Moon Memo: The convivial now
Good morning from Winter, in Portland, Oregon. Settled into a third place with my headphones on, the big windows showing the mush of this weather. A pair of men are arguing furiously about the election, berating children for disliking the current president, who will "save democracy." Do we need to be saved, when our tax dollars will be spent on wars against children instead of health care and minimum viable income? Where the only viable candidates seem to be old white men? When our president is so set in his ways that he can't see that our allies are the worst of revenge thinkers?
Today seems like a lost day. I did my little bit for work, but now I am just riding out the hours, pretending that I'd give a shit if anything else got done. Not feeling at my best. Grey light mornings cold and achy.
Sometimes the coffee won't save you. Sometimes the most delicious flaky crust won't save you. Sometimes being surrounded by books and other people won't save you. You have to accept that you are in a funk, and that you are worried, and that you will stay that way for the whole of the day.
Apple has announced the Vision Pro goes on sale in a couple of weeks. I don't know if VR or AR is going to be for me. I may now be the old woman who says "kids these days, peering into their virtual worlds" while I sit in the sunshine and drink coffee and watch the world slip away from me. I will probably regret that in 10 years time. But right now, all I have is my time attention, and VR isn't how I want to live. I'm cut off enough as it is from reality. I want to live a more convivial life.
Alan Jacobs (who I disagree with on many thing, and agree with on some...which I shouldn't have to say, but we live in a world where you have to justify your love for people who don't agree with you 100% of the time) summarizes how I'm feeling right now:
"The proper response to this situation is not to shun technology itself, for human beings are intrinsically and necessarily users of tools. Rather, it is to find and use technologies that, instead of manipulating us, serve sound human ends and the focal practices (Borgmann) that embody those ends. A table becomes a center for family life; a musical instrument skillfully played enlivens those around it. Those healthier technologies might be referred to as holistic (Franklin) or convivial (Illich), because they fit within the human lifeworld and enhance our relations with one another. Our task, then, is to discern these tendencies or affordances of our technologies and, on both social and personal levels, choose the holistic, convivial ones."
I want more conviviality in my life. I feel like I'm avoiding people right now, and I don't know if that's a good thing. Getting off social media except for posting poems has been very helpful for my brain, but it also makes me feel separated from the world. Goggles will not help me feel closer to it, I imagine.
But what do I know. My friend Terra the Tiger has found her whole community in VR chat. Kinky furries finding each other in a community where they can be themselves. How is that not convivial?
Across from me the same man is folding paper as he did when I first moved here. He flicks the paper through his fingers, the same way he always has. This is his place, and this is his world. I am just passing through.
Folding paper:
Love and stuff,
Misha Lynn Moon