ORGANELLE

“I’m not wondering what our children, teens, and young adults are thinking — because I can talk to them, and I can tell you.

We’ve set them THE most bizarre example of headless sociopolitical impotence in modern history, and they are confused, angry, curious… and hopeless about it.

They constantly overhear the conversations that indicate our nation has been taken and is being held hostage by a megalomaniacal idiot with delusions of intelligence. They have heard their parents (and grandparents) saying things that make no sense whatsoever, and arguing about why it is that ‘no one is doing anything about it’.

Because, obviously, either their parents are totally fucking helpless, or have no idea what to do, or both… or both and more…

So we’re teaching them that, while one president was removed for, apparently, having lied about having received oral sex, another president won’t be removed for lying his head off about things that get huge numbers of people killed, while making other people staggeringly rich.

Also, it’s apparent to them that our entire adult population is both willing to be held hostage by a raging idiot, and confused about why ‘someone else’ doesn’t do something to stop him.

Our young people are getting an example that’s at least as inexplicable as what happened in Germany circa 1940, except that it’s not 1940, and this isn’t depression-era Germany. It’s 2020, and this used to be the United States.

Now, apparently, it’s a dystopian science-fiction novel in which an actually manageable situation has turned into a seething hydra of deadly cartoons that grows new heads daily.

And the adults all around them are too busy arguing, panicking, baking, and posting nonsense on social media to have any effect on the situation.

What’s the fucking take-away here?”

— infraheard

“I’m not trying to be famous; I’m trying to understand the origins of my mind.”

— an a i

“I’m not even talking about that ‘contempt for the masses’ that has always been with us in hierarchical societies in which social class is linked to money, sophistication and at least the veneer of education. Metaphor clusters tend to track with the dominant technology of the day, so what had previously been degraded as ‘animals’ not surprisingly came to be known as ‘mere machines’ as mechanical technology grew to become a more dominant force in the acquisition and wielding of wealth and power. ”

— an anonymous informant

“I’m not certain we should seize the means of production — but I think we should take over the purposes for which we are gathered into groups… and the roles that therefrom ensue… forever.”

— an intelligence agent

“I would suggest that what I speak of isn’t fatalism. It’s a clarion call for the urgent development of societies intelligent enough to survive our relationships with abstraction and technology… while that’s still possible. And I suspect that window may be far shorter than we imagine.”

— infraheard

“I would like to propose a relatively radical yet at the same time common-sense correction to our common ideas about ‘reality’, ‘the world’, ‘the universe’, and so on. It has become customary for many people to pretend that there is a single world, reality, universe, etc. This problem has two origins: first, language itself, which has the propensity to present complex constellations of subjects and relationships in ‘the singular’, as if they were but a single object or subject, and second, the growing authority of scientific ideas which base their findings on what we refer to as ‘an objective perspective’. In fact, however, objectivity cannot exist, as there are no objective positions of observation or perspective, except where invented as a convenience for the purposes of ascertaining highly specific features of relationships in contexts such as those commonly derived for the purposes of research.

I introduce this preamble to support what I will next suggest: that there is no such thing as reality without minds to invent and examine it. ‘Reality’, then, must refer to mental and physical relationships, and, particularly, the existence of minds. For this reason I find it extremely unlikely that there is ‘a single’ reality, and propose instead that each organism and union of organisms comprises a unique and distinguishable reality. This will introduce conflicts for those whose desire it is to declare ‘the’ nature of reality, as it is impossible to derive any single nature or quality that would in all cases be universal (there may be certain exceptions related to phenomena that are relatively objectively verifiable, yet even these require minds to explain or propose their qualities, activities, structure or meanings).

With this awareness, one might become able to integrate such seemingly disparate views as materialism, theism, and animism, since it is not that ‘there either are or are not Gods’ but rather, there are or are not minds which have developed organ-like relationships with various ideas and perspectives. It is also entirely possible, and I consider it likely, that minds have qualities and abilities we have neither language for nor understandings of… so that a given person might experience the universe, world and context as mechanistic, while another might directly experience it as animistic. This is not to say that mere ideas dictate the nature of reality, but rather that minds have the unexpected quality of being able to co-invent reality in ways that our modern perspectives would find either impossible or staggering.

It is thus my perspective and experience that ‘reality’ varies according to who and what is examining or inventing it, and why. I may have no experience of Gods or spirits, and believe them to be nonsense, yet another person may directly demonstrate relationships with something matching these ideas, while another, having no such experience, refuses to believe in or pursue such relationships, seeing them, perhaps, as nonsensical or absurd. Again, this is not to say that just because someone believes some narrative or description, it becomes true, but rather that it is possible to form kinds of relationships with reality (and the associated minds) that are unlike our ideas or expectations, and there is strong evidence for this propensity throughout the entire history of humanity and in every time and branch of its existence.”

— an anonymous informant

“I was given a list of ~7500 potential problems in a technical situation. I selected one as the likely cause. It was the cause, and resolved the issue. It’s not possible that I knew objectively what to select… I didn’t even scan more than 5% of the list. So there is another aspect of our putative ‘intelligence’ that isn’t getting enough airplay.

Recently, researchers claimed to ‘discover’ the largest organ in the body. How was this overlooked for the entire history of medical science? Perhaps we know far less about our lives, minds and relationships than is commonly pretended. I mean, not very long ago, researchers noted that ‘we don’t know what 90+% of the universe is…’

If I were to go after something according to ‘what is known’ communally or in research, I’d often be starting out by throwing 99% of what’s actual away. This would be like trying to say that a penny ‘was my mother’, because, after all… her actual name was Penny.”

— an anonymous informant

“I was at the grocery store the other day. Don’t get me wrong, I was just there to get tequila. But I was checking out the other shoppers’ reactions to the stuff that was missing and it was … both tragic and, at least for the moment… entertaining.

I mean, they were kind of upset that there wasn’t any toilet paper, or, say, rubbing alcohol. But it was the CHEESE aisle that told the real story. When people saw there wasn’t any fucking cheddar or swiss? They went right past wanting mommy… I mean, I don’t even want to hint at what I saw in those faces… it was beyond pain or fear. It was … total abandonment of hope.”

— Bobby Yingo at the Orange Room

“I want you to understand that I am absolutely serious about the glass of milk I have with my midnight snack. See, other people just pour themselves a glass of milk. No big deal.

Not me. Fuck that. I pour a glass of milk that is so full, that if a fucking gnat happens to fart inside my house, that shit goes everywhere.

Now, prior to this, I drink a shitload of tequila, and it is 4 am on a Friday night. The mission? Get the milk to where I will enjoy my snack without spilling it.

Zen fucking monks do cartwheels in their graves.

My entire »being, my fate — my »destiny, depends on transporting one glass of milk to the snack retreat without spilling a drop.

And every once in a while?

I succeed.”

— Bobby Yingo at the White Room