A Pleasurable Headache: 9th August 2020
Time seems broken right now.
I'm not sure if it's living under pandemic-induced guidelines or the ridiculously hyper-kinetic news cycle (or maybe both of these things) but time has never seemed more elastic.
Individual days seem to drag on whilst the week itself passes quickly. We live in a constant push-pull vortex, bashed around on the whim of our own perceptions.
It calls to mind Douglas Rushkoff's concept of 'Present Shock' (which I've written about before). In an oft-quoted interview with Wired he talks about the notion of 'Narrative Collapse' which is "is what happens when we no longer have time in which to tell a story". This idea ties in nicely with some elements of a Current Affairs piece I've linked to below and other things I've been dwelling on this week.
One factor in the rise of 'fake news' and media scam-artists like Alex Jones is that idea of narrative colapse. With so many elements, so many shades of grey it's far easier for someone susceptible to watch a paranoia-laced video and take it as gospel. It takes time and effort to clarify the claims being made, something which a lot of people don't have the inclination or tools to do.
News cycles often present contradictory stories or positions right next to each other as a story develops which can produce confusion. Someone like Jones, as outlandish as some of his theorizing is, provides an extremely simplistic story to go with the confusing and contradictory news zeitgeist.
In the Wired interview Rushkoff quickly moves on to Game of Thrones and how its slow pace is keyed to the idea of Present Shock. He then goes on to say:
"The audience is voluntarily surrendering authority to the storyteller as long as he isn’t abusing it. Really, we just want the narrative to keep going. In a small way perhaps, it's suggesting a new shape of narrative that can respond to the need for sustainable solutions instead of finalizing victories. These open-ended narratives are much more consonant with the open-ended, fantasy-role-playing-like sensibility of presentism."
The emphasis up there is mine. This ties in to the hugely interesting article by Adrian Hon that came down the wire this week about what ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) can teach us about the QAnon movement.
Jones and other doom-sayers also talk about the end times or the global elite's plans for an 'end-game', which of course is pushed back constantly. Again, time is loose and ever-shifting. This, of course, is nothing new, but the time we live in provides a much easier environment for these tall takes to take root.
The most depressing thing about all of this is that I can't even conceive of a way around this, a means to put an end to more and more people boarding the Alex Jones or QAnon train. How do you fight an ever-evolving Hydra that leaves enough gaps in its narrative for the user to see themselves in?
Answers on a postcard or in an email, please.
Links
Ghost of Tsushima, Kurosawa, and the political myth of the samurai
Kazuma Hashimoto at Polygon unpacks some of the Kurosawa imagery and influence in the recent PS4 game, Ghost of Thushima. Hashimoto touches on the origins of the "modern" Bushido code (including its place in military culture) as well as some of the game's visual florishes and how the former melds with the latter. The conclusion is the game is a kind of pseudo-historical greatest hits package, and that whilst it's visually stunning it lacks a connection to the history it is purposefully mining.
The War Nerd: Amateurs Talk Cancel, Pros Talk Silence
Gary Brecher, AKA The War Nerd, talks about the latest debate on 'cancel culture' but frames it using it a historical viewpoint, in this case Victorian Britain.
Brecher argues that Victorian Britain was absolutely God-tier in its ability to hide its worst excesses, crimes and savagery. Brecher posits that it did this by, well, never talking about them. It sounds simplistic, and in practice it is. But Britain as a whole is woefully unprepared and unwilling to talk about its colonial sins to this day.
"Silence is the only really effective PR for a genocide, and the nature of artificial famines, as opposed to mass executions, makes silence particularly effective. Famines, most people still believe, are acts of God, or matters of chance, or perhaps (under their breath) the result of the sheer fecklessness of the victims, for being Papists as in Ireland, or Hindus as in India, or Muslims as in contemporary Somalia. After all, the Empire wasn’t standing people up against a wall and shooting them (except sometimes, as in Kenya, and the Empire handled that by putting the records on ships and dropping them into the Indian Ocean.)"
Brecher uses Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts as a touchstone throughout. I'm currently in the middle of Davis' tome and it is as heart-warming as its title suggests, but still comes highly recommended.
'Alien: Isolation' Is a Horror Story for a World Ruined by Private Equity
The always excellent Rob Zacny at VICE talks about Alien: Isolation and its place in the Alien canon. He argues that the game is perhaps the best continuation of the world set up by Alien and its sequel, giving us a world (in this case Sevastopol Station) overrun and shattered by private equity, corporations and the free market.
"The history of Sevastopol is largely told through a series of reports filed by a journalist who was on the station as things went to hell. Her brief articles explain that Sevastopol was, from its very beginning, an doomed speculative venture on the eve of an economic collapse. Seegson bought it hoping to reverse its own fading fortunes, and now both station and company are rotting together."
Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
A classic, but one I re-read recently. Plus, David Graeber writing about anything is fantastic.
Sam Kriss writes a beautiful ode to the oft-misunderstood bird.
"Geese don’t just signify; they also talk to us, specifically to us. Studies have shown that humans are capable of understanding geese signals intuitively, without any special knowledge of the animals. You can tell, without even thinking, when a goose is honking contentedly, when it’s searching for something, when it’s warning you away, or when it’s raising the alarm. Their sadness is bodily, viscerally the same as ours. So is their dancing, clucking, foot-stomping joy. The only other animal that shares so much of our semiotic space is a dog, and dogs are our own creations. And geese sometimes have the upper hand. In 390 BC, when an army of Gauls scaled the Capitoline Hill, the guard dogs slept, but the Romans were warned by the clamour of Juno’s sacred geese. Their ability to pass on meaningful messages has been understood for a very long time. It’s why geese are still used as guard animals today."
I heartily recommend the simple joys of having a group of Nene geese eating feed from your hand. They also have an extremely mournful call which belies their friendly and outgoing nature.
The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free
Nathan J. Robinson, editor at Current Affairs on the paywalling of knowledge, scientific articles and journalism. We currently live in the world where outrageous conspiracy theories and right-wing fear-mongering live in the open wilds of the internet (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc.). However, scientific papers debunking said theories, investigative longform journalism and the like often sits behind paywalls (extortuinate ones in the case of scienctific studies) or convuluted barriers.
"Possibly even worse is the fact that so much academic writing is kept behind vastly more costly paywalls. A white supremacist on YouTube will tell you all about race and IQ but if you want to read a careful scholarly refutation, obtaining a legal PDF from the journal publisher would cost you $14.95, a price nobody in their right mind would pay for one article if they can’t get institutional access. (I recently gave up on trying to access a scholarly article because I could not find a way to get it for less than $39.95, though in that case the article was garbage rather than gold.) Academic publishing is a nightmarish patchwork, with lots of articles advertised at exorbitant fees on one site, and then for free on another, or accessible only through certain databases, which your university or public library may or may not have access to. (Libraries have to budget carefully because subscription prices are often nuts. A library subscription to the Journal of Coordination Chemistry, for instance, costs $11,367 annually.) "
This also touches on the actions of Aaron Swartz (rest in power) and his act of hacking and downloading millions of JSTOR articles in the name of 'free access'.
MediaLens calling foul on those in power once more. This time it's the recently unearthed evidence (via a rare BBC special investigation) that elements of the SAS (British special forces) had executed unarmed civilians in Afghanistan. This comes on the back of a high court case involving Saifullah Ghareb Ya, who claims soldiers from the SAS shot dead four members of his family in Helmand province in February 2011.
"In the programme, BBC reporter Richard Bilton met UK detectives, formerly of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), who spoke for the first time about how they were prevented from prosecuting soldiers suspected of serious crimes. These detectives believe that the Ministry of Defence and senior military officers were involved in the cover-up of torture and illegal killings. This happened in both Iraq and Afghanistan."
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Right. I'm off to experience everything in glorious HD after managing to sleep for almost 11 hours straight. See youn two!