this is the first really long response I’ve written on substack. Maybe in a way, it’s meant to be a reflecting thought jewel to your thought jewel: this post, which I’ve read twice and am still thinking about. Before getting to some hard emotional connections, there’s some maybe-interesting reflection on causes and magical thinking that might be interesting. According to the definition you site, magical thoughts involve the belief in a causal connection between so-called “unrelated events.”
So much hinges on what we mean by cause. For the writers of this definition, and for most “hard headed” people, most skeptics, cause only involves two of the four classical aspects - just material and efficient cause, but no formal or final causes. Because if you start to think about final causes -- about the direction where everything is heading -- then there are no unrelated events, because all events have some sort of hard to understand but real finality Teilhard De Chardin called this the omega point; when the spiritual evolution of reality, the noosphere, lead to the divination of reality itself.
And from this cosmic angle: everything is everything! But the limited/modern causality won out becuse it was so ruthlessly efficient. Everything becomes limited, clear, distinct, a billiard ball linked to another billiard ball, or better yet, linked via a charmingly complex series of bank shots and reversals...
so magical thinking means one thing to old materialists who believe in limited causation, and it means another thing to new materialists who admit formal and final causation. Once you have forms, you can do scientific astrology again, can do so much scientific work that’s forbidden by the current system....
but this is all still in the may-be interesting area. Now I want to talk about emotions and connections. I would like to live in your forest bolo for 2-3 months a year, and then 2-3 in another, maybe a city one, then 2-3 in a mountain hermetic bolo, then 2-3 in another city, with no rhythm, but just an onwards nomadic journey.
bolo - consensual communism - infinite politics: these are words that can connect what you are doing to what i am doing.
but there is one difference between what you’re doing and i’m doing that seems important to highlight, because it feels so urgent and annoying to me. This is the scapegoating of an oppressor entity, and the situating of politics along an axis of oppressor-oppressed, and more deeply, the utilization of a violent metaphysics. Such violence so so basically common and normal that it feels weird and nude to talk about, but there’s some spirit which calls me to speak about this.
Arnold Kling distinguished between three political vocabularies: conservative, libertarian, and progressive. Each is organized around a polarity favored/unfavored: for conservatives, ‘civilization/barbarism’ for libertarians, ‘freedom/coercion” for progresives, ‘oppressed/oppressor’ Each of these presumes some underlying violence being done, which is (a) factually true about the contemporary actual moment (b) but not true for all future moments - that is, it is very easy to imagine a completely consensual, mostly communist future social order.
But this order would arise not through an apocalypse, but a complexification; an increased diversification of forms available to people, more names, more identitifies, especially collective identities, corporate identities within corporate identities within corporate identities.
many felt similar in the 19th century and they went into the woods to form new communities. why did these new communities always lose to the life that city offered? Stadtluft macht frei: city air makes free. In the city, the city that once existed and still does, you loose essential attributes and gain performative ones; you become how you act, create new capacities, learn. This has many more possibilities than life in the Phalansterie.
But now the two can be one: life in the forest can be part of a life that can involve life in many cities, everywhere; again, not an apocalypse, but a great collective education and extremely well-designed re-configuration; wholly through consent, happening, somehow almost without notice, but with much exhalations.
Ben! I have many thoughts on your reply here, and I'll reply line-by-line here.
• "so magical thinking means one thing to old materialists who believe in limited causation, and it means another thing to new materialists who admit formal and final causation. Once you have forms, you can do scientific astrology again, can do so much scientific work that’s forbidden by the current system...."
So I guess the questions is, "how do we provide people with new forms?". What new cultural forms are possible with, or even necessary because of digital tech, and the now-culturally-impoverished public spaces of the West? Web3 thought that it could solve this, but as soon as the funding got turned off, so did the enthusiasm and vision in that space. Blockchain is still too esoteric for most, and it's not really even useful yet to anyone but crypto speculators.
I think your commitment to creating institutional performances is powerful, and the podcast work you've created. People *crave* spectacle nowadays, as capital has all but bought out the existence of any real counterculture in US and the West.
I don't have any answers to providing new forms, but maybe it's being a part of a bolo-movement that is memed into existence through media, memes, institutional performance, crowdfunding, and very strong visions of a bolo future
• "I would like to live in your forest bolo for 2-3 months a year, and then 2-3 in another, maybe a city one, then 2-3 in a mountain hermetic bolo, then 2-3 in another city, with no rhythm, but just an onwards nomadic journey."
The place I am going in January, CABIN, is building this network, where people can choose to live nomadically like this if they want to. Right now, their properties are mostly in rural areas and in the US, but they are partnered with the Radish intentional community in Oakland, and they are working on starting places in Puerto Rico and Portugal. I'll be writing about it on the blog here, and I'm sure we'll talk about it while I'm there.
• "but there is one difference between what you’re doing and i’m doing that seems important to highlight, because it feels so urgent and annoying to me. This is the scapegoating of an oppressor entity, and the situating of politics along an axis of oppressor-oppressed, and more deeply, the utilization of a violent metaphysics. Such violence so so basically common and normal that it feels weird and nude to talk about, but there’s some spirit which calls me to speak about this."
I think you're right. Perhaps I do have a "violent metaphysics". I definitely often lapse into angry fugues about living in a system where I have to struggle to survive. Seeing the world in this way feels real and honest to me, especially as stochastic terrorism increases and right-wing terrorists become more emboldened in this country, and the police and politicians condone, or even encourage these fascists.
But you know, maybe this is just one perspective that can exist in the complexified, multi-valent, communistic order you propose. That sounds good to me.
• "But now the two can be one: life in the forest can be part of a life that can involve life in many cities, everywhere; again, not an apocalypse, but a great collective education and extremely well-designed re-configuration; wholly through consent, happening, somehow almost without notice, but with much exhalations."
I agree. While some may seek to abscond to rural areas to revert to pastorality, I think the synthesis between moving between city and rural is ultimately more powerful, at least with regard to transforming one's self.
I love the idea of "a great collective education". What other great collective educations have happened in history? I recently learned about Nicholas Roerich, and how, in the 1900's he helped to create a great collective education in Russia's arts and academic institutions to transform Russia's ability to train and produce world-class artists, and to preserve it's own artistic heritage.
What material conditions can be exploited to bring about this great collective education and re-configuration? How can it spread virally/memetically?
dear alex,
this is the first really long response I’ve written on substack. Maybe in a way, it’s meant to be a reflecting thought jewel to your thought jewel: this post, which I’ve read twice and am still thinking about. Before getting to some hard emotional connections, there’s some maybe-interesting reflection on causes and magical thinking that might be interesting. According to the definition you site, magical thoughts involve the belief in a causal connection between so-called “unrelated events.”
So much hinges on what we mean by cause. For the writers of this definition, and for most “hard headed” people, most skeptics, cause only involves two of the four classical aspects - just material and efficient cause, but no formal or final causes. Because if you start to think about final causes -- about the direction where everything is heading -- then there are no unrelated events, because all events have some sort of hard to understand but real finality Teilhard De Chardin called this the omega point; when the spiritual evolution of reality, the noosphere, lead to the divination of reality itself.
And from this cosmic angle: everything is everything! But the limited/modern causality won out becuse it was so ruthlessly efficient. Everything becomes limited, clear, distinct, a billiard ball linked to another billiard ball, or better yet, linked via a charmingly complex series of bank shots and reversals...
so magical thinking means one thing to old materialists who believe in limited causation, and it means another thing to new materialists who admit formal and final causation. Once you have forms, you can do scientific astrology again, can do so much scientific work that’s forbidden by the current system....
but this is all still in the may-be interesting area. Now I want to talk about emotions and connections. I would like to live in your forest bolo for 2-3 months a year, and then 2-3 in another, maybe a city one, then 2-3 in a mountain hermetic bolo, then 2-3 in another city, with no rhythm, but just an onwards nomadic journey.
bolo - consensual communism - infinite politics: these are words that can connect what you are doing to what i am doing.
but there is one difference between what you’re doing and i’m doing that seems important to highlight, because it feels so urgent and annoying to me. This is the scapegoating of an oppressor entity, and the situating of politics along an axis of oppressor-oppressed, and more deeply, the utilization of a violent metaphysics. Such violence so so basically common and normal that it feels weird and nude to talk about, but there’s some spirit which calls me to speak about this.
Arnold Kling distinguished between three political vocabularies: conservative, libertarian, and progressive. Each is organized around a polarity favored/unfavored: for conservatives, ‘civilization/barbarism’ for libertarians, ‘freedom/coercion” for progresives, ‘oppressed/oppressor’ Each of these presumes some underlying violence being done, which is (a) factually true about the contemporary actual moment (b) but not true for all future moments - that is, it is very easy to imagine a completely consensual, mostly communist future social order.
But this order would arise not through an apocalypse, but a complexification; an increased diversification of forms available to people, more names, more identitifies, especially collective identities, corporate identities within corporate identities within corporate identities.
many felt similar in the 19th century and they went into the woods to form new communities. why did these new communities always lose to the life that city offered? Stadtluft macht frei: city air makes free. In the city, the city that once existed and still does, you loose essential attributes and gain performative ones; you become how you act, create new capacities, learn. This has many more possibilities than life in the Phalansterie.
But now the two can be one: life in the forest can be part of a life that can involve life in many cities, everywhere; again, not an apocalypse, but a great collective education and extremely well-designed re-configuration; wholly through consent, happening, somehow almost without notice, but with much exhalations.
-b’b’b’b
Ben! I have many thoughts on your reply here, and I'll reply line-by-line here.
• "so magical thinking means one thing to old materialists who believe in limited causation, and it means another thing to new materialists who admit formal and final causation. Once you have forms, you can do scientific astrology again, can do so much scientific work that’s forbidden by the current system...."
So I guess the questions is, "how do we provide people with new forms?". What new cultural forms are possible with, or even necessary because of digital tech, and the now-culturally-impoverished public spaces of the West? Web3 thought that it could solve this, but as soon as the funding got turned off, so did the enthusiasm and vision in that space. Blockchain is still too esoteric for most, and it's not really even useful yet to anyone but crypto speculators.
I think your commitment to creating institutional performances is powerful, and the podcast work you've created. People *crave* spectacle nowadays, as capital has all but bought out the existence of any real counterculture in US and the West.
I don't have any answers to providing new forms, but maybe it's being a part of a bolo-movement that is memed into existence through media, memes, institutional performance, crowdfunding, and very strong visions of a bolo future
• "I would like to live in your forest bolo for 2-3 months a year, and then 2-3 in another, maybe a city one, then 2-3 in a mountain hermetic bolo, then 2-3 in another city, with no rhythm, but just an onwards nomadic journey."
The place I am going in January, CABIN, is building this network, where people can choose to live nomadically like this if they want to. Right now, their properties are mostly in rural areas and in the US, but they are partnered with the Radish intentional community in Oakland, and they are working on starting places in Puerto Rico and Portugal. I'll be writing about it on the blog here, and I'm sure we'll talk about it while I'm there.
• "but there is one difference between what you’re doing and i’m doing that seems important to highlight, because it feels so urgent and annoying to me. This is the scapegoating of an oppressor entity, and the situating of politics along an axis of oppressor-oppressed, and more deeply, the utilization of a violent metaphysics. Such violence so so basically common and normal that it feels weird and nude to talk about, but there’s some spirit which calls me to speak about this."
I think you're right. Perhaps I do have a "violent metaphysics". I definitely often lapse into angry fugues about living in a system where I have to struggle to survive. Seeing the world in this way feels real and honest to me, especially as stochastic terrorism increases and right-wing terrorists become more emboldened in this country, and the police and politicians condone, or even encourage these fascists.
But you know, maybe this is just one perspective that can exist in the complexified, multi-valent, communistic order you propose. That sounds good to me.
• "But now the two can be one: life in the forest can be part of a life that can involve life in many cities, everywhere; again, not an apocalypse, but a great collective education and extremely well-designed re-configuration; wholly through consent, happening, somehow almost without notice, but with much exhalations."
I agree. While some may seek to abscond to rural areas to revert to pastorality, I think the synthesis between moving between city and rural is ultimately more powerful, at least with regard to transforming one's self.
I love the idea of "a great collective education". What other great collective educations have happened in history? I recently learned about Nicholas Roerich, and how, in the 1900's he helped to create a great collective education in Russia's arts and academic institutions to transform Russia's ability to train and produce world-class artists, and to preserve it's own artistic heritage.
What material conditions can be exploited to bring about this great collective education and re-configuration? How can it spread virally/memetically?