild Angels so as to finally play off the lifestyle extremism born in response to the burning of Beatles records. They brought the rave scene together in a way like that.

For me, though, it's just not about the drugs anymore. I want to live. Anarchists are somewhat notorious for their celebration of minor crimes, as if shoplifting could ever expropriate capital to a point of creating a more liberal and equitable society. There's something that such acts teach people, however. You don't ask for your freedom; you just take it. I've recently turned thirty-one, however, and have finally been able to let go of youthful rebellion. I've come to an age of maturity to where I understand that I never really wanted to do things like crash some young urban professional's wedding party in a dancehall that I used to frequent and get completely toasted on their free champagne. I kind of just wanted to the disc jockey to throw it back with some Northern Soul and actually enjoy having a place to dance.

I'm kind of an independent music scholar, and, so, I use a lot of references that, perhaps, not everyone can relate to. Now, I kind of want to be like Bob Dylan, Tim Buckley, The Tallest Man on Earth, or The Milk Carton Kids. People, however, still have certain assumptions about authenticity and class. If you play the mandocello, an entirely good instrument, like a Gold Tone, is still not a Gilchrist. I'd consider purchasing a Gilchrist upon landing myself with a career that could afford one, but, it is entirely absurd to expect for any veritable mandocello player to just simply have one already. All that an electric mandocello is is just not a Gibson Les Paul, and, so, it'd be absurd to play one at all, but I think that that should get my point across.

To return to the David Foster Wallace essay, in order for authenticity to be considered as something for everyone, I think that we'll have to be forgiving of that it is bound to be somewhat awkward at first. Though I am just trying to double my listenership from three to six as of right now, to only example that I really have of this other than Manifesto is my bandcamp. A literary critic could tear my poetry to shreds and it is not quite good enough for One Little Independent Record Company to release, but, when you do think about it, it is kind of better than almost every other Spoken Word page on bandcamp. I don't assume for this to be because of that I am a superior poet; I think that it is so because of my approach to authenticity, which, with what pretense I can currently eschew, I do think is somewhat radically new and could, in some way, shape, or form, ultimately change the world for the better.

In a way, though, all of the human experience is kind of authentic. As much as there is to learn from Jean Baudrillard, I think that there's also something off about this idea that any aspect of the human experience can truly to be simulated. The 2017 film, Ghost in the Shell, is actually what it appears to be. It's a spectacular form of pure entertainment, and one that is fairly enjoyable by that account. Even though the experience of watching Ghost in the Shell is kind of somatic, it's not as if it occurs on some separate plane of reality.

There's also that there's a certain degree of snobbery associated with authenticity that I, at least, find to be distasteful. Even though I like the band, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, better than kind of a lot of musical acts, I understand that there are contributing cultural circumstances to that a person is even aware of them and don't assume for anyone who hasn't heard of them to somehow be disingenuous in their appreciation of music or other forms of art.

That's a fairly lengthy post. If anyone reads it, I hope that you will enjoy what I have had to say about this. I think that it's fairly erudite, but it could just ultimately be somewhat idiosyncratic and eccentric. It's just something that I've put a lot of thought into. It's probably somehow entertaining, to say the least. I will stop going on about this now, though, as I kind of feel like I am the only person who has any real idea as to what I'm on about, despite my concerted effort to have presented this in a relatable manner that is not rather characteristically obscure. Oh well, I guess. I, at least, see the humor in that I'm kind of an unfortunate obscurant. "Define irony", y'know?

I just think that it's kind of funny. You can start talking about J.D. Salinger, James Joyce, or Haruki Murakami, but the conversation will inevitably come to revolve around Thomas Pynchon. You two can carry on if you like, it's just something that I've noticed about the literary world.

If anyone is interested in carrying on otherwise, as any of this relates to the philosophical goal of The New Sincerity, I think that it's ultimately just kind of a rehash of authenticity. We take authenticity, however, for Baroque decadence, revolutionary cachet, the cultivation of the intellect, virtuosic skill, or fugitive character, and it is all of those things, but such requisite ways of life exist only for certain classes or sets of society. The idea, I think, was to level the playing field so that the reification of authenticity wouldn't require either an extraordinary education and the wealth with which to travel or a serendipitous set of circumstances to allow for that a person can become a legendary outcast and to ground authenticity as a lived experience in daily life. Earlier, I mentioned Pop philosophy. The anonymous text, Manifesto, is somewhat exemplary of how I think that such a project will begin. An established literary critic could write a lengthy and castigating critique of the text, but I think that, as its author has ventured upon something radically new, they ought to be given the benefit of the doubt.

In a way, it's something that people practice all of the time. At the same time, I feel like there's a kind of informal regimen of authenticity to where only certain sets of society, and, at that, only specific people within them, are ever really let to live in such a manner that will let them cultivate a veritable way of life. It's like how an old Gibson is considered as an authentic instrument, whereas any old guitar that anyone has is thought to be a garish imitation. I'd love to own an old Gibson, too, but I neither need nor can afford one to be in an actual band.

You can feel free to carry on, but, I just wanted to point out that, somehow, regardless as to how any literary conversation begins, it ends up as a conversation about Thomas Pynchon.

Telepathy - Surf, Dream Pop, and Psychedelia that features an electric mandoviola. The madoviola has a humbucker. The name of the model of the instrument is a Telestar.

You could be right about that, I suppose.

Eh, I like a lot of French theory. To each to their own, though, I guess.

I think that the historical debate on Postmodernity is mistaken in two regards. If you really wanted to be pessimistic, you should cite the outset of Postmodernity as having begun in 1883, a year to the day after Charles Darwin died, when Sir Francis Galton coined the term, "eugenics". You'd get the whole Industrial Revolution and subsequent genocides that way.

If you really wanted to be optimistic, you should cite it on the Tenth of December in 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified.

There are some who claim that Postmodernity didn't begin until sometime in the mid to late 1970s, probably either during the economic reforms of the People's Republic of China or with the creation of the internet. It all has to do with what this or that historian wants to say and why. They all kind of make sense in ways, and, at the same time, none of them do.

Japanese Imperialism, to my understanding, was, in part, a kind of "reactionary Modernism", as well as that Fascism itself had its roots within the "actual idealism" of Giovanni Gentile, and, so, I would think that it'd take a lot of your part to back up the claim that Modernity didn't culminate in the humanitarian catastrophe of the Second World War.

I don't think that the Age of Enlightenment per se can really be held responsible for the failure of the Modern historical project, though. For me, it was moreso born out of an incapacity to cope with a lack of divine order in the universe, of which the so-called "Age of Reason" had only so sufficiently addressed.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a great act and one of the rare examples of the transmutation of Fascist symbolism within the music industry. The last album of theirs that I think that I listened to, though, was Luciferian Towers. The only qualm that I have with them is that they kind of inadvertently repopularized Black Metal, which would be fine were it to have only been a cult phenomenon, but did probably actually contribute to a certain degree of Fascist inclinations, particularly within the Anarchist community. You can't hold that against GSY!BE, though.


For almost everyone, in order to really be able to do anyone any good, you, yourself, have to be able to live well. You can't give someone a ride to the airport or a place to crash if you don't have a house or a car. You can't host events if you're not in good enough standing with members of the community who have the spaces to. Cultivating a good way of life does necessarily involve a community, but people too often believe that they can become the Schopenhauerian ascetics, your Mahatma Gandhis and political prisoners on hunger strike, rather than establishing themselves well enough to live well enough to be able to make a substantial difference in the world.

I don't know how well that explains that, and, so, will make another attempt.

In some sets of society, there's a problem of a generalized indifference and an unwillingness to participate within projects that can make a substantial difference in the world. People care about being thought of a cultivated and their social standing at art events more than they do with kind of a lot of more pertinent concerns that they could have. I think that anyone ought to be able to live their life, but there is a certain critique to make of people of class being relatively indifferent to what is going on in the world.

There is the inverse problem in others, however.

Within the anti-war, anti-work, and environmentalist anarchist movements, for instance, there came to be this idea of referring to someone who was homeless as if they were "homefree". What was good about this is that it helped to change the image that people had of the homeless. It also, however, created a very serious predicament of that people would just kind of throw their lives away in pursuit of an ostensive global squatter's insurrection. There would come a time in a person's life, where, were you to do them any good, you'd have to be kind of like, "Hey man, while I do understand that consider for this critique of the Sierra Club to be extraordinarily important, what you really kind of need to start thinking about right now is as to what you're going to when you get evicted from this squat." As you may note the intellectual effort put into retaining some of their ideas, you also might want to suggest that they eventually go to college. Things like tend to only really go over so well, though.

I don't know. While you shouldn't be selfish, I will say that failing to take care of yourself will leave you without the substantial means with which to make a difference, aside from that everyone really ought to be let to live well, anyways.

I think that when anyone creates a general critique, it's bound to be somewhat limited. Even Foucault only points to so much of what there is of our general plight. It's always someone's take, to their limited experience, and limited by that account.

There's a difference between Postmodernism and Postmodernity. Postmodernism is kind of this vague empty-signifier to refer to contemporary theory. Postmodernity, depending upon which historian you ask, is either cited as having begun sometime in the 1920s or 1930s or following the Second World War. It just refers to our contemporary era.


I like your analysis and postulation of a concept of sincerity itself. Ideally, any good ethos ought to somehow manifest. I'm almost unsure as to what the reification of sincerity would actually be like, though must also assume that it happens all of the time. Perhaps, it's silly of me to think that there still needs to be some sort of artistic movement? I'd imagine that it'll be strange at first, a kind of speculative Pop philosophy, but could later develop into something that will much more nuanced, organic, and complex.

I am glad that you appreciate my anecdotes. I try to situate my theories to my own experience, perhaps to a point of excess. Thanks, though!

I've never read Philip Mirowski, but may decide to look into him someday.

What I mean of Friedman is that, because his ideas were as a justification for doing so, he came to be associated with any number of covert actions and a rather spurious set of foreign policy initiatives in Central and South America. If you consider what his ideas actually are, it'd seem that were they to actually have been into place, the situation there, though still with certain predicaments, would be preferable to what exists now. United States collaboration with right-wing authoritarian regimes was born out of a cynical anti-democratic anti-Communism and not some form of genuine Neo-Liberalism.

I guess that I see the primary plight of the Liberal democratic project being that it hasn't been sincerely engaged in rather than of lais·sez-faire ideas in regards to the economy. There are all kinds of problems with Neo-Liberalism, but I don't think that it is really what to cite as what has made the Liberal democratic project, to me, at least, insufficient.

Yes, I think this is a problem too. Wallace was good about pointing this out. I mean, I think it still happens, but it can get co-opted quite easily. But I take your point. — Manuel

A person's way of life and relationship to the world can be very easily utilized in order to manipulate them. You should only really care about your way of life and relationship to the world, however. It's just something that you can't ever let go of.

Baker, having been inspired by what she doesn't realize is Post-Left Anarchism, is putting forth the rather spurious claim that potential victims of assault are to blame for the failure of the democratic project through an appeal to an odd kind of beat pathology. She takes precarity for a sign of weakness and assumes that being fairly keen on navigating social networks is indicative of an incapacity for self-actualization. She's no different from more or less anyone else. Dangerous people take a disliking to those who are otherwise, purely by virtue of that they are, but their others tend to take the blame for any and/or all situations that arise. The predicament isn't taken for that a person's place in the world ought not to be considered as a contest of wills; it is just generally assumed that people just shouldn't meddle in other people's affairs.

What you may think is what I did, which is that you should listen to Yeasayer and stick up for yourself. Having done this, what I found is that people became all too willing to just sort of abandon me, thereby offering other nefarious parties the chance to ask, "you and what army?", at which point, I came to a certain realization as to why Anarchist tend to be such open minor criminals. It's just because of urban decay.

Anyways, of emotional intelligence, I would say that there are two ways that it develops. It can arise out of the development of good relationships, and is often quite valuable by that account, or just simply because it is the sort of skill that a person has to hone, one that is useful to them, but hazards a certain neurosis.

It's an oft-overlooked facet of the human psyche that can occasionally result in an obsession with social relations that people take for self-loathing narcissism.

Even though I do plan on leaving, I feel like this is a good thread and that could generate an interesting conversation.

I was only so with it upon writing that. What I'm saying of The New Sincerity is that it seems to have fallen out of favor because of this idea of "alt-bros". All that so-called "alt-bros" were were likable hipsters. They're certainly preferable to the set of people who took the Enfield Tennis Academy in Infinite Jest as sanction for informal racketeering as a kind of casual sport.

The world is as it is now and what is in the past is in the past, I guess. I'm just saying that there was something to The New Sincerity that people shouldn't have let go of.

The idea in Capitalist Realism is that there is no Capitalist ideology. It's already cynicism. I think that the danger is of a more generalized cynicism than any form of indoctrination. People, like Milton Friedman, have ideas that hazard a certain plight, and, particularly when you consider how they have been applied in places like Central and South America, it becomes easy to believe that there is as a Capitalist ideology. I think that our foreign actions there, however, were born moreso out of cynical attitudes towards democracy.

The excess of consumer involvement in goods and services is a new phenomenon. In a way, I don't think that it'll be completely negative. When I still had Netflix, I would intentionally add films to my queue that I didn't actually plan on watching just to input them within the aggregate so as to be shown a set of films that I was moreso inclined to watch. User participation within the production of goods and services does offer a certain degree of choice. It's, of course, considerably more troubling when you think about companies collecting massive amounts of data to build profiles of people to know what to market them. The experience is very strange, almost akin to schizophrenia. It seems like the ads are speaking to you directly because they kind of are.

I think that Post-Rock is the litmus of the popularity of The New Sincerity. It doesn't seem to be the case to me that anyone listens to Post-Rock anymore.

There are, of course, a lot of people out there who do do good work and have their priorities in order. I wasn't saying that there isn't any form of veritable activism, though I do kind of feel that way; I was just saying that it's as if you're not let to feel as you should about the human experience. There's no boundless joy, whimsical caprice, emotional depth, righteous indignation, or catharsis. There seems, to me, to be a somewhat deliberate attempt to disrupt how we naturally feel about things. That's what I'm saying bothers me the most.

Let's just put this here so that I can take off.

"Strawberry Fields Forever" by Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet

☮︎!

That's what it's about, though. The cover of Daydream Nation features an actual painting by Gerhard Richter and is a better album than "Sister", whose only good song is the one I have shared a link to. You and I should have enough faith in the world to believe that this should become accepted as incontrovertible fact. What will the world come to if we don't believe in veritable forms of free expression?

I don't know. What's "hip" is just what mafia sycophants and burgeoning mentalists are let to believe. It is up to the rest of us who are with it to prove otherwise. That's the game, y'know? I hate it, but excel nonetheless.

It's also just kind of personal, though. It's about not being let to establish the relationship with the world that I should so desire, when I should so desire to care. I harbor a somewhat cruel disregard for people who vitiate the human experience. I ought not to be cruel, but I can offer them nothing but disregard.

There's so much to the world. Why let your relationship to it be destroyed by what anyone says or posts on the internet? There's so much to it. I don't know. I guess that I feel like it's kind of terrible that there's so much out there to prevent everyone from ever being able to care. In a way, I think that they, and they just simply are the infamous "them", which is to say everyone whom I disagree with, fear it more than everything else. I mean, what could happen? Good art and greater world peace. God forbid, y'know?

I don't know. I don't think that I have explained my ideas on the Postmodern condition, though. Consider this. Those heroin users were really running heroin by producing cult propaganda with that video. It's totally righteous. Why? We have become subject to such botched forms of social control and are so totally lacking of any form of established order that we take the semblance of cult, which is still cult itself, for veritable forms of free expression. What I am saying is that this form of aesthetic extremism is symptomatic of the Postmodern condition. We desire authenticity to the point of psychological terror. Anything that lets us feel again is somehow good. I've just been invoking extreme examples to point this out.

The idea, however, behind the New Sincerity, I think, is that we ought to just simply be able to point to what is poignant of the contemporary human experience so as to evoke what we ought to have sentiments towards. Everything is dead set against this, though. Think about The Waking Life, for instance. People consider for it to be the worst form of pseudo-intellectual trite. It was a good film, y'know? What I'm suggesting is that this idea that we should care for and consider the world as it actually is should not have been a passing trend. I've merely highlighted the absurdity of its return to point out what is tragic of the Postmodern condition.

I, personally, am a great fan. Curtis embodies the Postmodern condition to a point of deconstructing it well. He's a showman and I want for his show to go on for as long as it takes to have its desired effect.

Maybe you can expand on this last point a bit, see If I can make more sense of it. — Manuel

Within a society mediated by images, I have this to bring forth. It's ekstasis, y'know?

I don't know. I have a lot of things to say about the War on Terror, most of them tenuous. What I am suggesting of the Taliban is that if we fail to take their basic existential claim into account, their right to exist as such, and such can mean all sorts of things, we can not establish a meaningful peace.

What I'm also getting at is that we haven't considered any hard truths. From the Arab Revolt to the 1953 Iranian coup d'état to any number of clandestine operations in the region, we have laid the rudiments for global terror to exist. The spectacle of the mass media is a way of ignoring such truths. As much of a problem as it is for almost any parties there to be fanatically anti-Western, such sentiment is merely to the point. We destroyed not only their democratic project, but also their way of life. If anyone wants to do any good, they are going to have to be willing to admit that.

That's all besides the point, though. I was trying to talk about Postmodernity. It doesn't let you feel the true weight of the world. It doesn't let you feel anything at all. There are art forms and mediums out there, but most others don't teach you to care about anything. I've been giving Postmodern analysis as an ironic way to caring about things. Perhaps, that's self-defeating. I don't know.

The Adam Curtis video that I shared features a song by Kanye West. What I'm suggesting is symptomatic of the Postmodern condition is that "Runaway" is somehow requisite to mediate the dispute in Afghanistan. I was just highlighting what was absurd about it. I like that documentary, though.

They seem to be working now.

Okay, so, David Gordon Green wrongfully been accused of bringing an end to The New Sincerity. As the male equivalent of Kelly Reichardt, I will say that this is unfair and that George Washington is just a great film. Being said, there is certain degree of histronics to All the Real Girls. I do believe that it's histronics, though. It's like Glen Hansard's "Say It to Me Now", but you're just not quite as charmed.

Speaking of Zooey Deschanel, has She & Him ever not been a good band? I feel like it's this sort of hipster pastiche to where things just aren't cool because they're popular. It's like the Sonic Youth albums, Sister and Daydream Nation.

They're not working.

Anyways, I feel like the ideal of the New Sincerity shouldn't be let go of. I do want to be brought within a genuine relationship with the wherein I feel as I naturally should because of what anyone calls to light of it. To be honest, it's my lack of genuine emotional state that I rebel against more than anything else. I care more to be let to feel as I should about the world than anything else. Everything, it seems, stands in my way. Thus. the reason for Wallace's many absurdities. That's all just speculative, though.

It's fun, y'know? You just have to keep two bookmarks.

So you can take the Iraq war and just treat it like a TV spectacle and you analyze that. But then you don't mention the millions of civilians which were killed. And that's a problem, if this is overlooked. — Manuel

Bangarang!

That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's symptomatic of the Postmodern condition for SALEM to situate our experience within fourth-generation warfare. Because it exists as popular spectacle, which is to say a form of entertainment, we don't take into account the human cost of the war. This is an odd kind of middle ground that I like. It's what you should make with a tenuous relationship with the British Broadcasting Company. You see that the Taliban are not fighting because of their so-called "religious fanaticism". They believe that their existential status has been called into question. It's their very way of life that they believe to be at stake. If anyone is serious about bringing an end to the war, they will have to take that into consideration. We need Kanye West to bring us there, though. That's what I'm saying about the Postmodern condition.

I haven't gotten nearly into Wallace as you have, but very much so appreciate your comment.

I also wonder if his commentary doesn't exclusively apply to the quote unquote hipsters that I tend to surround myself with.

I think Brief Interviews, among other things, is a nervous breakdown about how even if you're attracted to sincerity, and trying to enact the idea of it - you can find yourself, against your will, using that idea to take advantage of others. — csalisbury

I think that this, among other statements you have captures well why it fell out of favor. I discovered The New Sincerity through Cold War Kids, who are now on Capitol Records.

DFW knew that it was about facing suffering, and avoiding ironic distance - but he so often left it in the realm of ideas (balanced with photoreal observation) - what he never really seemed to explore was methods from getting from the pomo thing to sincerity. — csalisbury

Wallace, himself, I think must have had some sort of complex to where he had wanted to establish genuine human connections, but couldn't quite escape his own intellectual fortress. I could put this better, but my keys are sticking too much to type as of right now.

I don't know that you give him enough credit. Infinite Jest is a great read if you're willing to do the work for it. There's so much to it. It's been ages since I've read it, though.

I think that the idea of an "ironic turn on irony" could be akin to dramatic irony. I've brought this up before, but consider the Situationist International. They began attempting to liberate the world from the ruling order of the art world and became as a living caricature of a clandestine spy ring. Wallace, I think, offers an antidote to such cult pathology and self-fulfilling prophecy by playing off the ironic excess of Postmodern self-reference so as to reinject a certain poignancy and care to cope with the Postmodern condition. It's a way of situating people within the world that they actually live in and letting them emotionally respond to it.

This is kind of a strange aside, but I remember getting kind of stoned at an old friend's house, the kind of old friend you'd see in a film like Good Will Hunting, and feeling as if I had been grounded in the world, quite emphatically, while watching this video by SALEM. I realized that what I was watching was not some form of tactless juxtaposition, but, rather, that it was symptomatic of the Postmodern condition that it takes art such as this to remind people of things like that we are, to this day, engaged in a War in Afghanistan. It was very heavy and almost cathartic in a way.

SALEM's art isn't incendiary or shocking; it's just subversive. They lay it on pretty thick that it's as if the world is ending in Western Asia and it's as if the West has witnessed this as a perverse form of entertainment. The trouble with subversion, though, is that it's only ever functional under specific circumstances. It's like what someone once said to me about the ripped Iron City t-shirt that I used to wear as a form of détournement. "Get it? You just want to put it in the right context."

I think that William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops is a better example of art that brings people into a relationship with the event in such a manner that lets them adequately cope with it. What people fail to understand of the attacks on the Eleventh of September in 2001 is that they had their desired effect. The Western arrogance which led to the creation of such monoliths has lost its symbolic power. In the ensuing chaos of the so-called "War on Terror", the United States was nearly torn apart. The event was, of course, tragic. It was through Basinski, however, and not the relentless media sensation to follow the attacks that I came to grieve and cope with loss, both of life and what I had been taught to understand of the world.

I have used, perhaps, a highly charged example, but I think it get at the idea behind The New Sincerity. We should think and feel well enough about the world that we live in to care for it. It's quite simple, in a way, which is rather ironic. That's what I think that he meant.

Here is a video of David Foster Wallace talking about Infinite Jest.

I thought that once, too, but they just have a network of influence within the drug trade. They don't really orchestrate it.

What I'm saying is that focusing on countering on drug violence and leaving it out of the monetary interest of anyone in the drug trade to be affiliated with the far-Right will have the effect of just kind of dissolving the far-Right as a whole. The control they have secured within the drug trade is what is keeping them alive.

People just pin the police on whoever it is that they don't like. The utilization of lawfare within politics is an unfortunate atomic fact. Often, people don't even realize as to how it is that they do this. In so far that they're going to be following anyone, and they will be following someone, it does seem to make the most sense to me for them to actually counter violence, and it is the far-Right and their affiliates who are the greatest purveyors of it, but how to do this is not through heavy-handed punitive measures. There are a lot of other ways to deescalate situations, as well as that going about things as such often hazards the opposite.

There's a paradox, I think, to what the original poster has brought up. In order to have patience, you need to be let to have a certain degree of peace of mind. In order to have peace of mind, you can only have so many problems in your life. Some people just ignore the problems in their lives and play aloof. Not doing anything about them just doesn't do anything about them, though, and, so, other people are often put up to it. Now, in so far that you don't expect for anyone to solve your problems for you, you have the problems of other people to deal with as well. Not doing anything about them just doesn't do anything about them, though, and, so, you come up with a lot of quick solutions and half-baked plans. Because nothing is ever done well, they only ever work if they go unnoticed. You just dig yourself further and further, when all that you wanted was a certain degree of peace of mind. You can't trust a person who won't let you have that, and it shows. You should've devoted your life to so many other things, but what can you do now? Just take it easy. Relax. As if you didn't have enough to worry about already.

People often talk about self-actualization and even use it as a form of superiority. It stems from a hierarchy of needs. Everyone ought to be let to achieve what they should like to well, and that requires patience. Good luck making it that way, though. There's just nothing that you can do about people who won't let you have your peace of mind.

"The Only Living Boy in New York" by Simon and Garfunkel

Against what you say and all forms of clandestine wisdom, producing a potential legal, political, and press-related spectacle for your nefarious adversaries is how to adequately deal with them.

This is why the arts community tends to be extraordinarily flamboyant. It's kind of a beat way of life that only some people have to learn. Emotional intelligence is like that as well. You only learn to read into certain social when you somehow have to. It's a gift and a curse. You can begin to perceive yourself as a telepath or become acutely neurotic. There's only so much to see in the way a person sits or how they are dressed. There are things to see in it, however. It's just what you do when you can't find the information that you somehow have to. Some people call it intuition. It's really just an odd kind of common sense, but you can only believe in it so directly.

Some people don't listen to well reasoned conversation, aside from that, while lawfare does pose a certain predicament, punitive criminal justice is not necessarily integral to the concept of democracy.

If I get into a fix with the Italian National Vanguard, I can't just go talk to them so as to resolve our dispute. I have to prove to them that my political assassination will result in a set of legal operations undertaken against them. Your average Neo-Fascist conscript at this or that Metal show can just be talked out of a dangerous pathology. There are other people and forces at play, however.

I also agree with @Shawn in that this just doesn't have anything to do with Emotional intelligence.

Readers of this may claim that there are other actors within the drug trade, which I would, to some degree, discount. The Provisional Irish Republican Army decommissioned most of their weapons in 2006. Without the need to purchase weapons, they have no need of trafficking narcotics. The Revolutionary Armed Forces in Columbia has never controlled the lion's share of cocaine there, unlike the paramilitaries whom the Central Intelligence Agency has armed, trained, and funded. There have been a series of crackdowns on the opium trade in Southeast Asia, the excess of which has led me to echo Blind Chance with the expression, "Gestapo!", and I, personally find for it to be somewhat odd for the primary source of the funding of the Taliban to have continued throughout the War in Afghanistan, as it did dramatically decrease during the first year of the war, but has returned to normal ever since. The Opium Wars occurred alongside the proxy way between Great Britain and Russia in Afghanistan, which is a historical connection that not many people make, but, let's just chalk it up to corruption. Anyways, though as it comes off down the line, what we can deduce from this is that it is a set of right-wing political factions who control the lion's share of the drug trade. The primary concern of law enforcement should first be acts of terrorism, focusing upon the far-Right, and, second, be acts of violence, as it concerns the trafficking of narcotics in general. All of our efforts, however, have thusly been focused upon countering the far-Left and preventing the trafficking of narcotics generally. Any number of mafias and terrorist cells can only be meaningfully reformed with a shift in focus towards preventing drug violence, violent coercion, and terrorism. People in law enforcement like to take pictures of themselves with captured weapons and kilos of cocaine, however, and, so, until the Drug Enforcement Agency liberates itself from the cult pathology of how it is that they think that they should deal with drug traffickers, spinning David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" over their airwaves during the raid, we will just have to continue to endorse, which I do sincerely, the full decriminalization and legalization of all narcotics.


I don't think that you see what my conundrum is. I should like to do away with the cult pathology generated by police informants within any number of activist circles, but kind of suspect that I have actually been isolated from activist circles as part of a campaign by law enforcement. If they're going to incite fanaticism and wait for actions to erupt in violence so as to have a negative example, how can I, when I want not to be thought of as such, and am primarily concerned with my political community not becoming like that not care to counteract such measures. If they seriously want to counter terrorism, then, they shouldn't do such things. I can't prove that I have, but I just feel as if things are that way.

Personally, I'm of the theory that, should law enforcement regulate the drug trade in such a manner to where it is nonviolent and not Fascist, the far-Right will just simply dissolve. Good luck convincing a single other person of that, though.

The zealotry with which the American Left pursues the Right can actually get out of hand. The FBI tried to entrap that guy into selling weapons to the far-Right, which he refused, and they later waged a full-blown military operation against him in more or less his shack. It gave birth to the American Militia Movement and, by proxy, kind of a lot of existent far-Right groups today. There was an Anarchist in Aufheben who got a lot of flak for conceptualizing some sort of "soft-policing powers". I doubt that he was taken at his word, but such measures would seem to be a lot more effective in countering the far-Right than the heavy-handed measures of Ruby Ridge or Waco, Texas.

One's perception of one's own power or self-efficacy. People who feel powerless seem to be more prone toward conspiracy theories.
This is just a casual observation. — baker

This is true. Having conceptualized a few conspiracy theories, myself, I can say that they were largely born out of an incapacity to cope with precarity in my life. Being pathologically afraid of becoming homeless made me pathologically afraid of the intelligence community, mafias, and the far-Right by way of transference. It's not that there is nothing to fear; it's just that the fear becomes pathological. It's kind of an extraordinary experience. You compulsively accumulate information as an addictive habit and attempt to draw an elaborate network of influence. They rely on a kind of persecutory delusion. I believed in them because I believed that I had no future. You'd be surprised as just how bizarre some of them can become. I began with connections that I had made between the CIA and Propaganda Due and, at one point, had claimed that Adolf Hitler was the bastard child of Rudolf I of Austria and Stephanie of Belgium, Felix Yusupov had shot Rasputin, who was supposed to be an early American intelligence officer, and orchestrated the Bolshevik coup, thereby leaving both the Holocaust and the Great Terror as punishment for the decline of the aristocracy on the part of British intelligence. I even apologized to them for this after the fact.

So, we can see why people would be inclined to accept a “conspiracy theory” based on incontrovertible facts. What is less clear is what motivates others to deny not only the theory but the established facts themselves. In many cases, even mentioning the fact that the CIA was founded by a powerful business group can trigger a negative reaction of vehement (and totally unfounded) denial. — Apollodorus

I just think that you are mistaken to suggest that Rockefeller's empire was the prime mover of the CIA at its inception. He used his network of influence to have a place there, but that's it. It's all just networks of influence. I, further, just wanted to put forth my theory that what goes wrong in the intelligence community, or any form of network-power, has more to do with control than it does with wealth. The Gestapo didn't kill upwards of, I think, 18 million people over capital. The same could be said for the former Soviet Union.

The machine teaches you how to generate the rhythm, though. The machine is the master that the pupil surpasses. In this case, considering an abstract machine as positive, the machine is like a serendipitous liberatory learning device. It's a catcher in the rye. That they exist is something that just keeps the world from being driven mad.

Thanks for defending Absurdism. Camus gets a bad rep, partially because of Sartre, because he postulated that philosophical pessimism was just simply the case, whereas Sartre thought things had only become as such. I think that Sartre was right, but Camus didn't think that people should accept such a state of affairs, and, so, was not the "Nihilist" he was claimed to be.

The Postmodern condition clearly differs from that leading up to and during the Second World War, as well as in its aftermath, and, so, I could see how Camus came to his conclusions, but he did become somewhat unfairly isolated from the French intelligensia because of them.