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. 

  

Influences: skateboarding

It is fun to develop obsessions, fascinations.  By that I mean interests that can be described as “nutritive”, that absorb attention and make your life better.  And at the age of 43, skateboarding has become one of a few such nutritive obsessions. It is because of the anarchic nature of at least the way the videos are filmed and the attitudes of the skater’s - I really liked to hear skateboarding described as the demimonde of outsiders.  I am struggling to deal with my status - do I embrace my inner outsider or do I hide it, repress it in some way?  Up to now it has been the latter especially since I started at the cemetery. In an easily approachable sense my job is outre with the routine placing of human corpses or ashes in the ground or in columbarium wall niches.  My wife feels it is neat and I do too - it makes me comfortable in a place in society that is necessary and in some ways (intentionally?) overlooked, shuttling bodies off to these repositories, a social need for the post-death respect that we hope we all may merit. 

So I’m in what is an outsider profession - is that right?  What of my colleagues at the cemetery? I would say they definitely are unique and wild in their own outsider-like ways.  I will leave it up to them if they would actually regard themselves as outsiders. Dudes down to have a good time and keep things “ladish” on the job.  And that is an aspect of the lives that skateboarding videos capture - a community with smiles on their faces, allies in something outside of the mainstream - yet a society at peace with itself.  I accept that mirror to my own life and I accept that in my private life this vibe is modified yet still resonant - off work I am a different person yet still one who revels in being different. 

I’m sure skateboarding has attracted many, many paeans, odes, etc.  And I seek to add to that because, when you are moved by something - especially unexpectedly moved - you want to understand it.  And just as with graffiti - that fellow traveller of skateboarding - it only counts when it is seen. So I might publish this - always a debate about what to share. 

I feel the pull of sport and consider myself to be an amatuer athlete.  Whatever psychological needs are satisfied by my athletic endeavors I get similar, sympathetic satisfaction through watching sport.  American football, basketball, baseball. Even tennis, hockey and rugby I have spent time in front of the tube watching. But no sport have I watched more of than world football/soccer.  I’ve played a bit of footy - one of the main reasons I like soccer, along with for me, its innate watchability, is that I look like the guys playing - they are runners. Yes, they perform a string of near-miraculous touches and passes in a match but this comes on a foundation of mobility with the more speed the better. 

Skateboarding’s recent appeal must be similar, that I see myself as close to the prototypical skater.  And I’ve skated a bit too so, as with soccer, I have a sense of the difficulty involved and thus how hard it is for a football forward to score a goal or a skater lands a difficult trick - both are movement-based and both rely on fancy footwork.  Bodies in soccer, skateboarding, running must conform to demands of speed and balance: a certain grace is attained, success relying on this grace. In running this is seen in the runner’s gait, how they move and how they meter their effort over distance.  In soccer this is seen in the timing of runs and the player’s deftness in bringing the ball under control. In skateboarding this grace is seen in the body positioning, how the arms provide balance as the skater ollies up to a rail and then complete some complicated board-flipping trick when they dismount. 

It has been slightly jarring to come back to skateboarding after a couple of decades and hear the skaters describe what they do as “tricks” - sympathetic with my interest in magic, I suppose.  A series of tricks to unlock a goal, a recorded video segment that lands a skater sponsorships, the rolling and clacketing of skatewheels an incantation. If magic is intended to change the world in accordance with one’s will then what is skateboarding?  Whether a busy city streetscape or a graffitied swimming pool in some atrophied suburbia, skateboarding is a melding of a person with an environment - skateboarding is a re-interpretation of the built environment, an altering of the landscape to suit one’s will. 

When I see a skater do some trick that utilizes an odd, slopey bit of infrastructure I marvel at how a bit of canal or sidewalk or whatever it may be takes on a new meaning, a meaning different than the people that designed it and built it intended.  Handrails are now urban downhills. Stairs become chutes seemingly purpose-built for providing a corridor to sail through. Unseen back alleys with loading docks and concrete poured to suit commercial needs are now gathering sites where the skateboard crowd meet to share acts of bravado and serve each other as surrogate families in lieu of perhaps problematic or non-existent real families.  The demimonde of the outsider, the outsiders who re-create the world in their image. 

  

Old or new, normality is our home

What is happening to the average American?  What about the exceptional American?  What about me?  What is happening to all of us with what is going on now?  Changes to the waist lines of all those successfully sequestered.  Americans staring at their hoardings, their hoarding staring back and saying “Eat me!”  I’ve seen an increase in people outside recreating which i assume means these are people whose jobs allow for working from home - professionals who I see riding their bikes on Hill Road.  And what of those that have been laid off - are they also self-quarantining only waiting for the arrival of unemployment checks, their subscriptions to various streaming services about to run out - and the free previews of all the services that “stepped-up” to give these people something to do.  But weighing on their minds at some level they must be wondering when the freebies will be revoked. What then?  Where is the money going to come from? The other side of the paywall.

I’m glad to get out as much as I have.  One thing I take note of is a hope that the US will return to normal.  I say this because of my desire for stability for my family and I ask my ancestors to help protect us … and to make us stronger.  I want to go out and eat with my family when we feel like it.  I want to take my kid to new bike parks.  I want to buy beer from Jackson’s without feeling like I’m imposing on the clerk’s health.

We will return to normality - normality is our happy place.  It may be a different normal or a new normal but it will be our ever-present home room soon enough.  What will change? It is being studied right now.  A social science experiment is being conducted on a mass scale.  As we seek to return to a semblance of the old normal, pundits are already asking what that will look like.  And linked to that “what” is a “when” - if our attitudes of proper social intercourse are being altered then when will it be deemed satisfactory to sit in an office, venture out to restaurants, or attend sporting events?

When will we be ready to pollute more?  This is a topic being studied and commented on right now, roads populated by essential commuters - if the old normal traffic can be allowed again it will surely return.  If people can live less simply in order to satisfy manufactured needs they will and though pollution and consumption are kind of looked at as negatives they really symbolize success - in our society - and will absolutely be abided.

The ruling, what, cabal?, are still ruling.  I say (and don’t just about all of us?) I want a return to (the old) normal, that place of stability, that place of the known and somewhat predictable.  And this desire does also accept some negatives associated with the way “business was done” in pre-pandemic days.  Not just things like pollution and materialism but other things that more completely exemplify the social structure, that are sadly more essential features of the system.  And their essentiality/essentialness is marked by a commensurate level of opaqueness, hiddenness, things partially visible but mostly existing in the shadows, the American Shadow in a Jungian sense.  I.e. the air we breathe.

These are the meaner parts of our civilization, the parts that are discussed in broad philosophical-religious-psychological terms yet manifest in very real ways.  Progress becomes pollution and free competition becomes gross materialism.  And this “becoming” has now “become”.  Progress is pollution, making money is a desire to wastefully spend.  I remember the Kyoto Protocol, in the 1990’s, how the US would not be subject to measures to protect the environment because it “would seriously harm the economy of the United States”.  Two decades since then and during those intervening years the knowledge of damage to the environment has increased while the US as a money maker (in different proportions) for all classes has flourished.

We know but we still do it.  We deny facing this contradiction and place it in the bag of shadows.  We then lose the ability to talk about these issues and cannot find the words.  But perhaps not finding the words is actually a skill.  Perhaps it is a good thing.  We block out the things that challenge us and settle into our “normal”.  Which is feeding the shadow.  This is the structure of the world.  This is the social structure. Our system of government.  Our system of finance.  Our system of acceptable mores and conventions.  Our fallible human natures cast upon the American landmass.

The dancers in the wings

The dancers in the wings

“We are in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic right now.  Three billion people are on lockdown so hopefully we understand there is some bigger issues involved now” - Dan Carlin

The big topic is the big topic.  How much government influence should there be? Like prising apart an atom or like trying to look at the back of your own head.

To my mind some sort of sea change is necessary and I’m being uber-utopian here.  The current shit going on would require a shift in the public, private, corporate segments of society - all of society.  The shit we are in dependent on mutual cooperation, a confederacy of dunces. New, sea change-inducing mechanisms may be put in place.  New ways of doing things that would symbolize and make real new attitudes that would seek to make a more stable world. At the government level, say, a pledge would be made to be a True Public Servant, to dutifully uphold the Public Good.

And “the public good” would be different, the current covetous spirit exorcised - and now may as well say it - my values would be the ones by which most lived by - less cars, more travel, no giant Winnebagos - and damn, maybe hard work would somehow be de-incentivized and the whole thing collapse.  Whatever. I will be the solitary philosopher king.

The meanness that lets the average American support policies of genocide reverberates through our American life.  Meanness with its best friend and travel partner Stupidity.  I’m for a more engaged and informed populace. Less bad television, more history books, diminished valorization of the automobile and an increase in muscle-powered pursuits, running, hiking, biking and rowing.  The mountains being so popular that climbing reservations years out would be made - smartly peopled nature a good thing. More smart engagement, less stupid meanness.

And too a vow in corporations to care aoub the society at large that this business wants to go about acting in a corporeal way within.

Alas, I feel the current shit isa  manifestation of the trained inability of masses of people to actively self reflect and make changes.  This obviously goes beyond seeking change through current political channels yet in the mass-mind the dance between Republican and Democrat is the only dance capable of being perceived.  Change must come from without and that means coming from the world of the unseen. Republicans and Democrats dance in the spotlight as though the spotlight was more a projector generating reality.  Change exists in the shadows among the other dancers in the wings. Occluded from the current reality tunnel.

The current shit has already had a narrative placed on it, those that have a little more intelligence (i.e. those that are in positions of power and have money) seeing what may extend the status quo/their existence.  The rich and powerful are suffering at a level they deem acceptable - not to villainize this class really, just noticing the vibe right now. We don’t blame that class, instead we blame the government.

The plebeian counterpart to that pledge of the politicians are mass movements, people taking to the streets, people deciding what the parameters of allowable obedience-disobedience are, voting with the public presence of their bodies.  And, interestingly, currently as we are in the shit of this virus the main response is to ban gatherings of more that ten people and urging people to just outright stay inside. Not deliberate, maybe more an artifact of actual real treatment fo the Covid-19 pandemic: it's not like some critical mass was about to be achieved.  Current (pre-pandemic) public policy concerns weren’t near to even getting close to the threshold of what would make Americans take to the streets.