Magnetic Remorse

 

I knew when the poles flipped, when everything started to reflect. It wasn’t a single event, bust some small awareness which crept up, until I could see it clearly. Then it receded back, and everything appeared oriented correctly again. Everything which was left became right, corners switched places, paragraphs rearranged themselves. There was no turbulence other than the small keyhole which I saw the event.

 

I remembered the windows were on the other wall. The doors opened inwards rather than outwards which we are now accustomed to. I know you may not remember but somehow, I do. Wheels were on tops of cars rather than beneath them, boats were carried by people across the oceans. I know it is hard to imagine; that we spent so much time in the ocean. There were also many more boats, each from different underwater cities, and everyone took great care decorating their vessels. Now, no one seems to want to be in the ocean. There was no resistance, there was no revolution, it happened without a single objection.

 

Things are quite different than they used to be. Before the magnetic poles flipped astronauts used to burrow into the earth. They would create the most complex tools for displacing earth and stone. Then when they reached the layers of magma and highly pressurized environments, they created the international magma station.

 

It is mostly forgotten now, nearly scrubbed from the annuals of living memory. Yet even with such details I would be unable to provide dates or any evidence of such events, not that it matters. Now an altogether different sky pervades overhead.

 

Werewolves now turn into men under the motion of the moon, and the tide now causes the oceans to be still. I cannot tell you where all the wolves go when the moon moves, but I hear them, packs of men running together consuming and hunting everything they found, howling out a hallelujah chorus with their hungry mouths.  

 

Yet through my keyhole perception I can attempt to name some things which are quite different. There are opposites which were similar, there is little change. Ice cream for example was liquid, and then frozen upon eating, sandwiches had bread on the instead and fish on the outside. Sandwiches still exist, as does ice cream, but they mean different things now.

 

Astronomy is different too. The sun used to cool a turbulent solar system, saving us from our own chaos. The darkness above invited us to explore rather than hide, and the stars gleamed with beauty rather than the terror of the unknown. We wore fins and gills instead of clothes, and we sang songs and danced instead of sat and worked on keyboards.

 

How can such things be so different and yet unremembered?

 

I have a hard time understanding magnetism myself. I have heard it described so many ways, yet when the key entered the keyhole and understanding was given to me for a small moment, I heard the words, disembodied, floating over my lips. A magnetic field is a field where all the electrons move in the same direction.

 

The direction has changed; the oceans of reality have rolled back and exposed a tidal pool of an altogether different landscape. This new world is familiar, as if reflected from the previous, yet alien, intimate, and the motion of its change gives me a crawling anxiety without name, a fear which tells me the magnetic poles may switch yet again.

 

When everything goes the same direction, everything makes sense.

 

I used to think light and dark were opposites. When the poles changed, I was able to see how wrong I was. Visible darkness can be filled with light, or light interfering with itself, bouncing, colliding, negating its on photons so the sky appears black or dark. Real darkness is not seen, and when the light went out, when the sun flipped and began pulling photons within in, it collapsed into something altogether different, then I saw what real darkness was. The darkness is not seen or noticed, it is a darkness which says light is not possible, there is no luminosity to fill, there is no sea of photons for my eyes to swim, just absence, loss, a hole of where light used to be.

 

The new darkness has already been trivialized, already accepted. The change in magnetic poles reveals a new center, this time the sun has taken the sky, and filled it with cold waves, and the gravity pulls us towards the hole rather than to the center of the earth. We are falling, rising, descending to the great pit where the sun used to be. The hole pulls us in.

 

Yet it is happening so slowly, no one seems to mind, we have a new society to deal with, new falling markets and falling freeways. New falling judges and falling crime, new falling injustice, and falling catastrophes with falling tragedies. I could explain them, but they are commonplace now.

 

I was once called a pessimist for describing such things, and I have learned how wrong I was, how horrible obvious the flip was, how mundane my pessimism has become, and how inadequate my words for describing something new. Everyone who saw the flip ignored it, denied, avoided it until it became trivial. Now we all act as though we have always been falling, we have always been slowing descending into the mouth of new darkness where the sun used to be.

 

Describing the sun now is like describing something supernatural. How do you describe something which is no longer there, which used to forever by burning in the sky, a sky filled with stars and clouds and formations called galaxies? Now such a thing cannot be described in the thick black of absence.

 

How I long for the light, or at least an unchanging cornerstone of existence. How I wish for solid ground, when all there is, is falling. Even if such a starlight were to return, my eyes could not be filled, my anxious mind forever questioning the cosmic torrent. Once the veil is lifted, how many more veils lie beneath?

A Strange Amoeba:

Marketing asks such questions like: Why do people buy big trucks? Why do people buy expensive handbags? One such philosopher named Thorstein Veblen speculated endlessly on these questions. For example, having an expensive handbag shows your wealth or what you value. People buy things, display things for purposes of telling others who they are. Perhaps society values feathers, bright colors, cars, watches, make up, tattoos, diamonds, all sorts of visual things for navigating social worlds. When those social worlds change, so do the consumable goods.

Veblen himself claimed such a conclusion was merely a guess, and economics allowed for endless speculation. Another example would be the use of a cane or walking stick as being a way to show others you are so comfortable, or you can afford to have one of your hands occupied. Also wielding a cane meant you got to participate symbolically in violence by wielding a weapon. He is considered a progenitor of modern economics, and his guesses and assumptions became accepted as truth once people started to sell goods and services under these pretenses.

Next came technology, which allowed everyone to have any goods they may want. Cars and fans, refrigerators and toasters, rims for your car, leather seats, fuzzy dice, and countless other products fell from Pandora’s box until the market became saturated. During the Great Depression cars were made to last, enticing consumers with dependability and durability. However, a saturated market is not sustainable, and a change had to be made, and then came the invention of planned obsolescence; If things broke down, they would have to be bought again.

Then technology was attuned to the many desires of the population, and marketing demographics became the language for information for groups of people within a consumer world.

During this time psychology was on the rise, a language for the machinery behind the curtain of the human mind. Personal choice was less valued, and behaviors were more closely analyzed. People would say one thing but clearly do another. The irrationality for human beings became more predictable each year. Control groups, market analysts, therapists, and human resources became the pools in which the new language of psychology flourished. The world oriented itself around archetypes of behaviors, currents and tides of early childhood experiences, trauma, PTSD, all sorts of narratives were adopted. Stories like possession, hauntings, curses, and spirits where no longer useful to explain how people behaved and melted away like ectoplasm, resigned to the toy section of mass-produced Ouija boards, and recreational spirituality.

The culture of consumerism has grown from the language of demographics; that people are no longer induvial players on the stage of life, but have become clusters, amoeba in formation defined by the purchasing habits and behaviors of their demographic. This pretense of thinking develops of habit of viewing ourselves and others as separate creatures.

This is to say that current society has found a tribal language which is spoken by corporation and individual alike.

When people talk about giving up racism, giving up prejudice, hate or intolerance, I have my own opinion on what it means to pluck out its root. I would also like to reiterate the horror of the current age; where systems of oppression have been fine-tuned, propped up and reinforced by endless of years in intentional control over others from white supremacy, patriarchy, oligarchies, dictators, monarchies, school to jail pipelines, exploitation of the environment, the acquisition of wealth, and the attempt at control over others.

My criticism branches into two parts here, one is the thinking that demographics, or thinking of people as groups will ultimately lead to conclusions which reinforce racism and oppression, and the other is the root of corruption within authority.

First, the critical issue with demographics is thinking people behave as groups is based on previous information; statistics and facts based on past behaviors. Such information is sold to marketers and corporations and may not be entirely accurate. It may be 50% accurate, and there is still plenty of money to made from 50% accuracy.

It may be hubris think the current information is truth, simply because it makes money or produces a market. Culture changes, and those pieces of information may also change. People may suddenly start to despise large trucks or expensive handbags. The motion and behavior of consumers is fleeting and should not be considered a factual reflection of human beings. However, the narrative instinct is second only to hunger. Without a narrative we feel pain under the confusion of the unknown. This pain is often exploited by seemingly correct sounding explanations, to calm the anxious mind.  I would argue that demographics changes the narrative of cultural change away from the individual and generalizes the wider world, edging out the value of individual choice.

Perhaps choice is a pretend illusion in which we built society upon, but without individual choice, we are blobs in a petri dish called Earth, obeying only the rules of hunger.  Maybe your blob survives, and whether it be race, nation, neighborhood, family, church, etcetera, hunger and power become a means unto themselves and sees human beings as mouths to be guided to the alter of consumption.

Secondly, the root of corruption within authority. If you would pardon again my opinion, since my views on authority are speculative at best. I have never ruled a nation, or a city. I have not decided who lives or who dies, or how to divide resources amongst a group of people, I have not been involved in tariffs or wars, boundaries or passports. I have not ruled over any creatures other than perhaps my chickens.

The root of corruption is within the anxiety of death, and more specifically loss and unpredictability. Those who have seen famine, may horde food. Those who have seen war, stockpile weapons. Those who have spent their life climbing the ladder of power and authority fear those below from taking their position. Many well-intentioned leaders climb the ladder to attempt social change, only to find themselves justifying lesser evils for the longer game. The justification for lesser evil, is corruption. It is the mechanism in which those in power, stay in power. This extends into the landscape of mind as well, those who have a good life, may fear death because of what they will lose.

I would argue that one explanation for the attempt to control over others is an attempt at control over life and death, to control women is to control those who will be born for example. Much like the narrative instinct, human beings are anxious when faced with the unknown, fearful when faced with the unexplained, and control is the salve to calm such fears. The more afraid the person is, the more control is required, or grasped at. Therefore, authoritative governments who oppress others, to maintain control over their brittle rulership are afraid of losing control. They know one catastrophe, one oversight, one blind spot, and the wheels of changes will crush them, since the same wheel brought them crown of their rulership to begin with.

To echo the criticism of demographics, power is a means unto itself. Very few people are willing to set down power, to roll back authority when corrupt justifications have added up to a great systemic machine has rolled over the bones of human beings or the green and lush forests. Who can turn off such a powerful thing off?

My warning, if such a thing can be avoided, is that to not think of individuals as part of groups of people, but to see individuals as the thinking and feelings tendrils of the same creature which we are all part off. One day to see ourselves as one creature, with one mouth, one home, and know we all feel the anxious dread of unpredictable loss. In doing so, we might achieve an identity which transcendences all things except perhaps hunger. In philosophy this is called the Categorical Imperative.

“To act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to end, but always at the same time as an end. “  -Immanuel Kant

Also, when you are in a position of power do not justify the cost of accumulating more power, or social status, do not slice pieces of yourself off to fit into a demographic, but to grow in strange directions, to be a compassionate wierdo, to as see people as something which doesn’t need narrative, something which doesn’t need a description, to become acclimated to the unknown and unexplained.

To tolerate strangeness, is to tolerate change, to tolerate difference is to tolerate others as they become part of you.