Reading Marx is Making Me Depressed

I feel like I have been reading lots of Marxist inspired thought lately, and so I picked up 'A very short intro to Marx'. Thus started my descent into economic depression. To summarize the summary... history is moving toward the freedom of mankind. Freedom, for Marx, means, freedom from alienation. Human beings are alienated from themselves because their work is not an expression of their nature but a means to survive. Alienation - the key point here. Humans are alienated because of economic conditions. That is what separates us from one another, (according to Marx), is economic conditions. This is opposed to religion (Feuerbach) as the crux of alienation. Or our separation from our true selves (Hegel).

Anyway - I find Marx's critique of alienation spot on - even if his economic theories are a bit dodgy. Everything these days is commodified and monetized. Here, I am blogging for the pleasure of it. However, blogger & google are commodifying this blog by integrating it into their ad/knowledge network. This is even more profound than the realized alienation of the wage slave who must sell his time in order to support himself. In this case I am not even aware of my alienation. I view myself as human, while google views me as a commodity.

Also, as a former wage slave to a corporation, but now an independent wage slave to myself, I doubt there is any way to escape the transformation of time into money. In my thought though the greatest achievements of technology are medical and, in a round about way, social. By social, I mean, technology and technological accomplishment is the great leveler. It is not subject to discrimination. The ability and the actual achievement of technological accomplishment by people of all races, gender, sexual orientation, leads to the end of social discrimination.

I started blogging yesterday and then did not finish

I dont even remember what I was blogging about. But let me free associate here. I am currently reading John Crowley's book "Little, Big." This is a magical realism tale about a new england family that is some how connected with fairies. It is not necessarily plot driven - rather the plot is figuring out what the twist is or why we should be interested in this family in the first place. The book has fairy tale logic.

I have a love/hate relationship with John Crowley's books. I read his Aegypt series on the Kindle when I lived in Hong Kong - and I remember sitting in the IFC court yard during my lunch breaks reading this book and feeling connected to home. I like his ideas. The integration of mystical and magical elements with everyday life. The possibility that esoteric knowledge is practical rather than fantastical. This is not like generic magical realism in that Crowley is integrating historical esoteric elements into his book. He creates a world where the esoteric knowledge, or mystery schools of thought, actually are valid. However, the novels are more like an exploration of these topics rather than a structured story. It is almost like when you are playing a video game and the exploration of the levels is more interesting than the boss fight.

Journey to the west is a tale that treats the 'boss fights' with drama and exposition - fantastic stuff. I like the exploration though, why is probably why I am drawn to Crowley's novels.

Has it really been 3 weeks since my last post!

I wish I had something to write. I have blogger block tho. I blame it on the intense heat that is making me lethargic, unable to focus, and physically weak. There is something about the heat that makes reality less real. So, it is hard to get worked up about work. The flip side of this lethargy is that I am no longer suffering from a low level malaise. How can you feel malaise if it is hard to feel anything. I need inspiration. I was inspired by the 13Bit road trip to document collectors, however I was to exhausted to turn this inspiration into anything concrete. All I can do now is execute the little things, doing laundry, logging footage, reading a poem, walking the dog, and perhaps a short blog post.

the scrivener

I use scrivener to write. Paul and I use it to write our screen plays. I use it to write my stories, plays, and currently I'm using it to write a graphic novel. I was once in an airport bookstore and spied Bartleby the Scrivener, and read it on the flight back to NY. How is scrivener the software like Bartleby the scrivener? Perhaps some industrious 11th grade English student somewhere can deconstruct this. Really I like the scrivener software because I have different outline modes, I can write in a corkboard mode, and it is easy to keep track of research and themes related to a particular topic.

So, can I write a game using Scrivener? Good question. I don't know, maybe I should try that.
I'll post here the first paragraph of my latest short story - it is the documentation for a cellular automata program.

"Documentation for a Computer Program"

Out of the IOStream comes theWorld. The stream is blue, not a microsoft blue, but deep sky blue, #00BFFF, and it is not web safe. theWorld is created from a pseudo random number generator. The first iteration of theWorld was created with a Perlin noise filter. But that produced too much geographic diversity. The purpose of this experiment is to see how cells interact, so we need to strip out all extraneous variables - geographic diversity was the first to go. The pseudo random number generator, and that provides much less variation in worlds from one Universe to the next.

The Great American Novel

My husband always says that I should write a novel. I have no idea where he gets the idea that I am capable of such a feat - but it is an interesting idea to entertain. I have about 20 half finished novels and some new novel ideas, but so does everyone.

A novel is more than an idea. It is not a knock knock joke, a one liner. A novel is not just a good idea - it is the unfolding and refolding and crumpling up and tossing on the floor of everything that surrounds that idea. What novel should I write? I ask my husband. Write that novel about Detroit. I had a idea about a novel that follows generations of a detroit family through immigration, the automotive revolution, and finally to current decay. "How should I start?" I ask. "Dont try to write War and Peace." My husband replies. That is actually very good advice. But the Detroit novel really does seem to have a War and Peace scale, so I try and pick up another idea. Ok - I was thinking about something golem related. For some reason I have been thinking about Golem stories. I have a nascent screenplay on a Golem and World War 2. I also love Jewish esoteric stories (the hasidic tales, tales of nachman) - I like weird esoteric stories in general. So I was thinking about combining the two. A group of jews hiding one night from the pogroms in early 19c russia stay up all night telling stories. Shamelessly stealing from the Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and other stories in a story. I love framing devices almost as much as the stories they frame. I started writing this but all I got was a frame. A fictional story of my grandmother writing down her recollections from this night 50 years later. And my possession of this manuscript after her death, via my aunt. I actually had a beginning and an ending and all i need to do was fill it with stories. This has proven more difficult that I first thought. (I was also inspired by The Manuscript of Saragasso)

I was going to do 10 stories based on the 10 Sephirot (levels of creation) based on Kabalistic ideas. The first story I was writing was based on Daat (knowledge) and was a fictional account of Spinoza - really a glass grinder in Amsterdam. I was playing with ideas of rationality, speculation. But that is all I got - no plot ! I am thinking that there should be a video game based on the 10 sephirot. Maybe I should do that instead.

Being stymied, I decided to get into shape by writing short stories. Short stories are a different beast than novels - and I think most novelist dont get this. At the moment I am enjoying the short stories of George Saunders - he writes some dystopic fiction about amusement parks or modes of entertainment. Really great stuff. Since I was reading about vagueness in philosophy - I thought it would be interesting to write a story that explores vagueness. I sketched out a story about a bunch of adolescent girls who go to an amusement park and the different rides they can take based on the 'You are this high' mark - a sort of exploration of living in vague territory. I was going to end it with a death - but that was really a bummer. I really could not get behind it. It did not seem like a story I would write. And it really did not have a 'turn', a strong idea. A short story is sort of like a knock knock joke. Maybe I should write some science fiction.

This post was written while listening to passion pit.

Know your audience

I was in Los Angeles last week, and stayed with two friend, Arv and Anjali. Arv is an economist working on developmental economics - so we have lots to discuss - especially the fact that after recent experiences I no longer believe non-profit work is a viable solution to address public health and poverty issues. I have become a die hard capitalist - and believe the only solutions that address issues of poverty and health crises must be self-sustaining and not grant dependent. (More about this in another post perhaps). I am also against pilots (not ones that fly planes, or medical trial pilots). Also with the mass of data available I think that we need to revamp statistics - sample sets are less important - more important is noise reduction, or rather discerning salient information (trends) from the data, rather than extrapolating trends from a sample. (Again for another post)

Anyway, in speaking with Arv I remembered the importance of ethnographic research in the implementation of any solution. Many times projects fail, not because the data collection methodology is incorrect, or because the statistical analysis is not sound, but because people collect data incorrectly.

I was reminded of the passage in "American Caesar" a brilliant book by William Manchester about Douglas MacArthur.
When visiting Japan (before WWI), the Japanese generals said that there was a problem with malaria among their men. The men had prophylaxis (pills), but were still developing malaria - obviously something was wrong with the pills. MacArthur laughed and said something like "If I gave my men pills with instructions to take them every 4 hours - they would be dumped into a ditch and forgotten." The Japanese generals were horrified - our soldiers would never do such a thing. The next week a new batch of pills arrived with a new label - the emperor wishes that you to take a pill every 4 hours. After that there was never a problem with malaria.
No need for any fancy solution involving cell phones or alerts or sharks with laser beams - just ethnography (Arv liked this story too)

Vagueness

I am reading a rather dull philosophical tomb on vagueness. It is not really a tomb but it feels like one. I am just at the beginning, reading about the sorites paradox and borderline cases, but I thought I would blog a few thoughts about it.

The sorites paradox - this addresses the question of what constitutes a heap of sand or a bald man or a tall woman. If I have one piece of sand, and I keep adding sand to it, at which point do I have a heap of sand? There is a further 'philosophical' problem with these terms, namely how do you determine the validity of a statement that uses one of these vague terms. If I a am tall is someone .10 inch shorter than me also tall?

There are all sorts of philosophical solutions to these problems - most of which seem like utter mental masturbation and contrary to common sense. But what interests me is the intersection between this issue and other issues - in particular mathematics, and in particular thoughts about infinity (set theory) and thoughts about series (infinite series perhaps).

First let me address infinity and set theory. Josef Cantor came up with the idea that there are infinite number of infinite sets.
What does this mean? For example lets look at the set of natural numbers. It goes 1,2,3.... indefinitely. We would say the size of the set of natural numbers is infinity. Well is there anything larger than the infinity of the natural numbers. Cantor said (this was one of his proofs), that there were a greater number of rational numbers between 0 and 1 than in the natural number set. These are different types of sets. Natural numbers are countable, I can generate another number by applying some application to a lower number (such as adding 1, or multiplying by 2). For the numbers between 0 and 1 all I need to do is add a number to the denominator. 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000. I am not generating an infinite set by a mathematical operation but by constructing a new number. (I could go on but I want to get back to the paradox)

Also remember there are more irrational numbers than rational numbers (more holes in the number line than points) but I digress.

Anyway all this talk of different sizes of infinity. his seems like a bizarre question to ask at first, because infinity is not really a size but a description of a limiting circumstance. And does it really make sense to say the infinity of natural numbers is different than the infinity of the rational numbers, or irrational numbers. True the way we generate the number set is different but infinity is infinity.

This reminds me of the sorites paradox. When does a set become infinite, or infinite of a particular order? In this case each is defined by a different mathematical expression. A countable infinite set can be expressed by a function, and a non countable set can be defined by a transformation. But does this mean that the infiniteness is different. If I become bald by shaving my head or by genetics does that change the nature of baldness. Infinity is a limiting condition - it describes what differentiates the set from other sets that with definite boundaries.

Ok and my second thought about sorites - namely series, or rather limits. Perhaps baldness is that which is approached but never reached, like the limit of an infinite series. Rather than express the distance from baldness, or the way we reach baldness, we just default and call the condition baldness. Baldness is never actually reached, so it really does not make sense to ask if one hair added or subtracted makes a person bald. Rather, every hair lost brings someone closer to the condition of baldness which is never actually reached. I had more coherent thoughts on the airplane to LA when I was thinking about all these things - but you will have to deal with the limits of my memory.