They call it the Tragedy of the Commons, man, a cosmic downer flick projected on the greasy screen of reality. Garrett Hardin, that square with a heart full of barbed wire, spins this yarn about how people, us rubes, can’t be trusted with the good stuff – the land, the water, the air, even. We’d just suck it dry, turn it into a wasteland faster than a smack fiend at a pharmacy fire sale.
The rub, see? The hustle. Take that juicy commons, that shared bounty, and rip it from the greasy grip of the people. “For their own good,” they croon, these same bloodsuckers who’ve been squeezing the life out of the planet for decades.
Here’s the trick, man: Diffuse ownership, let everyone have a piece of the pie, and – WHAM! – instant locust swarm.Everyone’s gotta grab as much as they can before the well runs dry. But concentrate that ownership, put it in the hands of one slick dude in a three-piece suit? Now, that’s where the magic happens.
Suddenly, “rational self-interest” kicks in. This cat, he’s not some hippie sharing a bong with the daisies, no sir. He’s got a bottom line, a cold, hard equation etched on his reptilian brain. He’ll squeeze every last drop outta that commons, alright,but only after he’s figured out the most profitable way to do it. Because hey, rent don’t pay itself, right?
This Tragedy, it’s a script, a dog-eared paperback romance playing out on the grand stage of exploitation. They paint us as the villains, a horde of ravenous consumers, and themselves? The benevolent heroes, forced to lock up the goodies to save us from ourselves.
But here’s the real tragedy, the one they won’t show you in their flickering picture show: the land choked by greed, the air thick with fumes, the water a stagnant nightmare. All for the sake of some suit’s bottom line.
We gotta cut through this celluloid lie, man. We gotta rewrite the script, reclaim the commons, and show them what real stewardship looks like. It ain’t about profit margins, it’s about a shared responsibility, a dance with the earth, not a striptease for the highest bidder.
What happens when an ideology under the infinite guise creates a finite number of institutional/non institutional posts? The more ideologically entrenched a society is, the more it perceives any diversity as a threat. All human societies require myths, and they cannot function effectively as societies so long as they remain baffled by their ambivalence. For any concerted action to be possible, myths must be “ideologized” In its essence, politics is the practice of making symbols useful, for good and for ill
A society is pre-totalitarian when its people will only accept as “truth” what confirms what they prefer to believe. The politics apprehends genuine artistic works as works of artifice. You also have to be skeptical of the altruism behind conscripting a large number of people for free work is in their best interests. That is to say, even the political needs art as its mythopoeic foundation and challenge.
It is also true that humans can only produce art through culture by means of sign systems that are politically established and maintained. The best sometimes artist can hope for is a tenuous and ultimately doomed alliance with the status quo.
In the Marxist base and superstructure model of society, Ruling class-interests determine the superstructure and the nature of the ideology justifying the actions of society. An authority who calls to us is interpellating us a position we recognize and accept. The position we take is relative to a superior and central ‘Other Subject’, exercising emotional authority. Our identity is thus defined by the other and we recognize ourselves as an image or a reflection of the Other. The consistency principle leads you into a cycle of investment whereby you bond your sense of identity both to the subject position and also the underlying ideology.
Althusser’s explained how Ideological apparatuses interpellated the subjects into ideological positions. This interpellation is a form of misrecognition, where an externalized image is perceived both as the self and an ‘other’ all of which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’”
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: ARISTOTLE’S FRETS
Aristotle imagined a world in which machines could do all the work for themselves. He believed that better machines could free and elevate people, even slaves. But when the economy becomes more about information it seems to distort and shrink the overall size. In the case of the music industry, making a pre-digital system “efficient” through a digital network shrank it economically to about a quarter of its size. Instead wealth is being vacuum upstairs, since most of the real value still occurs out in the real world is reconceived to be off the books.
We’re used to treating information as “free,” but the price we pay for the illusion of “free” is only workable so long as much of the overall economy isn’t about information. The information economy, has been busy trying to conceal the value of all information, of all things things
The identity stack is 3 layers: fabrication of interchangeable components, knowledge sets and expensive cryptography. Non-material roles may be priced at will pertaining to social conceptions of status, possession, rights and so forth. The capacity to “innovate” which is usually a word for disintermediation is now potentially exceeding the capacity to learn. The practice of splitting the economic and social aspects of technology at the lowest attainable level is like dividing church and state for our day.
The material structure can get as cheap as nature allows, and advances as quickly as technology. The ability to re-package and shrink economy seems to be growing exponentially. But if the world is to be reconceived and engineered as a place where people are not particularly distinguished from other components, then people will fade.
INFORMATION IS NOT FREE
Software could be the final industrial revolution, and it might subsume all the revolutions to come: Maybe technology will make all the needs of life so inexpensive that it will be virtually free to live well. But instead, we are probably heading into a period of hyper-unemployment, and the attendant political and social chaos. The outcome of chaos is unpredictable, and we shouldn’t rely on it to design our future.
We’re used to treating information as “free,” but the problem in each case is not that you stole from a specific person but that you undermined the artificial scarcities that allow the economy to function. “Public goods” are defined as Non-exclusionary. They can be used by everyone, including those who don’t pay. They are Non-rivalrous. You disintermediate some and intermediate others. Transfer of intellectual property to those unrelated to the inventors is like injecting meth. Short term euphoria and long-term doom.
MOORE’s LAW
Moore’s Law means that more and more things can be done practically for free, if only it weren’t for those people who want to be paid. People are the flies in Moore’s Law’s ointment: when machines get incredibly cheap to run, people seem correspondingly expensive. In previous times in history inventions of new things created high value occupations by automating or eliminating those of lower value. Today’s flexible software is threatening to “free” us from the drudgery of all repetitive tasks rather than those of lowest value, pushing us away from expertise.
Pdf Economy
The standard mindset in the Western post-industrial state can only conceptualize of things in an inherently consumerist fashion. Every purchase of an old-fashioned vinyl, keyboard or guitar opens an opportunity to earn money by enhancing provenance.
More and more of the economy is mediated through a productification of the environment, and then after productification, we turn it in pdfs or mp3 but keeping it predicable, largely consumerist experience. The rise of the “network economy” where all economic activity is mediated by information tools, and the commodification of all human activity as a service to the information age.
An Mp3 buyer is no longer a first-class citizen in a marketplace. When you buy a vinyl, you can resell it at will, or continue to enjoy it no matter where you decide to buy other vinyl’s. You have only purchased tenuous rights within someone else’s company store. Musical recording was a mechanical process until it wasn’t, and became a network service.
WHAT FREEMIUM & WALMART HAVE IN COMMON
In order for a computer to run, the surrounding parts of the universe must take on the waste heat, the randomness. Google wants to be closed about how it compiles and exploits your information. Facebook wants you to have only one identity, so that it’s easier to collate information about you. Twitter suggests that meaning will emerge from fleeting flashes of thought contextualized by who sent the thought rather than the content of the thought. The plain is to gain dominance through rewarding network effects, but keeps dominance through punishing network effects.
The illusion that everything is getting so cheap that it is practically free sets up the political and economic conditions for cartels exploiting whatever isn’t quite that way. When music is free, wireless bills get expensive, insanely so. No matter how petty a flaw might be in a utopia, that flaw is where the full fury of power seeking will be focused. The power of the network grows as the square of its size. The original form was called the fax-machine effect.
One person with a fax machine is useless. Two people is one connection. Three people is three potential connections. Four is 6.
The Web has created a broad new class of knowledge workers: volunteer amateur editors. Their net effect is to displace existing knowledge workers, including journalists, writers, librarians, musicians. Nothing kills jobs faster and more permanently than free labor.
A few of the folks all this places aggregates will inevitably get an insane lift from being hitched to it, and they’ll create even more excitement. After all that’s the religion the world has run on for 40 years. This ideology wants the algorithm to run the show with as few humans in the loop as possible, ostensibly to improve “customer service” by “lowering prices.
The only thing that matters is that you don’t want to be left out of the loop in the information age. The game is on you, and it will only get worse. The only thing that matters is that you don’t want to be left out of the loop in the information age, and that you want your information to be valued in economic terms, not in terms of how much you can make from it. If the information age accounting were complete and honest, as much information as possible would be valued by those who provide the information.
NAPSTERIZATION OF EVERYTHING: BIG DATA
Scientific data can be gathered and mined, just like gold, provided you put in the hard work. Pretending that data came from the heavens instead of from people can’t help but shrink the overall economy. Capitalism only works if there are enough successful people to be the customers. No economy can be sustained on the backs of a few hundred major companies with a handful of employees and virtually no overhead. No amount of cost lowering can foster economic dignity when it also means that there are fewer good jobs.
We can’t tell how much of the success of an AI algorithm is due to people changing themselves to make it seem successful. People have repeatedly proven adaptable enough to lower standards in order to make software seem smart. Efficiency is a synonym for how well a server is influencing the human world to align with its own model of the world.
The future is uncertain. The death of traditional jobs in the manufacturing and retail industries and the decline in the middle class are just some of the factors contributing to the decline. No amount of cost lowering can foster economic dignity if it also means that there are fewer good jobs.
BELL CURVES: THE SUPERSTAR ECONOMY:
The music industry is a Superstar economy, that is to say a very small share of the total artists and works account for a disproportionately large share of all revenues. This is not a Pareto’s Law type 80/20 distribution but something much more dramatic: the top 1% account for 77% of all artist recorded music income. A star system is just a way of packaging a bell curve. Winner-take-all distributions come about when there is a global sorting of people within a single framework. But broader forms of reward like academic tenure and research grants are vastly more beneficial
All rituals in which anointed individual will suddenly become rich and famous are winner-take-all rituals. Winner- take-all Distributions, amplify errors and make outcomes less meaningful . To rely on them is a mistake — pragmatic, ethical, but also a mathematical one. Top players are rewarded tremendously while almost everyone else starves.
To get a bell curve of outcomes there must be a variety of paths, or sorting processes, that can lead to success. Henry Ford made a point of pricing his cars so that his own factory workers could afford to buy them. Digital networks have been mostly applied to reduce benefits of locality, and that will lead to economic implosion.
LEVEES
Bands, solo artist, styles and other talent have gone extinct during the collapse of the music industry, mainly as a result of human activity. A big part of the problem is that most consumers now attribute very little value to the recording itself. A decade-long decline in recording revenues has dismantled the label system, once the most reliable form of artist financing.
The music industry brass remained static and went on a campaign to blame everybody but themselves for their problems, The top 1% account for 75% of CD revenues but 79% of subscription revenue. Nashville has lost more than 80 percent of its songwriters since 2000. Most artists are overwhelmed with tasks that go far beyond making music, such as Tweeting fans. Lower royalties are killing an entire generation of writers, he writes. We are slowly losing the race against multi-resistant bacteria, he says.
The only thing that really works for the user (iTunes, Amazon, Spotify) has given rise to a hardware-based, proprietary, walled- garden, non-music-centric, de-facto monopoly. When you hollow out culture, it is inevitable that parasitic forces fill the void sometimes called corporations, sometimes called government.
The hyperefficient market optimized to yield star-system results will not create enough of a middle class to support a real market dynamic. It is that balance that creates economic growth, and thus opportunity for more wealth. To combat the degradations of star systems, levees” arose to compensate Thermodynamics and protect the middle class.
Levees modestly hold back thermodynamics to protect something precious. Markets are an information technology. A technology is useless if it can’t be tweaked. We can survive if we only destroy the middle classes of musicians, journalists, and film makers. But the destruction of transportation, manufacturing, energy, office work, education, and health care will come if the dominant idea of an information economy isn’t improved.
Live Music fans are frustrated with high ticket prices at concerts. The average consumer goes to just 1.5 shows a year. Many others are touring just to pay the bills, including medical bills. Dick Dale, who remains on the road despite his advanced age to pay for treatment for rectal cancer, renal failure, and massive vertebrae damage.
“When this music wants to be free things started happening. We just started having weekly fundraisers for people like famous musicians who’d gotten sick in old age and had like no support me more,” says singer/songwriter John Perry Barlow. “ Intellectual property kind of like a lot of things in our society it you can think of it as something that only benefits elites but actually it was fought for by unions trying to support people who are not elites at all,” he says. “To have it lost by people who thought they were doing the right thing is just one of the great tragedies of our era,” he adds.
Record companies and the Broadcast publishing official statistics are under increased pressure to keep up the illusion that the music Industry is recovering by manipulating whatever dials can be turned by law or fiat. It has given reign give to an interim “gimmick economy” but in the long term, this way of using network technology is not even good for the rich and most powerful players because their ultimate source of wealth can only be a growing economy. An economy where we sell each other PDF’s or MP3’s is no more viable that the debt based on we have now.
The ideal mechanism would reward creativity, and still be tough enough to withstand thermodynamics which will surely appear. So long as public goods make up a minority of a market economy, taxes on non-public goods can be used to pay for the exception where price and value gap are large.
TECHNOLOGY
I think where people go wrong in imagining post-capitalist economies is starting with values. The stacking order is technology → economics → values. You need to start with alternative technological principles. Example: design with degradation/aging as a feature not bug.
Venkatesh Rao
The average Sci-Fi writer of the 50s, 60s and 70s would be very, very disappointed with the world of 2018. Technology is not pure/impure but subjected to ape psychology People outside tech truly do not understand the insane & stupid arrogance that dudes develop when you give them magic computer powers, tell them to use those powers instead of thinking, pay them a lot of money, and then give them a space where they can suck each other’s dicks all day. Technology is someone’s opinion in material form, sometimes it’s tantamount to being trapped in someone else’s head. What if tech was designed to solve last century’s problems? Why are we so ineffective tackling the 21st? Maybe we are not prepared to make changes that go beyond our current level of mental complexity. Unfortunately the medium has ended up amplifying lack of flexibility, along with self-absorption.
Biggest “tech” breakthroughs in recent years have been nothing more than clever hacks to get around onerous regulation, he writes. Tech exaggerates economic system tendencies toward extraction, growth for growth’s sake, he says. “World building is a thing” in a digital world, he adds. It’s time for a new era of techlash, and a new generation of tech entrepreneurs, he argues. “Art requires the flexibility to loosen one’s identity in order to feel the pleasure of merging with the artist,” he says, in an emotional and physical connection.
Much of internet was a means to access inner space with different destinations being different possible versions of future you. The new stack is so successful that it optimizes its environment instead of changing in order to adapt to the environment. Cheap networking facilitates exaggerated and rapid network effects. Silicon Valley, which once seemed a portal to unlimited potential, now induces claustrophobia as so many distinct companies with different competencies and cultures must compete for the same global pool of so-called advertisers. It might eventually become an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail.
This access to inner spaces was supposed to make up for our lack of experience in peer relationships which was preventing some the development of the common pathway through which people learn about decision-making skills and the capacity to maintain a relationship. However, when your inner space is opened to commercial activity, it exaggerates this economic system tendencies toward extraction, growth for growth’s sake, and the removal of human agency and connection. Now the system amplifies for ruthlessness, and capital “becomes a person” through corporations and tech.
So much information is “free,” that there is nothing left to advertise on Google that attracts actual money. It may well mean either the state takes the means of production to sustain itself (i.e seizes say a bitumen plant to keep roads) or simple hollows out in time. It seems like subtracting value, an enormous amount of value, and stymied progress to seize control and extract wealth.
High unemployment and very high underemployment may well result in a non functioning state. This means building new models for the distribution of necessary rival goods. It is entirely legitimate to understand that people are still needed and valuable. The rich live behind gates, not just to protect themselves, but to pretend to not need anyone else. The ghosts of the losers haunt every acre of easy abundance.
It’s not as if everyone wanted to be closer to all of humanity when cities first formed. Something was lost with the advent of the polis, and we still dream of getting it back. The greatest beneficiaries of civilization use all their power to create a temporary illusion of freedom from politics. In every case, abundance without politics was an illusion that could only be sustained in temporary bubbles, supported by armies. It was a bubble supported by the power of the rich, and it’s time to get rid of it, he argues. The quote could be interpreted as a daydream that better technology will free us to some degree from having to deal with one another.
For better or worse, when the time comes the future will be shaped by the separation of church and state for our times. Our new time lords display difficulty understanding the on-the-books value of culture.Ric Amurrio
Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.
— Werner Heisenberg
If territory is a concept, the question would be: what is the problem to which it answers? Territory: An area of of phase space under the jurisdiction of a certain temporality. A concept is a way to organize a set of patterns that would otherwise remain chaotic. Concepts are not given as part of the universe, nor are they sitting waiting to be discovered in some Platonic world of Ideas. Rather, they are invented and maybe later ossify into “common sense”
“On Exactitude in Science” Borges writes about a fictional empire so adept at cartography that they are able to make a map of the exact size and dimensions of the Empire but when but when future generations lose interest in mapmaking the massive maps decay and litter the empire. Jean Baudrillard used Borge’s fable to illustrate what he saw as the inversion of the relationship between models (copies) and reality.
The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory. Territorial refers to the issue of individuality as an entity, identity, be it a person or a location or something else. If the territory you are familiar with is crossed by other people, the space would be crossed by different maps. There is not one map that stands out and defines space. Or is there?
We are all accustomed to believe that maps and reality are necessarily related, or that if they are not. Scribbling on the map does not change the territory: If you change what you believe about something that is a change in the pattern of neurons in your brain. The real thing will not change because of this.
“The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?”
~ Jeff VanderMeer
Korzybski’s Quest
Alfred Korzybski was a Polish-Polish engineer and war veteran. He wrote the source book for the field of study we know as General Semantics. He was haunted by his war experiences and asked how it is that humans have progressed so far but still fight wars. He believed that the progress of the sciences has not kept pace with the pace of human progress. His work is concerned with the role of language and language habits in human behavior.
Korzybski’s quest: What makes the human species human? What are the similarities among humans that differentiate us from other species? What accounts for the vast differences in behaviors that are exhibited among humans? Is it possible to characterize these vast differences such that we can more rapidly increase behaviors that advance and progress humanity?
What makes humans human? Time-binding
Plants as Chemistry-binders
Plants absorb, or bind, specific chemicals in their immediate environment. They reproduce cells and produce growth. Growth and reproduction are influenced by other environmental factors such as climate, gravity, and (of course) plant-eating animals and pollinating insects.
Animals as Space-binders
Animals possess (to varying degrees) the ability to move about in their environment. If the source of its food or water depletes, an animal can move to another place. Korzybski referred to animals as space-binders in that they ‘bind’ the spaces within their living territory.
The refrain TUNE WHISTLING/HUMMING
The Ritournelle has been translated in fact in English by refrain Deleuze, as, use an onomatopoeia in order to explain this word: “Tra la la” as a kid would hum.
When do I do Tralala ? When do I hum? I hum when I go around my territory…and that I clean up my furniture with a radiophonic background…meaning when I am at home. I also hum when I am not at home and that I am trying to reach back my home…when the night is falling, anxiety time…I look for my way and I give myself some courage by singing tralala. And, I hum when I say “Farewell, I am leaving and in my heart I will bring…”. The ritournelle (refrain), for me, is absolutely linked to the problem of territory, and of processes of entrance or exit of the territory. I enter in my territory, I try, or I deterritorialize myself, meaning I leave my territory.
The Ritournelle is therefore a form of incantation for a claimed spatiality,
Humans as Time-binders
The most critical difference between humans and animals is our ability to create, manipulate, record, and transform symbols. The ability to transfer knowledge from human to human, within and across generations, is called time-binding. Languages and other symbol systems provide humans with the means to document experiences, observations, tips, descriptions. Knowledge among the human species can therefore accumulate and advance as a body, not as random lessons taught and learned by copying, mimicking, or experience. All human achievements are cumulative; no one of us can claim any achievement exclusively as his own.
We all must use consciously or unconsciously the achievements of others, some of them living but most of them dead, to do greater things by help of things already done by others. It is this ability to ‘bind’ time that makes humans human, and is the defining capability of human time-binders. The capacity for accumulating experience, enlarging it, and transmitting it for future expansion is the peculiar power, the characteristic energy, the definitive nature, the defining mark, of man.
The definition of’ territory’ evades simple categorization because it continuously transforms into something else. It does not privilege or preserve any particular homeland’s nostalgic or xenophobic protection.
The territorial codings between and across certain bird species and their environments are carried over into the music in the use of birdsong. In response to these pressures, musicians have tried to open a space releasing “lines of flight” from the interdisciplinary territories in the hope of connections and new productions. The work of Olivier Messiaen, who used birdsong in his works from about 1955 onwards, linked birdsong to the piano in a way that transformed the domain of the musical instrument
The evolution of life is not about the survival of the fittest through cutthroat competition in conditions of ecological scarcity, but about self differentiating life overflowing with experimental self-organizing forms. For Deleuze, contracting habits was a way of creating order out of chaos. Habits are constitutive of the subject, not expressions of it.
A truly human existence involves overcoming habit, moving from mechanical repetition to creative repetition. Repetition is either conservative or is it creative, he says. In jazz, improvisational jazz, one hazards an improvisation, to join with the world. The idea of repeating with a difference is one of the defining features of improvisation in jazz.
Repetition is in one case a reparative reaction to trauma, a compulsive repetition of the same while the other repetition is a creative response to some of life’s little complexities. What Deleuze would call creative repetition or repetition with a difference
The territory is a multiplicity of partial objects that must be brought together or combined in order to create something that will never be completely stable in itself. To improvise is to join with the World, or meld with it. It is only through the expansion of territory that an identity takes form. Without it, one would be in a static milieu, crystallized:
Territory is a part of phase space and is not granted, but created, the territory itself is structured by some kind of repetition of forms of behavior and their function. In both situations it will be a sequence in of markings, or signs, postures, gestures etc. which will be in both situations.
Multi-territoriality is based on deterritorialization. It disrupts existing modes of meaning, wiping out crystallised individuals, de-substantializing jobs and rewriting history. The territory must have an outside, and there must be a way out of it. This creates an illusion of autonomy where the laws become flexible, but this redistribution of power also puts us all the more under the influence of other territorialities rather than only liberating us. TERRITORIALIZATION
The word ‘ territorialization’ was inspired by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. For Lacan,’ territorialization’ refers to the way an infant’s body is structured around and defined by erogenous zones and their relations with part-objects. As the infant undergoes a process of territorialisation its orifices and organs are conjugated. In the psychoanalytic sense, to deterritorialise is to free desire from libidinal investment.
This reconfiguration of Lacanian ‘territorialisation’ is that the subject is exposed to new organisations; the principal insight being: deterritorialisation shatters the subject.
LINES OF FLIGHT
Deleuze and Guattari would rather consider things not as objects, but as groups or multiplicities, concentrating on events rather than static essences. Music’s purpose is to facilitate a’ phase’ in which flight lines can be released within these numerous interdisciplinary territories to communicate with each other. The capitalist class attempts to control and submit to the reproduction of capital all of the mechanisms of deterritorialization in the order of production and social relations.
In this respect it must not be viewed in a negative way, it is not the polar opposite of territorialization or reterritorialized. It is not a reversal of the territorialization of the territory, but the formation of new combinations of the elements that made up the original territory. It can best be understood as a movement producing change, in so far as it operates as a line of flight, and indicates the creative potential of an assemblage. Philosophy is an example of absolute Deterritorialization, capital is a relative example.
GENERAL SEMANTICS:
What accounts for the differences in mapping: Evaluating
Korzybski knew from first-hand experience in World War I that human mapping did not always result in “improvement” or “greater things” Because people can expect to experience the ‘same’ event or situation differently, their reactions to the experience will inevitably be different. So in assessing the differences in human behaviors, Korzybski theorized that these differences were matters of evaluation, that is mapping, due to the different meanings that individuals attached to events and experiences, based on their own individual values.
Korzybski published his time-binding theory in Manhood of Humanity in 1921. For two years he observed patients at St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital in Washinton, D.C. He observed the language of the mentally ill, specifically how in many instances their language (maps) did not match the ‘real’ world (territory), which reflected pathological cases of misevaluation. He specifically sought a way to articulate and communicate how a misevaluation differed operationally from an appropriate evaluation.
The Map|Territory Analogy
Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map; the map of the map, of the map; and so on, endlessly, a fact first noticed by [Josiah] Royce (Korzybski, 1994, p. 58).
1. The map is not the territory.
A map depicts only limited aspects of the territory it represents or symbolizes. For a map to be useful, it must accurately reflect the relative structure or relationships of the key features of the territory. Similarly, our language behaviors can be thought of as maps of our actual life experiences. These verbal expressions of how and what we think, feel, react, judge, assume, etc., should be in accordance with the ‘territory’ . And on a pre-verbal level, we can use the metaphor to remember that even our lived experiences — what we see, hear, feel, smell, taste, etc. — are neurological constructs (‘maps’) of whatever it is in the ‘real’ world outside ourselves.
In other words, a particular type of distinction is expressed: one thing is not the same thing as another thing which the one thing is represented by. More generally, an abstraction is not that from which the abstraction is abstracted. The map (an abstraction) is not the territory ( whatever is not an abstraction; but hold that thought until the summary of this page).
2. The map cannot show all of the territory.
Maps are limited in size and detail. They can only depict selected items of interest or importance. Our language behaviors are limited and cannot include or comprehend all of whatever we are trying to describe or understand. On a pre-verbal level, the maps of what we are seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling account for only a fraction of what exists in the territory of the ‘real’ world.
3. A map is self-reflexive and made by a map-maker.
A human being makes a map by deciding the purpose of the map, the size, the scale, the features to be included, how many copies will be made, who will use it, the colors, etc. We are making our own maps (evaluations) of our experiences, and we can also then evaluate our evaluations. In language, since we can almost endlessly talk about our talking, we are in a sense making maps of maps, of maps of Maps, etc..
In deciding all those details, the human map maker must also determine which features will not be included, which might be exaggerated or emphasized for importance, what descriptive annotations might be helpful. And if the map-maker were constructing a map of the territory which surrounded the map-maker herself, then a theoretically-complete map would include both the map itself and the map-maker.
Abstracting-Evaluating
Abstracting, in the context of Korzybski’s model, refers to physio-neurological processes that occur on non-verbal and verbal levels. From the world of energy stimulations that envelope us, our nervous systems abstract (or select, choose, pay attention to, etc.) only a fraction. From these partial, incomplete, and fleeting sensations, the nervous system must construct our conscious or aware experiences by matching patterns of stimuli with the brain’s ‘database’ of previous experiences.
Evaluating is used in much the same way as abstracting, although you could consider it a higher-level, more generalized term in that we can cognitively evaluate the abstractions that result from our abstracting.
Abstracting by necessity involves evaluating, whether conscious or not, and so the process of abstracting may be considered as a process of evaluating stimuli, whether it be a “toothache,” “an attack of migraine,” or the reading of a “philosophical treatise.” A great many factors enter into “perceiving” … (Korzybski, 1990b, pp. 686–687)
Abstraction process: Structural Differential
Alfred Korzybski developed this diagram in the 1920’s as a means to visualize the abstracting process. The parabola represents an environment (the world around us) consisting of innumerable characteristics or events. Only some of these characteristics can be detected by human senses. These initial sensory data are further abstracted and transformed as the nervous system/brain recognizes and associates the data with a word or label. The tag below the circle represents the Descriptive (verbal) level of abstracting.
From descriptions of events we form inferences, assumptions, opinions, beliefs, etc., by generalizing this experience with our past experiences. And we can continue, indefinitely, to forming ferences from inferences,. which may then be subsequently recalled in future experiences.
Abstracting
Something happens (Event);
I sense what happens (Object);
I recognize what happens (Description);
I generate meanings for what happens. (Inferences)
Abstracting refers to ongoing physio-neurological processes that occur on non-verbal levels. EVENT is not OBJECT is not DESCRIPTION is not INFERENCE, etc. We can verbally differentiate certain phases, or levels or orders, of the abstracting process to analyze our behaviors and reactions. What we experience is a function of the unique capabilities and limitations of our own individual nervous system.
Two Worlds
As a consequence of our abstracting-evaluating processes, you can say we live in two worlds — the world that exists out there beyond our skin, and the world in here within our skin. What each of us knows about the world out there is constructed by our in here nervous systems based on our individual sensory interactions with the world out there.
Summarizing
A. We need to acknowledge and take into account the characteristics of these two worlds.
B. We need to understand that even our most basic sense experiences of the out-there world are created by our brains.
C. We need to maintain awareness, and take responsibility, for the neurological fact of this foundational distinction — what we experience in here is not what’s out there to be experienced.
In Korzybski’s terminology, we need to maintain a consciousness of abstracting, beginning with the understanding that everything we experience represents an abstraction of something else. In a very real sense, all we can ‘know’ are abstractions and associated neurological constructions.
… we used and still use a terminology of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’, both extremely confusing, as the so-called ‘objective’ must be considered a construct made by our nervous system, and what we call ‘subjective’ may also be considered ‘objective’ for the same reasons (Korzybski, 1990c, p.650).
Identification
In General Semantics, the behavior we label identification is normally to be avoided, or at least recognized. We allow the stimulus to determine our response, without deliberately or conditionally evaluating the stimulus. Examples of identification include: mistaking the word as the thing, or the map as the territory. An extreme example would be someone eating a menu because the pictures of the food look so tasty. Someone who eats an unfamiliar food, then later has a rather upsetting reaction when informed what the food was, isn’t reacting to the food. The person is reacting to the sound of the name of the food. The verbalized name is associated (identified) with a previous or imagined terrible experience and that drives the reaction. The author was responding to a negative review on Amazon.com of a plastic product made by a company called Steelmaster. This, even though the reader acknowledged the product was described as being made of plastic.
BIOLOGY AND THE UMWELT
If we approach territoriality from the perspective of biology, we can use the understanding of territory advanced by the ethologist Jakob von Uexküll. Von Uexküll proposed that there is no meaning outside of a milieu (Umwelt). For him a ‘territory’ refers to a specific milieu that cannot be separated from the living thing occupying and creating the milieu, so that the meaning of a milieu for Von Uexküll is affective.
NOMADICISM
The origin of the word ‘nomad’ is not, as many have assumed, a romanticized image of actual nomadic peoples, such as the Bedouins, but rather Immanuel Kant’s disparaging claim that the outside of philosophy is a wasteland fit only for nomads. The immediate origin of the concept would seem to be Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of the despot in L’Anti-Oedipe (1972), translated as Anti-Oedipus (1977). The despot is an intermediate figure between the primitive society without a state on the one hand and the so-called civilized imperial state on the other.
What is crucial about the concept , however, is the fact that in Deleuze and Guattari’s description it refers to a latent state of being, meaning it is virtual and presupposed, but never actual. The figure of the nomad stands for the power of the virtual, or what they call the war machine. The nomad is a tendency towards deterritorialization, Deleuze and Guattari argue, that can be found to some degree in all phenomena. Their project consists in identifying this tendency wherever it can be located and finding ways of amplifying it. A philosophy would be a great philosophy, not if it could be placed within a specific and limited territory of reason (such as a correct and consistent logic) but if it maximized what philosophy could do and created a territory: creating concepts and styles of thought that opened up new differences and paths of thinking.
The signifier holds no sovereignty over interpretation in this account, for intensity of experience is more important than meaning. The signifier is not the determinant of what is signified, for the significations of the text change with the placement of the text in context.
In this sense, nomadic space is smooth-not because it is undifferentiated, but because its differences are not those of a chessboard (cut in advance, with defined movements); the differences establish positions and lines by movement.
A tribe dreams about, crosses and dances a space and thus fills the territory from within; the real territory — the material extension held by this tribe which could then be measured and quantified — would be different from (and dependent on) the abstract, nomadic territory, for if the tribe went on, danced and dreamed elsewhere, the original territory would have been already there.
And if the first territory was crossed by other people, the space would be crossed by different maps. There is not one map that stands out and defines space. Or is there?Ric Amurrio
“Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used “to tell” at all.”
Umberto Eco
Art allows for the subjective aspect of our lives to exist outside us, which is to say that in art, the subjective becomes objective. For the most part, however, a “sign” is some unit of communication that stands for something else, while a symbol is a unit of communication imbued with deeper and more complex meaning.
SIGN
A sign is simply something that stands for something else. For example, the word “cactus” directly correlates with the idea of a spiny desert plant, so the word is a sign signifying the plant. Signs are not limited to a single meaning. The sign “cactus” might refer to a specific prickly pear plant or to an entire species. The word still correlates directly, or stands for, something else. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
SYMBOL
Symbols are best understood as signs that have deeper and more complex meaning. Signs translate directly to objects or ideas, and have something of a life of their own. The Christian cross or the Star of David, for example, do not have a direct translation. Rather, they carry symbolic meaning that can differ in different contexts. Worn on a chain around the neck, the cross might be a symbol that a person is Christian. To the person wearing it, however, the cross might be a reminder of personal faith or a means of identifying with a particular sect. This deeper meaning distinguishes the cross as a symbol instead of a sign.
“the difference between poets and mystics . . . The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truthwhile it’s true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.”
Symbols cannot change without also changing their meanings. This is because symbols point us to unseen regions of the Real. They are not signs of this world so much as signals from elsewhere. In a sense, the symbol is itself the thing it refers to, even though in its self-reference it shoots out to a myriad of other things. The moon as a symbol might correspond with femininity (through its connection with the menstrual cycle), silver (its luminescence), dreams (its connection with sleep), the ocean (its influence on the tides)
SYMBOL ETHIMOLOGY
Symbols belong to a non-temporal space in which all things are interconnected, not causally but imaginally. The term symbol compounds two Greek words, syn- and bole, which combined mean “thrown together” The symbol is a partial object, the only sensible part of something real yet invisible. It is like the mushroom, which in reality is just the sex organ of the sex organs of the psyche. The word symbol is closer to a neural network or dynamic process than to a static thing. The moon itself, the night, the sea are symbolic images reaching down to a living organism.
Symbols are lenses for observing the imaginal world beyond the range of normal awareness. Moby Dick tells us about Ahab’s decline, as a warning sign that he missed his one and only chance to beat the white whale because of it. The task of art is to get the symbol across in a way that allows it to be preserved and passed on. There is only potentiality for something to be, until the right situation presents itself.
WHEEL, PLOW, ALPHABET
We’re so busy holding onto signals that have been carried to us by symbol systems that you could say we are being ruled by the inventors of the wheel, the plow or the alphabet. Muscle memory is a thing for musicians. You forget by which processes you learned some stuff and vice versa. At the sub-symbolic level as there’s definitely atrophy with respect of prosody, meter, rhythm.
It makes you think if it’s all the symbol-mediated the ones that are gumming up the works. Symbols, signs and icons protect an image of reality, at the expense of reality itself. They fail to represent forces and flows correctly or use a variety for when they talk about the same hyper object. They bind us to narrativium whose function is to make us legible
It’s the bravery of being out of range culturally that instead of using planes to explore the unconscious, or even using planes to fight other planes (signifiers/signifieds/signs) we’re just designing flaps, spoilers and ailerons.
According to Swiss linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure, there are two main parts to any sign:
Signifier: This connotes any material thing that is signified, be it an object, words on a page, or an image.
Signified: The concept which the signifier refers to. This would be the meaning that is drawn by the receiver of the sign.
A great example of effective use of semiotics is found in the use of metaphors. These commonly understood concepts tend to resonate easily with your target audiences. For example, “a glass half full” is perceived as a sign of optimism.
COMMUNICATION VS EXPRESSION
Communication consists of reducing things to signs. It assumes a universe of transmissible data from which the depth dimension of the Imaginal is absent. Only expression allows the symbol to occur in the guise of an aesthetic event. It is the frame drawn around the signs, and not the signs themselves, that begins the process of symbol formation.
The original appearance of the symbol that prompted the creation of a work of art was a unique and unrepeatable occurrence, so each encounter with that symbol within the work will be unique. The painter was possessed of a kind of second sight that allowed him to perceive the excess of meaning in a given situation. Only expression allows the symbol to occur in the guise of an aesthetic event, The process of symbol formation is the frame, not the signs themselves, that begins the process of expression.
The Imaginal can lead to truths that don’t jibe with conventional expectations, sound reason, and common sense. Wilde’s warning on this is clear: “Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril” Wilde: “The symbols that come our way have a secret purpose, it is to reveal to us what we need to see — and so are most afraid to see. The Imaginal is infinitely older than civilization, older even than humanity itself.
GOOD VIBRATIONS
In 1978, the original “Good Vibrations,” sung by the Beach Boys, was used to introduce consumers to “The Sunkist Soda Taste Sensation.” In 1981, Sunkist Orange Soda became one of the ten best selling carbonated soft drinks in the United States. Today, the tradition continues; Sunkist and Diet Sunkist, sold by Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages.
For this ad, a strong message is effectively communicated without the use of much words. Music is different to the spoken language in many ways, but possibly the most important way is that it can communicate without pointing to something in the real world or having a precise meaning. In other words, it has a degree of non-conceptuality.
VC does not find signifieds in which to invest. Instead, it offers the equivalence of all signifiers, thereby deterring them from signifying anything. The system of interpreting signifiers overgrows its referents. It develops with no relation to whatever it signifies.
REIFICATION OF SYMBOLS
To reify something means to make something that is abstract seem real and concrete. Marxians use the term reification to refer to situations in which people see qualities of social relations as being qualities of abstract objects derived from those relations.
Of all the terms that have arisen to explain the impact of capitalism, none is more vivid or readily grasped than “reification”-the process of transforming men and women into objects, things. The principle of reification, emerging from Marx’s account of commodity fetishism, provides an unrivaled method for understanding the real effects of capital’s impact on consciousness itself.
Our point is that contemporary perceptions of sense and reality have been reified, and that aesthetics can express why this is the case, with major consequences for understanding the role of music. If you can harness the trappings of a style — taking its surface level idioms and cliches, while deliberately leaving behind any emotional authenticity to be a backing track that helps someone sell something, you’re probably half the way there.
Reification signs are proliferating around us-from the branding of products and services to ethnic and sexual stereotypes, all manifestations of religious faith, the rise of nationalism, and recent concepts such as ‘spin’ and ‘globalization.’
Reification of religious symbols enables a person to hold a religious identity that is at odds with their everyday life practices, values, and beliefs. Money is a concept independent from the economic transactions from which it derives. Is a diploma or degree more important than the education it is supposed to represent? Which would a student work harder for? In the military which matters more: expertise or rank? How can a credential be more important that the thing it is intended to indicate? It seems our culture is one that values, it seems, the credential over the education, he writes. The religion of reified symbols is another form of tribal totem, he says. It is a tendency for formal religious institutions to see their religious symbols per se to be sacred. At its extreme this becomes idol worship: the belief that the symbol is itself a god.
REIFICATION: HOW LICENSING KILLED ROCK’N’ROLL
Songs carry emotional information and some transport us back to a poignant time, place or event in our lives. Twenty years ago, licensing a rock song in a TV commercial would be met with immediate cries of “sell out.” It’s no wonder a corporation would want to hitch a ride on the spell these songs cast and encourage you to buy soft drinks, underwear or automobiles while you’re in the trance.
Within the last decade, commercial syncs are providing an additional source of income as record sales continue to slump — so it’s no surprise that the number of classic rock songs in advertisements has increased. As AC/DC (whose music is now in an Applebee’s commercial) once pointed out, “Money Talks.”
Classic rock songs are being used in more and more commercials. Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” and Springsteen’s “Born In the U.S.A.” are used in adverts. John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Son” is a biting critique about the privilege and hypocrisy of rabidly patriotic politicians. “Welcome to the Jungle” is about selling your soul to make it in Los Angeles and “Viva Las Vegas” by Elvis Presley vs. Viagra. The Western canon’s aura makes it just the thing for pitching luxury car brands like Mercedes-Benz with the 2017 holiday ad unfolded over a track of Shostakovich’s swoony Waltz 2.2.1. Capital uses music to carry out its teleological purpose.
SIGNIFIER, SIGNIFIED, SIGN: AGAIN
Reification is the mental process of transforming the non-concrete into something concrete, a ‘fact’ The US national anthem will be a perfect example of a reified piece of music. Music can provoke vague and difficult to define emotions. It can exist without communicating anything specific and can mean different things to different people. Many say that the allure of music is that you can say things with it that you never could with spoken language. The mind does not go off on an interpretive journey when we hear it — this music means USA, we know it is the national anthem, and this is the only way we can really understand it. The word itself is reified to construct an approximation of experience to work around the limitations of our senses and leave out a whole world of information in doing so.
So, if you’re wondering where I’m going with this — here it is. A shorthand description: When music is reified, it behaves a lot more like a spoken language. It means something specific. It can be described easily. It is unable to change because its meaning (or for semiotics people, its signifier) is fixed. The melody of the US National anthem doesn’t require me to engage with the non-conceptual. I know what it is.
So one good way of telling whether a piece of music is overly reified or not is if you’re able to describe it easily in words. They have all in different ways become a thing. A known musical object. This is of concern to composers because we recognize the value of the abstract nature of music, which allows us to communicate in a way that the spoken language is often unable to do.
If you have problems wrapping your head around this how the iconic banjo duel scene in the movie ‘Deliverance’ caused a powerful association with his instrument that has overpowered how audiences listen to it ever since. In this case, it’s not any particular melody or song that’s reified but the instrument itself and it’s also worth noting that it’s happening against the musician’s will. In the example of the banjo — it is no longer free to communicate musically — instead becoming a humorous shorthand for backwardness.
And the US national anthem represents its country so strongly that it can’t be mistaken for anything else. In all these examples, interpretation is resisted and the music is unable to change.
There are so many other ways that music can be reified: rules for example can lead to reification — for example the idea that chorus must always follow verse or that the opening movement of a symphony must use sonata form. Over-reliance on rules or patterns may create repetitive musical artifacts that do not engage the listener but merely remind them of what they’ve heard before. Especially in music, lyrics are a kind of reification by people like Taylor Swift who use them to convey to the listener what they should feel, in case they turn their brains on to perceive meaning for more than five seconds.
LETS ROCK — CREATIVE PROBLEMS
No matter where you stand on this, it’s obvious that all facets Rock’n’Roll, be it prog, Metal, blues, indie, etc face a mounting artistic problem: that almost everything about it is a foregone conclusion: from the intro riffs to the choruses all the way down to the lyrics. Getting new is harder and harder because there’s too much desire to be the same.
There are riffs and there are bridges and there are choruses And this wouldn’t be so bad if was in service of a larger musical idea. But no. But all we get is well worn references linked together with forgettable filler. A greatest hits medley of what the philosopher Theodor Adorno calls ‘the handed-down musical materials of history’ — which are the genres, tonalities, structures and other musical traditions that we all grow up with.
Things that already have meanings, rules and associations tied to them. So music is always reified to a certain degree. While writing the music for their albums, The Black keys or QOTSA or the Foo Fighters draw from a large range of well known sources. There’s heavy referencing of Led Zeppelin, Canned Heat, Jim Kimborough, Bachman Turner Overdrive etc. While Patrick Carney grew up on punk groups like The Clash and the Cramps, Dan Auerbach came up on bluesmen like Junior Kimbrough and southern rockers like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Throw in Steppenwolf, T. Rex, and Captain Beefheart/.
I’m not saying that Black Keys or QOTSA are plagiarists or hacks because the artistry in their music is in combining musical ideas with pre-existing meanings to form new meaning, breathing life into the original genres and conjuring a sense of otherworldliness and fantastical adventure. Like all music, there is a certain degree of reification going on, but it’s creative.
So the problem then is one of degrees. In other words, there comes a point where a piece of music is so reified that it’s glued up completely; where its meaning is so obvious that there’s no room for maneuver. This can be illustrated by looking at the newer albums QUOTSA, FOO FIGHTERS — which for me sit here on the reification-o-metre (pretty reified,-very reified).
Since so many big moments rely on pre-existing material. And the problem with reusing pre-existing material is one of diminishing returns. At its worst, rehashed music can descend into meaninglessness. To give an example of what I mean, let’s look at the use of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in film.
When used in Apocalypse now it was a deliberate artistic juxtaposition — drawing from the original meaning of the music to provide a subtext of false glory and horror. It was done to make us think. Now let’s look at it’s reuse in the film ‘Watchmen’ directed by Zack Snyder.
The music here isn’t appropriate at all because the intention of this part of the story, written by Alan Moore, was to illustrate the complicated inner struggles and regrets of one of the main characters. But Snyder, as always, employs the lowest common denominator approach: ‘since Apocalypse Now takes place in Vietnam and this scene takes place in Vietnam let’s just use the Apocalypse Now music.
The music is now super-reified. Ride of the Valkyries isn’t being used for any deeper meaning — it just means ‘Vietnam — but also, remember Apocalypse Now?’ And it’s this meaninglessness that Rock’n’Roll is in danger of going towards with most bands lifting well worn constructs we’ve heard a million times and placed them at strategic moments to achieve maximum cliche.
GUITARS
Keith Richards proposes that Chuck Berry developed his brand of rock and roll by transposing the familiar two-note lead line of jump blues piano directly to the electric guitar. Country boogie and Chicago electric blues supplied many of the elements that would be seen as characteristic of Rock and Roll. Perhaps it’s time to consider organizing rock’n’ roll in a different way. It doesn’t have to be based on guitars. It could be a different think.
65 years later and there is never a moment when I feel it is being used as a storytelling device as much as a dog whistle. Music that stands for Late Stage Capitalism. Pretending to be something a human would write. No matter how hard it tries, it just can’t help but reflect the banality and inauthenticity of the corporation that uses it .It doesn’t provide any kind of deeper meaning or allow me to ponder or interpret what is going on. Its sole function is to point out when something rock related is happening, which I already knew about because I’m listening to the album. This is extreme reification and it hurts the songs, it hurts the bands and it hurts the fans.
The music is now telling you what to feel. It isn’t earned. It’s cashing in that cheque written by the original generation. Eventually, this theme will lose its potency completely, it will become a known artefact that disallows interpretation. Being different is dangerous but it’s the only way to achieve new heights. What’s left of the music industry is too afraid to deviate from customer expectation and choosing bands who are happy to churn out very similar material over and over again but what about Indie?
It is up to you to decide to what extent this is happening but it seems to me pretty obvious that it is, at least, happening.
Perhaps it’s time to consider organizing rock’n’ roll in a different way. It doesn’t have to be based on guitars. Or it could be different guitars. Think King Gizzard and the Lizzard Wizard microtonal guitars.
Tchaikovsky was working on the first movement of his 4th symphony in 1877 when he was suffering from depression and alienation. He wanted to express his emotions in a way that didn’t sit well with some Romantic composers at the time. We should not as audiences expect to be pandered to by relentless reference to stuff we know. The original tunes were, well, original. That’s the only thing that has any hope of delivering a truly breathtaking new Rock’n-Roll experience.
“Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” ― William S. Burroughs
Feels like leaving Flatland. In addition to the usual three spatial co-ordinates, these notes have an extra label, which can act like a co-ordinate along space time. By tracking all four co-ordinates together, we map out in real time how a music moves in four dimensions. When you go from three to four dimensions in math, your right brain shifts from visual geometric intuitions to symbol-rewriting intuitions, where your right brain is trained on patterns in how the symbols move around instead of the underlying shapes. When this happens, you lose sight of the forest for the trees, and putting together larger jigsaw puzzles becomes much more difficult because the space is larger than your visual intuitions can cover.
Leaving Flatland is a fascinating concept that can be applied to various aspects of human experience, from mathematics to music. The concept of Flatland is taken from the 19th-century novella of the same name by Edwin A. Abbott, where the characters are two-dimensional beings living in a two-dimensional world. The idea of leaving Flatland refers to the shift from a limited perspective to a more expansive understanding of the world.
In the context of music, leaving Flatland means exploring music in four dimensions, rather than just the traditional three. By adding an extra label that acts as a coordinate along space-time, we can track how music moves in four dimensions in real time. This opens up new possibilities for understanding and exploring the complexities of music and sound, and challenges our traditional understanding of how we experience and perceive these elements.
However, as we move from three to four dimensions in math, our right brain shifts from visual geometric intuitions to symbol-rewriting intuitions. Instead of relying on visual intuition to understand the shapes and movements in space, we must rely on our ability to manipulate symbols and track patterns of movement. This can make it more challenging to understand larger and more complex structures, as the space is larger than our visual intuitions can cover.
Despite these challenges, leaving Flatland can also be a liberating experience. It allows us to explore new possibilities and push the boundaries of our understanding. As we leave the limitations of Flatland, we are able to see the world from a new perspective, one that is more expansive and open to new possibilities.
In conclusion, leaving Flatland is a concept that challenges our understanding of the world, whether it be in mathematics or music. By exploring new dimensions, we are able to push the boundaries of our understanding and open up new realms of possibility. While the shift from three to four dimensions can be challenging, it also allows us to see the world from a new perspective, one that is more expansive and open to new possibilities.
In Werner Herzog’s documentary film “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” he explores the discovery of the Chauvet Cave in France, which contains some of the oldest known cave paintings in the world, dating back over 30,000 years. Herzog draws a comparison between the experience of exploring the cave and the hypothetical discovery of extraterrestrial artifacts, in that the images in the cave seem to belong to a familiar but distant universe, and can evoke powerful emotional and psychological responses in those who experience them.
Additionally, the level of technical skill and artistry displayed in the cave paintings suggests that they were not just simple representations of reality, but rather complex and sophisticated works of art. This level of skill and sophistication implies a deeper understanding of the world and its workings, and could be seen as evidence of an ultimate truth or reality that transcends any one specific cultural or religious tradition.
Herzog also notes that the experience of exploring the cave can be a profound and transformative experience for those who visit, evoking powerful emotions and memories that seem to come from a distant past. One scientist interviewed in the film describes having overpowering dreams during his first visit to the cave, and Herzog describes the paintings as “memories from long forgotten dreams.”
Overall, Herzog’s comparison between the Chauvet Cave and the hypothetical discovery of extraterrestrial artifacts highlights the power of art to evoke a sense of wonder and mystery, and the importance of preserving and studying our cultural heritage.
Plato’s Cave
In Plato’s allegory, the cave represents the world of appearances, where humans are chained and forced to perceive only the shadows on the cave wall, which they mistake for reality. The outside world, which represents the world of true knowledge and enlightenment, is represented by the sun.
Similarly, the Chauvet Cave can be seen as representing a hidden world of ancient art and culture, which was unknown to modern humans until its discovery. The cave paintings can be seen as representations of a deeper reality that was previously hidden from view, much like the outside world in Plato’s allegory.
It could be argued that the Chauvet Cave paintings are in fact representations of an ultimate truth or reality, and that this truth is not necessarily tied to any one specific purpose, such as religious or cultural expression. Overall, while the meaning and interpretation of the Chauvet Cave paintings may be debated, there is evidence to suggest that they represent a deeper reality or truth that is not tied to any one specific purpose or tradition, and that this truth has the potential to transcend time and culture.
DMT
There are some interesting parallels that could be drawn between the Chauvet Cave paintings and the DMT experience, particularly in relation to the idea of encountering a deeper reality or truth.
During a DMT experience, users report intense visual and auditory hallucinations that are often described as otherworldly or mystical. These experiences can include encounters with entities, landscapes, and dimensions that are beyond the normal realm of human experience. Many users describe feeling as if they have encountered a deeper reality or truth, one that is not accessible through normal sensory perception.
Similarly, the Chauvet Cave paintings could be seen as a means of accessing a deeper reality or truth that is not accessible through everyday experience. The paintings depict animals and landscapes in a way that suggests a profound understanding of the world and its workings, and their technical skill and artistry suggest that they were not just simple representations of reality, but rather complex and sophisticated works of art.
In both cases, the experience of encountering a deeper reality or truth is often accompanied by a sense of awe and wonder, as well as a feeling of connection to something greater than oneself. This connection may be seen as evidence of a deeper reality or truth that transcends time and culture, and has the potential to unite individuals across vast distances and differences.
The term “Stable Cheaters’ Equilibrium” refers to a situation in game theory where participants in a game or system find themselves in a situation where cheating or deviating from the intended rules becomes the norm, and this behavior is self-reinforcing and difficult to reverse due to its stability. To understand this concept better, let’s break down the components:
1. Equilibrium in Game Theory: In game theory, an equilibrium is a point where all participants have no incentive to unilaterally change their strategies given the strategies chosen by others. In other words, no player has an incentive to switch their strategy if they know what the others are doing. There are different types of equilibria, including Nash equilibria, where no player can improve their payoff by changing their strategy while others keep theirs.
2. Cheating in Equilibrium: Cheating in this context refers to deviating from the agreed-upon rules or strategies of the game in a way that benefits an individual player. This could involve actions that give a player an unfair advantage, despite the collective intention to play by the rules. Cheating can be advantageous for a single player in the short term, but if everyone starts cheating, the system’s integrity and benefits can erode.
3. Stability of Cheaters’ Equilibrium: A Stable Cheaters’ Equilibrium occurs when a significant portion of participants in a game or system adopt cheating as their strategy, and this behavior becomes self-reinforcing and difficult to reverse. Essentially, everyone is cheating, and there’s no incentive for any individual to stop cheating because doing so would put them at a disadvantage compared to others who continue cheating.
4. Example: Tragedy of the Commons: A classic example of a Stable Cheaters’ Equilibrium is the “Tragedy of the Commons.” Imagine a shared resource, like a pasture, where multiple farmers graze their animals. If each farmer decides to graze more animals than their fair share, the pasture becomes overgrazed and depleted, leading to long-term damage to the resource. Even if individual farmers recognize the problem, they might continue overgrazing because if they stop, they suffer a short-term loss while others still exploit the resource.
5. Addressing Stable Cheaters’ Equilibria: Stable Cheaters’ Equilibria can lead to detrimental outcomes in various situations, as the collective good is sacrificed for individual gains. Addressing this requires coordination, incentives, and sometimes regulations to encourage participants to follow the agreed-upon rules and strategies. It might involve penalties for cheating, rewards for cooperation, or altering the structure of the game to disincentivize cheating.
In summary, a Stable Cheaters’ Equilibrium represents a situation where cheating becomes the norm and is self-reinforcing due to the dynamics of the game. Recognizing and addressing such equilibria is essential for maintaining fairness, sustainability, and positive outcomes in various systems, whether in economics, environment, or social interactions.
Title: Embracing the Alien: Exploring Music on Its Own Terms
Introduction: Music, a universal language, has the incredible power to transcend cultural boundaries, evoke emotions, and connect individuals across time and space. Yet, truly understanding and appreciating music requires us to suspend our preconceived notions and embrace its essence on its own alien terms. In this essay, we embark on a journey of discovery, exploring how music defies traditional comparisons and must be approached with an open mind, allowing its unique language to unfold and transport us to uncharted realms of sonic expression.
The Limitations of Analogies: While analogies can be useful tools for comprehension, they fall short when attempting to fully capture the essence of music. Music is a form of artistic expression that operates in a realm beyond the constraints of language, logic, and the familiar. Its power lies in its ability to communicate emotions, narratives, and abstract concepts that transcend verbal description. Analogies, rooted in the familiar, struggle to encapsulate the intangible and extraordinary qualities of music.
The Non-Verbal Language of Music: Unlike spoken or written language, which relies on structured syntax and semantics, music communicates through a non-verbal language. It speaks directly to our emotions, evoking sensations, moods, and imagery that surpass the boundaries of words. The interplay of melody, rhythm, harmony, timbre, and dynamics creates a rich tapestry of sonic experiences, allowing music to express ideas and evoke feelings that surpass traditional linguistic comprehension.
Cultural Diversity and Musical Expression: Music serves as a reflection of cultural diversity, embracing a multitude of traditions, styles, and genres from around the world. Each culture brings its unique sonic language, instruments, and rhythmic patterns, contributing to the tapestry of global musical heritage. By immersing ourselves in music from different cultures, we expand our understanding of the human experience and open ourselves to new forms of expression that challenge our preconceptions.
Embracing the Unfamiliar: To truly appreciate music on its own alien terms, we must be willing to step outside our comfort zones and engage with sounds that may initially seem unfamiliar or unconventional. Experimenting with avant-garde, experimental, or culturally distinct music can stretch our sonic boundaries, enabling us to discover new textures, structures, and meanings. By embracing the alien, we enrich our musical vocabulary and foster a deeper connection with the universal language of music.
Personal Interpretation and Subjectivity: Music, like any art form, invites subjective interpretation. Each listener brings their unique perspectives, experiences, and emotions, shaping the meaning they derive from the music they encounter. By acknowledging the subjectivity of musical experiences, we embrace the diversity of interpretations, recognizing that there are no “right” or “wrong” ways to engage with music. This freedom allows us to celebrate individual journeys and encourages a sense of openness and curiosity.
Conclusion: To fully appreciate the profound language of music, we must embark on a journey that transcends analogies and embraces the alien. By suspending familiar comparisons and immersing ourselves in the non-verbal, cultural, and subjective realms of music, we unlock its transformative power. Let us venture into uncharted sonic territories, embracing the unknown and reveling in the enigmatic beauty that music offers on its own extraordinary terms. In doing so, we enrich our understanding of ourselves, others, and the boundless potential of human expression through sound.
Keith Richards, legendary guitarist for The Rolling Stones, has long been a fan of AC/DC, the iconic Australian hard rock band. Richards has spoken publicly about his admiration for the album, which he considers to be one of the best rock records ever made.
Released in 1978, Powerage marked a turning point for AC/DC. The band had already established a reputation as a fierce live act, but they had yet to achieve mainstream success. With Powerage, they refined their sound and showcased their songwriting skills, creating an album that was both powerful and melodic. The album featured classic tracks such as “Down Payment Blues,” “Gimme a Bullet,” and “What’s Next to the Moon,” all of which showcased the band’s trademark riff-heavy sound.
Powerage represents the pinnacle of AC/DC’s artistic achievement. Its blend of hard-hitting riffs, catchy melodies, and bluesy swagger has stood the test of time, cementing its status as a classic of the genre.
The idea that everyone is still trying to make the album that AC/DC might have made between Powerage and Highway to Hell speaks to the album’s unique place in the rock canon. Powerage was a seminal work that showcased the band’s musical prowess and raw energy, and it served as a bridge between their earlier, more raw sound and the polished, radio-friendly rock of Highway to Hell and beyond.
This statement also suggests that the album continues to resonate with fans and musicians today, long after its release. The fact that so many people are still trying to capture the essence of that sound and that moment in time speaks to the album’s lasting impact on the rock genre as a whole.
Despite its enduring popularity, Powerage remains an underappreciated gem in the AC/DC catalog. Many fans and critics continue to lament the fact that the band never made an album that matched the brilliance of Powerage, or the one that might have been made between it and Highway to Hell. Powerage, they argue, is peerless, a testament to the band’s creativity and musical prowess.
Art is often considered a product of human innovation, a way of expressing emotions and ideas through various mediums such as painting, sculpture, music, and literature. However, this perspective fails to fully capture the nature of art as a way of knowledge that is distinct from theoretical deduction and that is inextricably linked to human experience. In this essay, we will explore why art should be seen as a way of knowledge that precedes theoretical deduction and happens at the same time as experience.
One of the most compelling reasons why art should be seen as a way of knowledge is that it enables us to gain insight into aspects of the world and ourselves that are not accessible through theoretical deduction alone. While theoretical deduction relies on rational analysis and logical deduction, art accesses a different mode of knowledge that is more intuitive and subjective. Through art, we can gain a deeper understanding of emotions, perceptions, and experiences that are difficult to express in words or formulas. Art can convey complex emotions such as love, grief, and joy, or capture the essence of a moment or an experience in a way that no other form of knowledge can.
Moreover, art allows us to explore and understand aspects of the world that may be beyond our immediate experience. For instance, through visual art, we can explore different cultures, historical events, and societal issues that we may not have firsthand experience of. Through literature, we can enter the minds of characters and experience different perspectives and worldviews. In this way, art expands our understanding of the world beyond what we can access through our own limited experiences.
Another reason why art should be seen as a way of knowledge is that it happens at the same time as experience. Art is not a passive representation of the world, but an active engagement with it. When we engage with art, we are not merely observing or interpreting, but actively participating in the creation of meaning. The experience of art is deeply personal and subjective, shaped by our own experiences, emotions, and perspectives. This means that art is not only a way of representing the world, but also a way of shaping our understanding of it.
Furthermore, art is a way of knowledge that is deeply embedded in human culture and history. Art has been a part of human expression since the earliest civilizations, and has played a vital role in shaping our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. From cave paintings to modern art installations, art has been used to explore and express our most profound emotions, beliefs, and values. Through art, we can gain insight into the cultural and historical context that shapes our worldviews and beliefs, and connect with the shared experiences of humanity across time and space.
In conclusion, art should be seen as a way of knowledge that precedes theoretical deduction and happens at the same time as experience. Art enables us to access a mode of knowledge that is distinct from rational analysis and logical deduction, and allows us to explore and understand aspects of the world that are not accessible through our own experiences. Moreover, art is deeply embedded in human culture and history, and has played a vital role in shaping our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. By recognizing the value of art as a way of knowledge, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the power and importance of artistic expression in our lives.
