My Geoscience education: reflection on good behavior by someone who did not utilize his degree

At times I am disgruntled when I reflect on my education - B.S. Geoscience, geology emphasis, Boise State University 2012.  Still I study geology but frustrated by the seemingly intentional cloud put up, a cloud of pomp, of professors being anointed as secret holders of information, the concealing clouds meant to hide, meant to be hiding worthy mysteries that you are supposed to be desirous of getting closer to.

And, so, I've just described what I usually - what perhaps most people usually - see as knowledge.  That cloud I described is my own fog of non-understanding that as a student I should desire breaking through because then I will be educated which is what all that time spent was meant to accomplish.  Once broken through I would see open roads - options.  I would see paths to income and further edification.

I saw classmates do it, make it through the mystical vapors = profs deferred to them, talked to them, laughed with them: that friendly chiding from the prof over the effort the student was putting in.  I caught glimpses though basic, easiest-to-see-through clouds.  I saw how it was important to work with a professor, helping them with their research.  I saw classmates completing research papers that their profs helped them with, guided them. 

A different life-path, if I was willing to travel, to relocate, geology would have meant more.  Still have it I suppose: I thought it would be nice to have a little notebook to carry with me esp. when backpacking or hiking, a little scrapbook with info on the areas I frequent.  So just went now to the garage and got my little 3.5"x 5.5" Moleskine notebook that I've had for years, the first 10 pages or so containing entries that I'll read sometime but not now - pages and pages empty though, ready for info.  Right now I'll jot some facts about the the Idaho Batholith, a structure so interesting, so integral to understanding the Sawtooth Mountains to the north of me, which I visit and gaze upon from atop Lucky Peak.

Yeah, I feel if I was all about heading to work in a mine I could have contacted those employers, tailored my time spend studying for my degree with an eye on that eventuality.  A better part of a decade downstream from those times, get something out of it still.  I feel I recognized good traits in people now and that in the past I did not have that full perceptual ability.  I'm working on it now.  Sure I've heard of "focus" but it was abstract hearing about that quality in others.  Now with my focusing I get ti and I get how it may be beneficial to me, if the ability to focus is in actuality a benefit to others.

It is that ability to "snap out of it" and think forward (positive) thinking thoughts - there it seems to slip back under the veil of abstraction but for me it is a real technique I practice concretely.  Especially when the thoughts do go negative (and this is with the primary purpose of minimizing/controlling/getting rid of negative thoughts) I ask what I want to work on with my writing.  As simple as that.  Or I think of my run plans for the the next day, for the week.

I guess it doesn't' matter if this is what others do or if this is solely a special adaptiation for myself. 

The light at Lambert Dome

                                    Invisible when the sun leaves...

                                    In the darkness they are singing for you

                                                                       Shana Cleveland

Am I going to lose that blue light - express it, a light that got the response out of me that the light was good, that the light is medicinal, healing, a blue tinged light, the light created by sunlight illuminating the top of a hollow cylinder.  in this case the hollow cylinder is gray-tan mud stone.  A cool light, the grottoes keeping the temperatures down, ancient adobe walls pushing night-chill into the daytime, open-top caves, caves with skylights.

Definitely a cave-like feeling, an awareness of the mass of erode-able stone, like walking into the folds of a great gray-velvet stage curtain.  Cautiously I said that I would not want to spend the night in one for fear of falling mud-clay-rock.  But the healing that might occur with an overnight stay, dream time within the rock.  I want to go back - there are more alcoves to checkout.  I desire more time in that natural Angkor Wat, bas-reliefs crated by nature's conceit.

To save one life

"I would kill all the cats in the world if it would save one human child" I said.  And now - part way through the task of killing every cat - I question the boldness that I brought to that assertion.  What gods or mechanisms exist that would make someone who said such a thing actually do such a thing?  I still feel it true, that declaration but ... come on: to actually make someone kill every cat to prove whatever godly point you are trying to make: I'll stand by my point but damn!  Hope whatever human I saved is thankful.

Animosity as a function of success, or lack of it: a blog post than ends with "fuck off, fuck you, end of conversation". Then a message of hope.

We cannot seem to get people of standing to step up to volunteer to lead the country. There must be plenty of them out there - this is a country of 360 million people.  There must be some fine people out there, some great leaders, some upright people.  I know a few of them myself.  And yet we can't flush 'em out of the thickets to be our leaders because the country is in such a state of chronic, immersive dishonesty.  So how are you going to make authority credible? - James Howard Kunstler (hour 1, min 38).

I don't always think in terms of "animosities" - it is a habit I try to reduce.  Or, said in a better fashion, I try and take my animosities and alter them, transform them, channel them, put them to use.  upon finishing using my newly altered animosity I put it away or return it to the constant background which accompanies us all: potentialities that we hone before it is made to manifest.  It is good to hone animosities instead of trying to discard them completely - however your mind may accomplish this task of getting rid of animosities. 

Americans, my fellow Americans, live as though they are in a cult, a Cult of Happiness, that has removed the need for animosity, that sees animosity as an anomaly, as being out of appropriate form.  Americans think as though they are in a cult: ah, this thought gives me assurance, an interesting way to see my social world.

That word animosity has not the best connotations - bad, resentful, frustrated, wild, not in control.  Yet, if you have legitimate reasons to feel animosity, then what kind of push-over are you?  If an injustice has been committed, anger and animosity are the early responses, responses that are steps on the path to understanding and then action.

Yet, in America we are post-animosity.  This is the Promise Land: You. Are. Happy.  Say it, sing it - the song "Happy" has 626 million youTube views.  Chill.  As though people act out for change - agitate - for neutral reasons.  As though people exclaim their anger because they are bored.  No, not the case.  Conversely, do people in power often give away power/money/control just because they publicly state their support for justice and justice demands this egalitarianism.  No.

How do you really feel?  What are true emotions versus emotions that you have been trained to feel?  There is an advantage in avoiding animosity - its nicer to not feel bad, just feel good and feel like others should do the same.

Some people have the advantage of not needing to feel anger - or, said in a better way, they channel these emotions that manifest in animosity in some other method of expression.

Haven't we gone beyond feeling that Dems v Reps is the only game in town?  How perfect these foils are.  Does level of success dictate how I view these parties and how I view the system of government what we have?  My feeling of lack of success being manifested as a grab for esoteric knowledge which may free us all if only we all shared a similarly shuttered esoteric redoubt?  A redoubt which the successful could be made to acknowledge, to nod at in some three o'clock in the morning drug conversation but the successful do not need those talks, they need only to pay into keeping things rolling the way they have been which is the way that provided them a venue for their success, for them to flourish.  The third party option the outre domain of outcasts, freethinkers, freethinkers being the unconventionally successful.

Fuck. The successful going to the Glassbead Game to draw talking points.  But fuck if public relations don't work well - still the wheels will fly off one day and I feel it is a rewarding to discuss whether or not to support the Beast cuz may as well keep a good thing going: and we don't have a real choice anyway, the soap opera of our politics, the limited hangout of our politics and if you say "Well, each candidate has substantive policy claims that we may rationally analyze" then fuck off, fuck you, end of conversation.

As Jasun Horsley has mused: "The only sane option is to disengage and to focus on the people that one can connect to and work with and just try to rediscover a way of living together in the midst of all this chaos and just hope for the best." (hour 1, min 39).

The philosophy of archaeology and the "end of history"

This quote from John Gray's book Straw Dogs has put me in mind of archaeology and of "the end of history" concept:

Science promises that the most ancient of human fantasies will at last be realized.  Sickness and ageing will be abolished; scarcity and poverty will be no more; the species will become immortal (p. 123).

This puts me in mind of the theory of archaeology.  Why do we pull specimens out of the ground as opposed to leaving them buried?  Is this addressed anywhere in the archaeological literature?  Any cries to leave objects in the round?  Any apologia - perhaps a "salvage dig" argument that may lie beneath all of archaeology.  For sure it is hubris that we exhume objects, sure in our cataloging, sure in our methodology.  We admonish the forebears of modern archaeology, sometimes congratulate them when their antiquated techniques had approximated contemporary ones. 

The methodology today must be reflexive - has it been asked whether or not all objects should be left interred until as yet unforeseeable advances are made, our unearthing techniques now causing damage that we are currently not capable of understanding: we will be admonished one day as we have admonished our predecessors.  We are the future's Victorian gentlemen haphazardly digging up the past or tomorrow's Wetherills, cowboys digging up bones, ruining some things, getting some things right.  Maybe keeping things in the ground is the mark of true sophistication.

I've thought of collectors in ancient Roman times - did they too dig up and admire artifacts of other cultures?  We are so much more sophisticated with our dating techniques (we actually have dating techniques: ancient Rome not aware of isotopes and radioactive decay), with our ability to let brilliant minds examine finds: at least we have a narrative of the past.  I feel good knowing the depth of our knowledge.  I enjoy books about archaeological investigations.  I will have to track down more theory about archaeology, "dig deeper" than simply the Wikipedia entry.

Scary to think that we may stand at the apex of knowledge.  Will we be able to maintain our collections in the future?  Will all the information we have accumulated be lost?  I feel that we may as well have dug up all we have since the ability and the know-how may not exist in the future.  All of archaeology is a salvage job in this case.  We exist now in a window period of money and access and have amassed knowledge - our ability to understand this knowledge may be an artifact of our time.  Hold on to that info and celebrate it while we can.

Every age stands as a bulwark against oblivion and should feel good about itself.  History is always ending.

How America lost its smile

It took centuries - not that long in the bigger picture.  America as a Beautiful Dreamer had a self-satisfied grin for so long.  Not a smile but a resolute head-held-high look that if you said "America, if you are happy with yourself come on and give me a smile" then America couldn't help itself and would almost imperceptibly break into a grin.  That time between the Revolution and World War II being the time of that stalwart carriage and stalwart grin. And after WWII a smile.  The smile of Plenty but also the smile of Ignorance and no Self-Reflection and unearned Pride and then a continuing to smile while things falter and the smile gone in a much shorter time than the grin lasted. 

A regression or ascension to the grin of the grave where dreams, beautiful and otherwise, await.

The City of Marathons

I've run with them a time or two, sold on getting absolution through sweat.  A way to kill some time here in our city of the dead.  I've run with the still-physical ones that is, real sweat, real rubber pounding pavement, those alive runners so hale and lithe.  A couple marathons a day plotted past my house.  The live ones.

And many more those of the dead, those of the shades.  The immaterial, the passed-over still kicking up a real wind as they run by.  Constant packs of runners generating saline and fetid air in their wakes.  I avoid those packs, I hide - running with the physical ones a way to avoid the dead.  Regardless whether they are manifested by concrete or if the concrete is manifested by them.

Why I'm still not "sick of hearing about Hillary's damn emails"

I know the term “conspiracy theory” has a storied past, a bit of a bugaboo that causes eyes to roll.  I will say enough nuance is already available if you do a modicum of research or go beyond what the mainstream presents.  Still, if there happens to be even some small about of utility in a term, a concept, or a body of knowledge then I say it is worth going ahead and using that term. 

After the events of 9-11, echoes of which we still feel today, someone said (Noam?) something to the effect that even if there was a conspiracy the effects of those events created a real-world situation that we are still dealing with.  And those real world facts, the way state actors and institutions have reacted to those events is what most valuably should be discussed. 

The 2016 presidential election is now rapidly receding into the rear view and we are fast approaching the 2020 election but still feel the Trump v. Clinton edition might provide knowledge and insight to us now despite those thoughts having a tinge of conspiracy theory. 

The first point, the one actually dubbed a conspiracy - and the point that drives me to distraction - was the Democratic National Committee’s conspiracy against one Bernard Sanders. 

I've had a lot of The Emperor's New Clothes” moments during the course of studying sociology and Sanders’ treatment, his response and the response of the nation apres to and up through now is, I guess, as flagrant as any nude emperor in the most stately dignified procession. 

For propaganda, fact, or the middle ground between the two that comprises reality to be known it must be seen and that is why the media is so important - just the term itself, adkin to immediate, without media being involved explains the media’s importance as the state of being, ideas needing means of becoming material, becoming known.  So when I read about he DNC i saw an outright conspiracy, the chain of which to get to the top was very short: the party leadership was (and still is) opposed to even the rhetoric of Sandres and the Democratic Party’s raison d’etre, and the Republican’s as well is allowing corporations to more readily make money.  It takes two to do fascism’s tango - corporations and the government - and that dance is now being done. 

The only problem with Bernie’s treatment being labeled a conspiracy or not was that the media is allied with 1) politics as it now exists - see their rating whilst covering Trump’s 2016 campaign - 2) allied with corporate interests because, well, they are corporate interests, and 3) the media more supports the Democratic wing of the War Party.  So, any talk of conspiracy was solely being done on the fringe.  This issue made it to the Bernie and Hillary debate stage with Bernie declaring that people “are sick of hearing about your damn emails”.  Those emails described the conspiracy and Bernie supported his own political kneecapping. 

Conspiracies are meant to be secret.  Do the majority simply honor the intention of the criminals, seeing something is there but opting to turn a blind ey as some courtesy?  This seems especially wrongheaded if they are victimized too.  Living their lives as though they are not being plotted against as though everything is okay. 

But an honest consideration of our situation demonstrates the ineffectiveness of protest.  What I - the conspiracist - thinks is the right thing to do is bucking so many trends as to be impossible to change.  The system is so entrenched, built on such a vast, multi-form base - with mechanisms like using opposition to further entrench, its propaganda game being strong - that discussion of changes becomes a discussion about fantasies. 

Incremental change, they say, just do what you can do.  The argument to use the existing structure to affect change in the structure being your best chance - using corrupted, yet extant, avenues.  Is it a difference in cognition, some psychological quirk that makes the conspiracy believing/noticing person dig deeper, who are not happy being a passenger on this ride but want to control the vehicle, pull it over to the side of the road and see what is under the hood? 

Conspiracies that claim popular - as popular as can be - attention deal with big events, big players.  What is frustrating to a guy who is more interested than the average person is interested in conspiracies is that the causal chains for certain large events or policy maneuverings can be followed a great deal up, close to those metaphorical or literal smoky back rooms where the real levers of control are manipulated.  And we see the outcomes where the results themselves may be traced backwards to the door of the smoky backroom.  Those causal chains linking the past to an event or that link subsequent policy to the event are there to study.  We conspiracists just want to open up the door and reveal those dark mechanisms. 

I am torn about the proper understanding of conspiracies as I am of the proper understanding of mass psychology.  Conspiracists go too far.  They can make most of their arguments near to complete by using “above board” information like Noam Chomsky - he does garner appreciation even from critics.  Conspiracists do reveal curious things, little details of the backroom proceedings but the picture will remain incomplete. 

And this incompleteness is solved if you just go along with the herd, incompleteness erased once you side, even begrudgingly side, with the official narrative - you trade away some of you rationality for security and I can see why this might be the best choice being offered. 

I am writing about the psyche of the country - that emperor's new clothes feeling - that feeling is a sense of wonder - dark wonder - which may be similar to if not synonymous with imagination and the sociological imagination, an old tern now, a qualifying of the simple imagination it takes imagination and applies it to society - this is an invitation to theory and theory’s counterfactuals, an imaging how things could be different.  But, they are not different and social structures exist the way they do for a reason. 

So, in place of the old term sociological imagination I deploy the term the structural functionalism imagination.  How bedrock do you go to get your social theory?  The deeper you go the closer to the archetypal you go - you end up with religious or religious-sounding truths, that man is evil, that man is good, that man is but an aspect of divinity expressing itself.  Will understanding like this help in theorizing in the real world? 

I must understand the world in terms of myself.  I must understand that my motivations are structured by society alongside everyone else.  That is the name of the game when it comes to perception, the eye describing itself but not capable of seeing itself, the “I” describing itself but not capable of seeing Itself. 

Conspiracy theorists dig down to a deeper level.  Or, well, at least they attempt to - that they discover and reveal aspects of themselves is more likely than that they reveal a real nugget of truth so solid and real and valuable that all are capable of seeing it -  that is the type of thing conspiracy theorists seek with their excavations but instead they present gossamer, specimen lockers full of the finest shimmering gossamer, strands of truth, fantasy and ego braided together.  And if the public at large cannot identify with the ego of that conspiracy theorist researcher themselves then the gossamer is disavowed, it is shunned, it is confusedly thrown back in the face of the researcher, his nugget of ore reduced to a glamor blinding him.  Alchemy can change the outside world but must necessarily change the alchemist too. 

A long way around to get back to my conspiracy, my lamp of truth: Bernie’s mistreatment at the hands of the DNC and how grave an offence this should be perceived by all as - perceived by all and not just me.  But, as any true grotesque should, the conspiracy theorist’s ego is a mirror that others see themselves in - and they do not like what they see. 

The conspiracy theorist must look into the motivations of the mainstream to find understanding and, with it, moderation.