that pestulential light again

What is the world but a massive insect eye - where the same image is caught in a six billion different lenses, and composed across the differences tat the see?\ a world reflect - and refracted into tit bit, gossip, well known facts, gathering tales and social passions. A world full of its own optical illusion and distortions, its own believes and problems.
what else do we man by big phrase such as the world but this fact- what else but this collectivasion through language and intuition through dreams perhaps into soemthing akin to the mind.
and and yet - the trouble is that mind even in allegory is mad, really really mad - for it lacks the checks and a balances that create and infuse the finite- it lacks then the external rhythms that are simply imposed on its from an fixed and known outside. The mad world of our collective mind, no ability to tell virtual, created in the storm of gossip and the act of telling from actual events. the two are one. as no doubt they are in all our minds to a degree- but only to a degree. its answer is of course to create dark demons patorl its borders- figures, be they a mysteries hidden ENEMY or a missed conspiracy, or the idea of a environment destroyed or a God - js but something beyond the rumour, something. IT could all be about, - a dream perhaps?
These visions are curious affairs- real demons, that one does not know whether the are inside or out. Dark demons are then thought up, theorizes, they theory enters the mind and new demon, a new half outside,half inside world is created in the added refraction.
For what is the name of a demon but legion?
Philosophy spilts into political economy, which spilt is into politics, business and economy which which again and again. The new formations then partially, at times coagulating and then splitting again into new forms, in a and endless procession of new amorphous externals -in a mind quite mad.
But it is mad in another sense to. For our collective mind is like the most repressed and emotionally illiterate of humans. it cannot feel what and where ti should, but rather will endless loose and misplaced feelings: worries about jobs slip into racism, and worries about death into new agism or hysteria about the medical profession. Nothing is ever felt as it seems. Nothing is ever quite right or proper in this mind of ours.
And yet of course the feeling here are always indulged (and this is really part of why they are never what they seem): A good social feeling creates its own world - carries it with it if you like. the world it builds, and then lives in (and the demons that are the obverse of this feeling).We live then in a world of rehoused collective feelings: Feelings that forever become their own reality - their own truth, irrespective of the effects of that truth or wider reality or even other parts of the mind.
The very act of sharing the feeling leads to the demand of these parts of the mind to be special- too really really matter more than the rest - to be their own little distorted demon haunted world -
Finally the networks creating and informing this collective mind are very wobbly. The rules about what get listen to and what ignored are rather mobile and indistinct. Many thing that should perhaps matter in our sane moments get lost, while innanities spread. We end up in this chaos looking to a few pillars of sense- a few censors or believes merchants to short though the hubbub of possible important dreams and fact. The rules then for bleeding a story across the world are either hidden or merely random - and live in the consequence of that fact. The result of course is that the things that are built up into a collective minds are only a very very small part of all that is going on. There are always other truths out there- in the drivel and the gold. The mind exists then of a small part of its own register- it needs to ignore so very very much, and has no clear fixed way to do it. It might notice the trivial or it might ignore gold - without a rhyme or reason.
The world then has slipped from the nice straight forward, if vindictive and petty, idea of God into the spider eyes of man and all his demons good and bad - and our problem is ow how to live with the impure insanity that necessarily follows...

A brutal dilemma

It is one of the odd, sad things about being a human - we dont's half belief in our ability and right to see into the future. We forever confuse desire with truth, hope for actuality, impossibility for probability . What is more there really odd thing about this tendency is that we do it more when we we only half half a thing, and less when we know more. Take a group of people or a hal understood policies or glitzy product, and we give you a fantasy.
All of which is fine, but of course the real rub here is that society is pitched a little in the real and a lot in the fantasy - and where before that fantasy used to be all about the State or a God, it is now all about products, and sham politics. The problem then being that this move to a religion of stuff creates an actual tension with genuine reality. For without a box called Not normal actuality, the worlds of fanatasy and reality merge and fuse - a merging that is always haighly problematic as mere belif creates its own other shadow realities.
Politics becomes then almost entirely a shadow game where one attacks made up stories and virtualites, based of single examples and urban myths (the politics of witch burning is what wins general elections), while economics becomes dream of the never never crossed with moment of absolute brutal reality. The entire process is then infused with a myth of freedom and chose. we are told hat we can chose can change government and are in some some of control. Indeed in a senese this claim is critical to the system. Once it was made (say two hundred years ago or so) once freedom became what the system had to be about, then as freedom parsay is actually a contradiction in terms in a complex society, the argument had to turn of fantasy. we might then not all be free in realty, or might have in spite of that freedom radicially different chances in life and different abilities to influence our world, but that need not matter if in the shared reality we all live in we are free.
A politics of freedom and fantasy clearly run together- and look for those freedom issues to incarnate and agitate around - and societies are tuning on the way they are delivering the current collective fantasy - and how. The rule being that at some point or other the fantasy shops and the fantasy engine gets going: The unglamourous mass production or unscrupulous world of finance,of maniptualtve sphere of advertising cut and ret the fantasy: There aim not to manage or direct so much as endlessly produce in the shadows. .. They do not pull the string, but rather mange them, We live them in a society where glizty fame is the gaol, and its production must remain of camera.
Except that this getting is getting tricky. The system is a little too complex at the moment. There are too many glitzy and too much production. So much so that it is being at times all too visible, Banks and the environment, secretes and media lies, all are more visible than have been in a world where everyone in a sense does some production (what else is facebook/blogs but a fame machine, where we are all also producers). The dirt and the realties that infuse our loud demand for fantasy as raining on our party. This is a complex crisis as it is very plain that new dark fanatsies are build built to cope with this dissolutionment- fantasies about living in difficult times and needing to punish ourselves and others more. There is no simple revolution here- and no necessary productive crisis - but rather a darken of the fantasy just when one thinks it might ends or change or become something different .
Leading to the double of the left, how to stop this dark fantasy destroying too much of what actually we value, but also at the same time how to try to find other voices than fantasy and this production - how to use its revealing to be production. But the brutual dilemma is that these to run counter to each other. revel so much truth and the fanatasy goes very dark very quickly: Reveal none or hide the production process and nothing changes. The Left whose future depends on then revealing the destructive production of fake fantasies in order to critique capitalism at all, finds its caught, in either supporting the dream or ruining and possibly leading the way to nightmare (as has happened so often before) -a very brutal choice....

Judicial Murder

Well we do not kill any more- but the great lesson of society - that at some point one individual has to be sacrificed very publicly and possibly grizzily - to serve as a reminder or a threat for the rest of us. It keeps us all behaving. ore that than it forms the limit at which a state can burn itself on otherwise inchoate forces that surround it and genuinely threaten it. what else was a witch trial but the sate showing its power at a time of anarchy (thirty years war)?
The witch of the cosmic version of the conflict that ranging between sates. sates were fighting points confessional struggles in protracted series of violent and disruptive wars - wars that risked anarchy really spreading peasent revolution and the rest). A good witch trial sopped all that - all the fear all the hatred could be worked in a grizzly passio na paly where the shere desperation of the times could be expressed in terms of a voilent conflict of god and devil and in the struggle of neighbours. The connection was not direct so much as inhabited. witch trial always around made sense in the desperate time. A sense then that also burned the power of the judges on the minds of individuals and set limit to anarchy (or rather caught within a certain conflict).
in short even states really do not like chaotic forces. or better they like only the one - the officially sanctioned force the Market. This the one they have been forced to accept and (and actually partially created - fosture/foisture on humanity). The Free market is then a chaotic force that the state runs with and merges with - the two feeding each other - and so expanding to devour otherpossible threats. The free press has been devoured by the freemarket (that is global new organization).
This relationship was of course bought in blood - and written in part across a series of conflict from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth that saw the rise of the market as the force of globalization of the times ( a struggle that included of course the witch trials).
The point of course being that the state (or market) now do not want other chaotic forces coming along. they will take extreme measures: They have then been looking for a long time for a good public judical murder (well after fear failed). a murder to make sure we all behave online and do not do anything too radical (this even as they trumpet the freedom on the internet- by of which of course they mean the rights of the market to use it). What better then then the jucidal slaughter of a sight that sells tittle tattle (and that actually has said nothing one one not assume to the be the case- America has actually come across as a sane super power). No matter. A case like this becomes then a defining point - a state is burning it power- forcing the new powers to conform and behave o the old model. making itself felt.
It is of course right to do so (well from it point of view). The Internet is potentially as disruptive as the free market or the anarchy of peasent rebellion. The only question is - is the freedom on the internet actually powerful in bedded enough to survive as the free market survived the attacks of the state- it was too useful to crush? - or will it buckle and conform in the face of state power - as google has done in China but of course now (when the boot is on the other foot) in America Or what is far more likely will the state and free market attempt to devour it as they have devoured all other freedoms: that is will they comprehend it in their structure (verbal and conceptual) and so prevent it having any other life. This is a legal but also a conceptual battle. the question is then can the state-market model absorb the internet within its existing language and concepts: Watch then for the deployment by the state and the media of the arguments of identity, personal freedom and responsiblity - and all the language commericalism here, and the way via apps via the music industry it becomes the language of the 'other-net')

Make then no mistake- this a is a real conflict for our times.
so where do you line up?

the coagulation of corruption.

It is one of those games we all play: an irregular verb - I compete, you bribe they are corrupt. Corruptions is almost the necessarily consequence when one model of possible political future becomes the only model, and is impose willy nilly across the world. States like Afghanistan have never worked (why should it have to be one- it never as?) - and all that is likely to hold the hodgepodge of interests together are web of wide scale corruption - so that the corruption actually becomes the sate, and every one knows it. It is after all an old problem in philosophy - One invent rules that appear perfect (or not)- and then discovers the problem about rules is that they create a game, that might not by playable or that if it will will be also played to intern rules, to the rules minds make of the rules they are given. rules external fixed thing, even the ten commandments (which is surely the idealists model here) simply do not have to be followed- or if they are the following itself might be highly problematic and complex. to follow a rule is never simple. Likewise to break a rule is never simple either. Rules are not simply there to brea- one might break one rule to mend another- or to keep the spirit of the whole thing... The entire edifice of laws then turns on interruptation, corruption or lawyers - how else could it be different?
lopped into this fact are then several others. firstly once one has a rules one needs a person to enforce it or regulate it or at least note when it has been broken. in the perfect rule state that person is of course oneself. And yet Rules are often rather technical affairs, and so highly complex to enforce - and oneself rather biddable and possibly open to suggestions: Or again rules are very often about articulating complex relations on has with others, relations which would normally be pitched in other (in more violent or passionate ways)- and rules form merely a part of that pitching (and not necessarily a big part). Or finally many if not all rules are parachuted in from God knows where- are the result of some stitch up at sometimes between global powers, and make little sense in local situation or in other peoples cultural traditions. There is no reason to follow them all the more this is the care when the external powers themselves do not follow (or perhaps police) there own rules. Or (as is often the case) e they are too greedy, or maybe they do not care enough. to monitor what there own people are doing. Maybe they have invented the rules in another context, or as a reflection of their own power (and so nothing to do with other nations) - the permutation go on and on- but the upshot is the same the world is full of bodies of rules defined at one time and in one (all too political context, and which has almost no value or universal application.
In short the idea that rules are internal affairs collapses leaving one with the bodies that are meant to enforce these rules impartially as the answer. At which point of course one hits the deep problem with external rules themselves. They need to be enforced as a world within the world. Everything will have then to be comprehended within the rule book and in terms of it The rich complexity of life is then lost within a few targets and half jotted mantras. The result is the then pure nonsense - as rules become applied nilly willy or wherever and however: - a world where they simply be any simple answer.
This is of course the Genius of case law Case law allows rules to be applied, and then for everyone to watch and think about the application and change their practice. Law becomes then a living tradition - for everyone to know. and yet keeping this case law free from the influences needs a lot of hate and jealousy, and all directed at the same place. That is you need rivals struggling with each other, rivals who are determined to honour the tradition but critique one another. The trouble of course is that the manufacture of such a system of rivals in a bitter struggle according to certain rules is almost by definition a product of cultural tradition. That is what cultures (with the exams and the colleges, and their port and high tables) do. To try to impose it elsewhere is then always tricky, as local customs will move the rules elsewhere- : Or actually and far more tragically the mere fact that one is imposing a rule from without is enough to undermine the application of the rule kit itself. Everyone is liable to self-consciously apply the rules, and wire that self-consciousness into their application- a fact that actually breeds corrpution as people cease to live the part.
Rules then corrupt as they wander across the globe- and do so naturally, as local practice adapt as they adopt, the rules. more than that they are adopted self-consciously, an adoption that disrupts culture making different people powerful, and creating a hybrid of local custom and self conscious rule kit. To navigate this senseless union becomes always then tricky. one need to knows That is exactly what rule as are being applied where (local or international or hybrid). At which point another dynamic kicks in. for once the rules cannot make sense then it really becomes about who one knows...
and other dynamics then get working. Firstly the original enforces of the rule are not innocent here. they have after all taken rules from one of their domains and applied then across all the rest. It does not wrk for them either - they will the be just as generate transgressor - only their corruption will be mingle with genuine hypocrisy as well, as they focus one where the rules work and not and the money making areas where they do not... At the same time the actual problem will not be understood by the western powers who rail against the corruption while aiding its creation and of course to do business at all conniving with it. An ideology of the end of history and the triumph of the west is so strong strong, and so imperial, that any other world or voice always gets itself lost in the process.
At which point of course the world divides into a very complex sequence of patchworks, some Western rules are applied sometimes and some local, and between rule endless little acts of bribery and corruption. Acts the West joins in one and uses of course for their own benefit (although in this case they are of course absorbed under the expenses of big business). A complexity that is then reflected in business big and small and the way it these fragments of law allow to make (or lose) money. the very fragmentation of the sate becomes then the system itself (and oddly stable)
Corruption then is not really any criminal so much as the failure of one system to universalize across all domains an the across the world. does this really surprise us? What really? and are we sure that in condemning i we are not merely also critiquing other cultures form not being like us? Questions we need remember in the rhythm war - even when we condemn regime that certainly are corrupt and d enforce unjust rules on their people, regime - that and do indeed include ourselves once we are removed from the comfort zone of our western identity....

Leaks or history

It is a matter of rhythm which you say of corse. that is there the politics of war and diplomacy, necessarily two faced, if what keeps peace, or whether everyone actually knowing that people are not daffy, they have realized Cameron is ligtweight, China might not care for North Korea, and Saudi Arabia does not like the Shiite republic. A force has temporarily the face that states put up to the world, the rhythms that being a state, with is dynamics of nationalism - and hypocracies of commerce and democracy, but whtehr the icebergs of the states shatter into violence is another matter. It rathe depends one exactly where one thinks hmanity likes to pitch its political power. I mean states are the successor to Gods, and are so fairly deliberately. They see themselves and their action a semi-divine entity. that s beyond good and evil or simple comprehension - and certainly beyond emotion this entire edifice of global politics has then an element of Olympus about ti. Great god struggle across the face of the world. they set up alliances, pour in resources for a while: they even have special favourites - and all the while they have the same needy relationship with their humans. for they need to be worshipped to be a all - and the same dependence on chance (and oil). the same need that is to confuse themselves with the world of men
The deep rhythmic accord here is no doubt not chance. Why else do the ruling classes laud the classics so highly: In the d they see the template for the states.
And yet this quasi-divine sate has clearly come under rather a lot of pressure recently. Firstly from these kind of leaks- the moment that we realize (if we actually ever doubted it) that we are governed by humans after all. Secondly of course there have been those other leaks thats how exactly how corrupt the entire state is and how inefficent. It is less a divine body and more merely a way to have individuals on the make. The self appointed divine state is clearly under threat - from as it were an internal cancer, which corrodes their apparent power and their rights to command worship. N owonder sates call foul, and sar to use whatever they have to stop or limit leaks- any God would do as much.
But what we are left with is strange question.
in the end is democracy actually realizable and worthwhile. that is do we want these successor to God ruling the world as they do now? Our chance of the divine in the sate? Or do we want to pitch the pretensions of these Cod divinities? aand hw if they dies on us, how do we replace these Leviaithans without resorting to Behemoths of chaos? What is the world with out sham divinity really like? a world Hobbes knew and feared....A world that might now be different, might be better, but do you want to take the risk? Or do you want to pretend to yourself that you do, and yet not really? thatat is do you want merely to cricitise the sate or the gods without declaring them dead.
But if this last is true what does one do when the Gods wreak vengance to restore honour? Are we going to stand ? Or attempt to say something and so risk being caught up in the tempest of forces. The point being of course if enough of us say something (or even more laugh) at some point whether we say will stick - it will be something the God are listening to.
That is if we criticise Gods for Duck houses and not for the size of their claims (Cameron was actually the most greedy politics of the last parliament in terms of money paid)- then that critique sticks in the minds of our Gods, and they ensure we cannot make it again - one way or other (and will warp an entire system just to ensure that fact - the rules of nature or sense suspended for our foolish query). Do we want then to critique knowing that is the case. that is that what sticks is not sense but chaotic power to reverberate the powers of the gods themselves.
The death of God, Death of man and the Death of the the state, are three agonies crystalized together- a death agony that will one way or other reverberate through time; The screams of the dying forms the rhythm war itself.