Category Archives: bearings

On This Day

For a concise & historically accurate account of why we celebrate Juneteenth, we relay a short video written & narrated by Heather Cox Richardson:

 

 

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Against the Cult of Death

Now comes an Open Letter, signed by hundreds of Nobel laureates, philosophers, scientists & artists, including the entire editorial staff here at DP:

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Twenty Lessons

Available as a free download from Timothy Snyder’s website:

 

 

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Deep In Our Tissues

Now comes the resounding voice of Barry Lopez, with a passage from within the conversational riffles of his  Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects.

 

Our trouble seems to be that, you know, our primate heritage, which is apparent in watching the behavior of chimpanzees and bonobos, is that we’re keenly interested in ourselves and opposed to others. That’s deep in our tissues. And with the kind of world we’ve built, that’s not going to work. So, those human beings who have the very strongest residue of the kind of patrolling behavior and violence that troops of chimpanzees have, those people would like the world to be, I think, arranged in a way that suits their habits and their desires. But a lot of people die that way. And we have created a chemical environment that is killing people left and right, quickly or slowly, through cancer, for example.

It just doesn’t make sense anymore to have these ideas about “me” and “mine” and the terrible burden that has been created by so-called advanced nations about the primacy of ownership, the ownership of food. Or, you know, the terrifying thing in the United States, this idea that nothing is exempt from the application of a kind of economics that’s meant for profit. I mean, how can you make the care of another, the professional care of another person’s body, be informed by a profit motive? Even a fifth-grade kid can see there is something that doesn’t really add up here.

So, for me as a writer, I live here and I’m informed by this [river]. And the way it informs me helps me understand a lot of the things my species does that are suicidal. It’s not up to me to say that they are suicidal, but I would feel like a traitor to my teachers here if I never said a thing, never mentioned it.

 

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Dead Silent

We are grateful to a DP correspondent for alerting us to the below video study in abject ethical & moral vacuity.

 

 

Once this wave of lethal madness recedes, the judgement of history will be severe regarding all those who silently grinned and smirked while inflicting senseless cruelty upon the weak, the vulnerable and the poor.

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Sad By Design

Over the years, we have received countless enquiries as to why we are not “on” Facebook; and why do we not “weigh in” on X.

Now comes the voice of esteemed media theorist Geert Lovink with a few excerpts from an interview (worth perusing in its entirety) centering on his 2019 book, Sad By Design.

Read on:

In my book, Sad by Design, I contrast technologically induced sadness not just with the historical ‘illness’ melancholy but also with boredom, depression, loneliness and similar sombre mental states that are dominant today. We read a lot about ‘male’ anger, from trolling and shitstorms to cyber-warfare but less so about the regressive side. Emotional rides are no longer experienced in solitude; the virtual others are always there as well.

It is a truism that we are lonely together (a subtle but crucial variation of Sherry Turkle’s alone together). We cannot put the phone away — there is no relief. In my essay, I have tried to minimize the comparison between the current wave of technologically-induced sadness and the rich historical descriptions of melancholy. […] 

The predictable continuity thesis is not just elitist, it is escapist. It walks away from the dirty present, much in the same way romantics did in the industrial 19th century.

Techno temperaments generated by computer code and interface design (also known as nudging) causes overload and exhaustion and produces a gloomy state that flickers, without ever becoming dominant on the surface. Sadness today is an indifferent micro-feeling, a flat and mild state of affairs. This should be contrasted with the much heavier illnesses such as depression, stress and burn-out.

One or two centuries ago these would be labelled melancholia. Some artists make this an explicit topic of their work such as Lil Peep and Billie Eilish.

Sadness is no longer hidden and is becoming part of pop culture. Youngsters feel the anxiety, the stress, and become sad about empty promises and diminishing opportunities. They are experts at reading daily life through the sadness lens. This does not mean we should medicalize them. We are not sick.

How do we comfort the disturbed? Not by taking their phone away. What can we do that’s liberating and prevents moralism? […]

Right now, social media are either the domain of marketing or an object for (moralistic) concern of teachers, parents, politicians). Critical internet research is still a joke in terms of funding, schools, research programs. […]

Social reality (SR) is so much larger than hyped-up technologies such as virtual and artificial reality. SR is also am ironical hint to sociology, the discipline that so far has failed to contribute to a better understanding of the ‘social in social media’ as I called it in 2012 in e-flux, an essay I updated in Social Media Abyss.

I no longer believe there is some raw and truthful reality outside of the social worlds that tech companies have created.

Dichotomies such as online-offline and real-virtual are no longer meaningful. I like the idea of a social reality that people carry with them. Once they grab their phone and start swiping and scrolling through the updates on their ‘social’ apps they are in it again. You go on ‘social’, as the Italians say. Have you seen it on ‘social’, as the Italians say.

We need to re-invent the social, which is now technical and digital. I would not say it ‘affects’ us as such an understanding somehow suggests that we are outside, victims, subjects. The user perspective teaches us that we’re fully involved—by design—and constantly interact, contribute, upload, klick, respond, like, swipe, whatever. The extractive data machine lives of that.

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Self-design can be a somewhat naïve term. The daily reality, in particular for young people, is a brutal one, in which the construction and maintenance of the self-image is a matter of life and death. We should not underestimate the internalized values of the neo-liberal precarious reality in which people are forced to compete with each other and life never quite succeeds.

There are always mishaps, fall-outs, missed opportunities, break-ups, strange downtimes in our mood, an endless period of boredom in which nothing seems to work. The self-image constantly breaks down, we get angry or depressed, can’t finish a deadline. This is all recorded and captured, processed and turned into data points that are added to our profile. Self-image is no longer a cute selfie, it has become much more complex and contradictory. […]

Silicon Valley has all but killed the speculative imaginary—and they are acutely aware of that. This was their aim. Not merely own it but shut it down by pulling it into the background. A growing movement is reclaiming the net but it’s an uphill battle.

It sounds weird but ‘another internet is possible’ has almost become a subversive slogan. If we want to overcome homo extractionist, we need to organize and fight, in visible manners, build and use those alternatives we desire so much! […]

Right now, there is hardly anyone working on the speculative re-design of the social. This space has been poisoned by the systems of likes, followers, updates, newsfeeds, ‘friends’ you name it. Let’s get rid of this jargon. However, we want to reinvent the social we need to acknowledge that we can no longer distinguish between the social and tech.

Forget offline romanticism. Secondly, we need to get rid of the Silicon Valley online presence inside our conversations, our lives. Let’s minimize the presence of third parties and focus in a pragmatic way on what needs to be done and what tools support this strategy.

No more invisible moderators, filters, censors. The algo ain’t no friend of mine. Alt.social will have to confront itself with various challenges: monetization and democratic decision making. Both aspects have been quietly removed from Silicon Valley’s agenda and their related start-up venture circles. For art and activism redistribution of the ‘wealth of the networks’ and collective decision making are essential. We need to dismantle the ‘free’ and invent new ways to work together and deal with difference and disputes.

We can no longer delegate the management of the world to these IT firms. Silicon Valley is part of the problem and we no longer expect them to resolve the growing tensions in the world.

 

True, all that, in 2019 — more deeply so in 2025!

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Let No Man Deceive You

Now comes a fresh entry into the Annals of Hubris and Delusion:

 

 

 

This too shall pass!

 

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Love, Grief & Rage

Towards the end of a week that included Earth Day, recognition of which was mostly obscured by the ongoing chaos and destruction emanating from Washington D.C., we relay the following communication from Extinction Rebellion:

The Mourners, a poignant artistic expression of grief for Mother Earth

Extinction Rebellion DC (XRDC) joined tens of thousands of people at the “Hands Off” rally in Washington, D.C. The rally was part of a nationwide day of protest, with more than 1,300 protests across the country. In D.C., while protesters directed their anger and outrage at the increasingly fascist tactics and policies of the Trump Administration, XRDC chose to focus on solemnity: mourning the loss of life and livelihoods that an extractive and exploitative capitalist-industrial system creates. The Mourning Rebels meandered silently through the crowds, holding space for grief.

Inspired by other rebels around the world, XRDC uses the Mourning Rebels as a recurring form of performance art to show that we reject the numbness of today’s society and bear witness to the loss – grieving in public to expose the violence, including the destruction of natural ecosystems, the exploitation of people and animals, and the loss of dignity in political discourse and social interactions. Mourning is a form of resistance that breaks the silence and rejects the lie that this destruction is normal.

“When those in power try to silence us, we rise louder”, explain rebels in D.C. “When they attack our communities, we fight back—together. Today was not just a protest; it was a call to defend our rights, our Constitution, and the planet we all share”.

Rebels draped in black joined forces with a group dressed as women from The Handmaid's Tale

While XRDC keeps focusing on its two main campaigns — stopping the investment in new methane infrastructure in DC and resisting the destruction of a forest for the expansion of a golf course — the Mourning Rebels will remain a recurring action. In the midst of rising violence and crackdowns on dissent, mourning is an expression of solidarity and community. And it is through this crucial process of grief, that we can cultivate meaningful action.

 

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Anti-Constitutional Escapism

Today, as a small group of extremist fanatics continues to attack the legal foundations of our Constitutional Republic, we serve to relay an excerpt from a recent post by the ever-vigilant Timothy Snyder.

 

 

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Our Sacred Honor

 

To rise up & speak up.

To pledge to each other our sacred honor.

To stand together against tyranny.

To redeem the soul of our nation.

 

 

 

 

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