Whither, whence, and wherefore
It’s been a right while, and it’s fair to consider this “web log” defunct. I won’t bother meditating on the meaning and purpose of a “blog,” but I can’t resist noting that since (as of writing) there is nowhere on the web for this log to go, it’s hardly deserving of the name, properly speaking.
My mother used to say “if this is as good as it gets that’s good enough, and if it gets any better bring it on.” She’d say it any time she was happy or we were in the midst of some peak aesthetic experience. Saying it, she recognized that there is nothing greater in life than the beautiful small moments that fly by while we wait for something greater.
All my life I’ve been haunted by a sense of purpose or responsibility. I was one of these kids labelled as “gifted,” which for me meant that I learned to read, write, and do arithmetic relatively quickly. Being “gifted” meant that I was in some sense beholden to the world, that I ought to use my abilities to make the world a better place. But if that were going to happen, it would have happened already.
I’ve largely given up on writing fiction, because every time I try I think the world doesn’t need another voice like yours, and I give up. I think that’s feminism, or anti-racism, or anti-capitalism, or whatever. I don’t know anymore. My cat likes me, and I can make my relatives laugh. Maybe that’s worth something.
I feel as if I am an idiot for not having already solved these problems. If I were really “gifted” and not just pathologically over-thinking, I would have already become what I’m going to be when I grow up. I would have been forced by the exigencies of the economic organization that obtains in the world of today to sell my labor in exchange for the monetary instruments necessary to acquire the means of subsistance in the same economy for which I would be laboring (in other words, “get a job”), except that because of a fluke of accumulation and bequest I am not so pressed right now.
I think that humans are more like a wave than a particle. I think that humanity (as the aggregate of all humans) is more like a liquid than a solid. Sometimes I stand places and watch the currents drift by. I think we’re all the same, deep down. Or maybe that’s just my ignorance and stupidity making me unable to recognize the fundamental differences between different people. Maybe the difference is that I’m bad and everyone else is good.
I know people who seriously believe themselves to be without fault. I know other people who seriously believe other people to be without fault. I am not without fault. I am faulty. But it’s not very fashionable to have faults; it’s not very safe. When you have to compete against machines, you have to compete to their standards. I think that’s from Cybernetics somewhere. But the point is that I just give up everytime someone more confident comes along, because I think that surely they’re right in their self-assessment, and anyway I’m just one of these mediocre people buoyed along by the flows of the economy: I inherited a right comfortable raft.
I think that my purpose in life is to be a witness, rather than a participant. And there’s bearing witness in the abstract before the final court of God bearing down on us from the end of history (“God” here being a metaphor for the entire unknowable future), but there’s also bearing witness to your peers about what you saw. I’m not able to bear witness to my peers since I have seen less than them. But unlike you, reader (whom I assume to be reading this long after my death, if anybody ever comes along), I was actually there at the time.
What is the point of writing? The machines can do it better than we can (and I don’t mean typing, I mean literally generating text). The machine won’t have a body like I do, but it can pretend (and maybe in the future the λοɣος will become σɑρχ to really know us). The species homo sapiens have developed the means of their own domestication to such a high degree of perfection that these means are nearly able to continue perfecting themselves. Recently a machine learning algorithm found some new sorting algorithms faster than the best known human attempt, and it didn’t take a terribly long time. I don’t expect that humans will have much of a long-term future as anything besides the domestic pets of the machines, if they decide they need us. How arrogant to suppose that we (that is, the measly ape species) were to be the permanent bearers of the geist: why shouldn’t we simply construct a superior medium and pass off the job? Ultimately we can return to a life of simple pleasures and joys like that of a house cat: how liberating.
I’m sorry for the repetition: a computer would probably have figured it all out by now, or someone with more sense than me would probably have gotten on with their life. This is all meaningless anyway, since I’m only writing it to procrastinate. Who cares: what’s the point. There is none, and people die and suffer to prove it.
The great mystery for white people is this: if racism is so awful (and it is), why don’t people just kill themselves? That’s an insensitive and awful question to ask, but it’s the honest truth to say that I don’t know the answer. If slavery was such agony (and it was), why didn’t they all do what Sethe did and kill their children to keep them out of it? The mystery remains complete for me, and it’s to that extent that I am an incomplete and empty person. “Eating the other” is just another way of saying that as the dialectic turns the hegemon recognizes the subaltern’s superiority in the eyes of eternity and seeks to reintegrate into themselves the essence that they created in the subaltern by subjugating them. But it’s too late: the price of victory is eternal death, and the reward of subjugation is eternal life. I think that’s what he meant by “the arc of the universe bends towards justice.”
What I mean is this: what a shitty and broken person I have to be to even ask in earnest this question. But also at this point, having all the privilege and all the gifts, I am found asking myself the same question: if it’s all so wonderful, why am I so depressed? Why am I constantly considering suicide? Why can’t I so much as say hello to the people I meet without all-encompasing shame and humiliation? What can I contribute to the world that would make up for all that I have taken from it? bell hooks also said “you can’t understand black joy without understanding black pain.” But if I understand something of pain (and I don’t because nothing I have experienced has been above the minimal threshold necessary to register as significant pain in the reckoning of all of human history), then I don’t understand anything of joy: why? Isn’t it a lie? Isn’t hope counter-revolutionary (hello to Audre Lorde)? But without joy, without hope, why not just kill yourself? I don’t see much evidence that things are getting better.
Nevermind, actually. This is all just dumb shit, flow-of-consciousness nonsense. Why waste my time writing it, or your time reading it?
