Present Shock and the Loss of History and Context

In his new book, Douglas Rushkoff examines the telescoping of time and context wrought by ubiquitous digital technologies.

One of the few observers who is able to articulate a coherent critical account of American culture is Douglas Rushkoff. His new must-read book is Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (print edition) and (Kindle edition).

I have long found inspiration and insight in Rushkoff's work, especially his keen understanding of the pathologies of consumerism. In my 2009 book Survival+, I wrote:

Rushkoff's reply to an interview question on the consequences of ubiquitous marketing reveals how media/marketing has created an unquestioned politics of experience in which one's identity and sense of self is constructed almost entirely by what one buys:

"Children are being adultified because our economy is depending on them to make purchasing decisions. So they're essentially the victims of a marketing and capitalist machine gone awry. You know, we need to expand, expand, expand. There is no such thing as enough in our current economic model and kids are bearing the brunt of that.... So they're isolated, they're alone, they're desperate. It's a sad and lonely feeling....The net effect of all of this marketing, all of this disorienting marketing, all of the shock media, all of this programming designed to untether us from a sense of self, is a loss of autonomy. You know, we no longer are the active source of our own experience or our own choices. Instead, we succumb to the notion that life is a series of product purchases that have been laid out and whose qualities and parameters have been pre-established."

In my view, this is a brilliant analysis of the rot at the heart of the American project.

In his new book, Rushkoff examines the telescoping of time and context wrought by ubiquitous digital technologies. We're always accessible, always connected and every channel is always on; this overload affects not just our ability to process information but our culture and the way media and marketing are designed and delivered.

The title consciously plays off the influential 1970 book by Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, which posited that our innate ability to process change was limited even as the rate of change in our post-industrial world increased. That rate of change would soon overwhelm our capacity to process new inputs and adapt to them.

In Rushkoff's view, we've reached that future: the speed of change and the demands of the present are disorienting us in profound ways.

We all know what stress feels like: it often causes our view to narrow to the present stressor, and we lose perspective and the ability to "make sense" of anything beyond managing the immediate situation.

Rushkoff identifies five symptoms of present shock:

1. Narrative collapse - the loss of linear stories and their replacement with both crass reality programming and post-narrative shows like The Simpsons.

2. Digiphrenia – digitally provoked mental chaos as technology lets us be in more than one place at any one moment. As Rushkoff notes in this chapter: Our boss isn't the guy in the corner office, but the PDA in our pocket. Our taskmaster is depersonalized and internalized.

3. Overwinding – trying to squish huge timescales into much smaller ones, for example, packing a year’s worth of retail sales expectations into a single Black Friday event.

4. Fractalnoia – making sense of our world entirely in the present tense, by drawing connections between things with weak causal relationships, for example Big Data, which excels at identifying correlations but is utterly incapable of identifying cause amidst the correlations.

5. Apocalypto – the intolerance for presentism leads us to fantasize a grand finale, the cultural equivalent of a "market-clearing event."

As Janet Maslin of the New York Times wrote in her review: "How do we shield ourselves from distraction, or gravitate to what really matters?"

Studies have shown that our innate ability to remember people and identify their relationships with others is limited to around 100 people--the size of a village or combat company. We undoubtedly have similar innate limitations on how many channels of input we can absorb.

Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations) calls this filter failure, his term for what used to be called information overload. Our filters become overloaded and we lose the ability to "make sense" of what's going on around us.

As the phenomenologists discovered in the 20th century, our basic coping mechanism is to separate the world (and inputs) into three basic categories: the focal point, the foreground and the deep background. Being unable to sort out which input belongs in the three spaces leads to disorientation and poor decisions.

The parallels between filter failure and stress are not coincidental, as we handle filter failure and present shock the same way we handle stress: we limit inputs and make a concerted effort to reorient our awareness and context, what some call "be still and know."

Another troubling parallel to present shock is addiction. People now respond to texts, emails, alerts and phone calls like rats in the proverbial cage with the lever that releases another tab of cocaine: they over-stimulate themselves to death but are incapable of restraining their impulse for more.

The "obvious" solution is to turn off inputs as a way of restoring our ability to live in a present without novelty and distraction. This is akin to withdrawal from a powerful opiate, and so we should not be surprised that there are now treatment facilities for kids who need to detox from digital inputs.

Rushkoff is especially attuned to the distortions in our experience of time created by digital media-communication present shock: "Time in the digital era is no longer linear but disembodied and associative. The past is not something behind us on the timeline but dispersed through the sea of information."

In effect, change no longer flows linearly like time anymore, it flows in all directions at once.

History and meaningful context are both fatally disrupted by this non-linear flow of time and narrative. Is it any wonder that we now read about young well-educated people who do not understand the meaning of "policy"? To understand policy requires a grasp of the histories and narratives that led to the policy, and the linear, causally-linked way that policy is designed to solve or ameliorate a specific problem or challenge.

If the causal chains of history and narrative are disrupted, then how can anyone fashion a meaningful context for actions and narratives, and effectively frame problems and solutions? If everything is equally valid in a non-linear flood of data, then what roles can authenticity, experience and knowledge play in making sense of our world?

These are knotty, complex issues, and you will find much to constructively ponder in Present Shock. 

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Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economy

Complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).

We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, David P. ($77.77), for your outrageously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Tracy T. ($50), for your colossally generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...

Centralization and Sociopathology

Concentrated power and wealth are intrinsically sociopathological by their very nature.

I have long spoken of the dangers inherent to centralization of power and the extreme concentrations of wealth centralization inevitably creates.

The Master Narrative Nobody Dares Admit: Centralization Has Failed (June 21, 2012)

The Solution to Concentrated Power: Decentralize, Diffuse and Devolve Power (June 22, 2012)

To Fix Healthcare, Let 100 Solutions Bloom (February 26, 2013)

Longtime contributor C.D. recently highlighted another danger of centralization:sociopaths/psychopaths excel in organizations that centralize power, and their ability to flatter, browbeat and manipulate others greases their climb to the top.

In effect, centralization is tailor-made for sociopaths gaining power. Sociopaths seek power over others, and centralization gives them the perfect avenue to control over millions or even entire nations.

Even worse (from the view of non-sociopaths), their perverse abilities are tailor-made for excelling in office and national politics via ruthless elimination of rivals and enemies and grandiose appeals to national greatness, ideological purity, etc.

As C.D. points out, the ultimate protection against sociopathology is to minimize the power held in any one agency, organization or institution:

After you watch these films on psychopaths, I think you'll have an even greater understanding of why your premise of centralization is a key problem of our society. The first film points out that psychopaths generally thrive in the corporate/government top-down organization (I have seen it happen in my agency, unfortunately) and that when they come to power, their values (or lack thereof) tend to pervade the organization to varying degrees. In some cases, they end up creating secondary psychopaths which is kind of like a spiritual/moral disease that infects people. 

If we are to believe the premise in the film that there are always psychopaths among us in small numbers, it follows then that we must limit the power of any one institution, whether it's private or public, so that the damage created by psychopaths is limited. 

It is very difficult for many people to fathom that there are people in our society that are that evil, for lack of a better term, and it is even harder for many people in society to accept that people in the higher strata of our society can exhibit these dangerous traits. 

The same goes for criminal behavior. From my studies, it's pretty clear that criminality is fairly constant throughout the different levels of our society and yet, it is the lower classes that are subjected to more scrutiny by law enforcement. The disparity between blue collar and white collar crime is pretty evident when one looks at arrests and sentencing. The total lack of effective enforcement against politically connected banks over the last few years is astounding to me and it sets a dangerous precedent. Corruption and psychopathy go hand in hand. 

A less dark reason for avoiding over centralization is that we have to be aware of normal human fallibility. Nobody possesses enough information, experience, ability, lack of bias, etc. to always make the right decisions.

Defense Against the Psychopath (video, 37 minutes; the many photos of political, religious and secular leaders will likely offend many/most; if you look past these outrages, there is useful information here)

The Sociopath Next Door (video, 37 minutes)

As C.D. observes, once sociopaths rule an organization or nation, they create a zombie army of secondary sociopaths beneath them as those who resist are undermined, banished, fired or exterminated. If there is any lesson to be drawn from Iraq, it is how a single sociopath can completely undermine and destroy civil society by empowering secondary sociopaths and eliminating or marginalizing anyone who dares to cling to their humanity, conscience and independence.

"Going along to get along" breeds passive acceptance of sociopathology as "the new normal" and mimicry of the values and techniques of sociopathology as the ambitious and fearful (i.e. almost everyone) scramble to emulate the "successful" leadership.

Organizations can be perverted into institutionalizing sociopathology via sociopathological goals and rules of conduct. Make the metric of success in war a body count of dead "enemy combatants" and you'll soon have dead civilians stacked like cordwood as proof of every units' outstanding success.

Make lowering unemployment the acme of policy success and soon every agency will be gaming and manipulating data to reach that metric of success. Make higher grades the metric of academic success and soon every kid is getting a gold star and an A or B.

Centralization has another dark side: those ensconced in highly concentrated centers of power (for example, The White House) are in another world, and they find it increasingly easy to become isolated from the larger context and to slip into reliance on sycophants, toadies (i.e. budding secondary sociopaths) and "experts" (i.e. apparatchiks and factotums) who are equally influenced by the intense "high" of concentrated power/wealth.

Increasingly out of touch with those outside the circle of power, those within the circle slide into a belief in the superiority of their knowledge, skills and awareness--the very definition of sociopathology.

Even worse (if that is possible), the incestuous nature of the tight circle of power breeds a uniformity of opinion and ideology that creates a feedback loop that marginalizes dissenters and those with open minds. Dissenters are soon dismissed--"not a team player"-- or trotted out for PR purposes, i.e. as evidence the administration maintains ties to the outside world.

Those few dissenters who resist the siren song of power soon face a choice: either quietly quit "to pursue other opportunities" (the easy way out) or quit in a blast of public refutation of the administration's policies.

Public dissenters are quickly crucified by those in power, and knowing this fate awaits any dissenter places a powerful disincentive on "going public" about the sociopathology of the inner circle of power.

On rare occasions, an insider has the courage and talent to secure documentation that details the sociopathology of a policy, agency or administration (for example, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers).

Nothing infuriates a sociopath or a sociopathological organization more than the exposure of their sociopathology, and so those in power will stop at nothing to silence, discredit, criminalize or eliminate the heroic whistleblower.

In these ways, centralized power is itself is a sociopathologizing force. We cannot understand the present devolution of our civil society, economy and ethics unless we understand that concentrated power and wealth are intrinsically sociopathological by their very nature.

The solution: a culture of decentralization, transparency and open competition, what I call the DATA model (Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable) in my book Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It. 

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Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economy

Complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).

We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, Stephen L. ($25), for yet another wondrously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, John D. ($20), for your most-welcome generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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The Number of the Beast Is 1667

The Devil is in the details.

The Devil, of course, always claims to be "doing God's work." Satan's job, as it were, is to deceive, and if claiming to be "doing God's work" deceives the credulous, then by golly, Satan will do so with the utmost sincerity.

If mixing in a bit of truth to a slurry of lies deceives the credulous, then Satan will happily mix up a batch of misdirection and deception with a dollop of truth.

The Devil is also a jokester, and so He loves dropping little hints about His influence, for example, stopping the meltdown of the S&P 500 in early 2009 right at 666, the Number of the Beast.

He also likes to toy with those sensing His presence, for example, pushing the S&P 500 (SPX) from 1,666--all too obvious!--to 1,667 in the waning seconds of trading on May 17, 2013. (The Devil is in the details.)

It turns out the Number of the Beast (traditionally 666, but 616 in some texts) refers to the Roman Emperor Nero.

Though his reign mixed tyranny and extravagance in equal measure, his primary financial legacy was the devaluation of the Roman currency as a means of increasing Imperial spending.

Hmm... does that sound familiar?

He was also known for reducing the power of the Senate: "By 65 A.D., senators complained that they had no power left."

Who are the unelected rulers of monetary policy? The Federal Reserve, of course, and their bankster buddies like Jamie Dimon, who Bloomberg Businessweek just declared as "Wall Street's indispensable man."

The only difference between 65 A.D. and 2013 A.D. is our senators are too clueless to even grasp they have no real power left.

The very fact that 1,667 is a single digit above Satan's trademark number suggests that Satan has played a little joke on us, and that makes 1,667 the new Number of the Beast that holds Imperial power over finance and money and seeks to devalue the Empire's currency to fund both tyranny and extravagance.

---

Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economy

Complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).

We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, Judith A. ($100), for your outrageously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Guy T. ($50), for your awesomely generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...

What's Cooking at Our House: Dosas and Pizza

On the home menu: dosas and pizza.

There are many kinds of flat breads and crepes in the various world cuisines; we recently made two: pizza and dosas. The pizza crust is a yeast-bread, stretched flat after mixing without being allowed to rise. The pizza sauce is also home-made.

(The roses are from one of our three climbing roses.)

Dosas are a south Indian crepe made with rice flour and ground black lentil (urad dal). The batter is allowed to ferment slightly for a tangy taste. In some regions of South India, the batter is left plain; in the area where my brother has spent time, finely chopped cilantro, onions and grated carrots are added:

It takes time to cook dosas to the ideal crispy texture; patience is required, but amply rewarded. Yum!

"A healthy homecooked family meal and a home garden are revolutionary acts." 

---

Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economy

Complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).

We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, Stephen L. ($25), for your superbly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Diana S. ($50), for your monumentally generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...

Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out

What happens to everyone in the ruling Elites and those desperately trying to join the ruling Elites when the debt-serfs stop paying and the tax donkeys drift away to lower-cost, lower-income lifestyles?

Turn on, tune in, drop out was a famous slogan of the 1960s counterculture popularized by Timothy Leary, who stated that slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan during a lunch in New York City in 1966.

Tune in referred to gaining an awareness of the countercultural spectrum of ideas and values, turn on referred to mind-expansion via psychedelics and drop out meant to drop out of conventional society; Leary later explained that "drop out meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change."

In 1967, Leary modified the slogan thusly: Drop out. Turn on. Drop in.

Here at oftwominds.com, the slogan has been updated to Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out: tune in means to become aware the status quo is unsustainable and deranging; turn on means to become engaged in self-reliance and taking control of one's life and livelihood, and opting out means opting out of supporting our financialized cartel-state Neofeudal Debtocracy by being a compliant debt-serf and tax donkey.

People all over the world are tuning in to alternative narratives, turning on to self-reliance and low-cost/low-impact living and opting out of the status quo culture of consumerism, debt and complicity with a parasitic, exploitive financial-state Aristocracy/Plutocracy/Oligarchy/Kleptocracy (take your pick--it's still the same rapacious Elite whatever name you choose).

The most direct path to an alternative way of living is to opt out of debt and the associated consumerist fantasies of store-bought selfhood: multiple university degrees, brand name clothing, luxury autos, etc. This renunciation of consumerist consumption and debt is called Degrowth (May 9, 2013).

Once you opt out of debt and excess consumption, you need a lot less money to live; that means one can work less and have more time for family, gardening, self-cultivation, entrepreneurial enterprises, etc.

For many, the cash economy and generous state benefits beckon. I am not recommending any particular lifestyle or set of choices here, I am simply stating what can easily be observed in any developed nation should you remove the mainstream media/state propaganda blinders: people are earning their livelihood in the informal cash economy, avoiding VAT and sales taxes, and many are drawing some sort of state benefit for one reason or another: unemployment, disability, early retirement, etc.

Others are occupying housing units without paying rent or the mortgage, i.e. squatting. A tide of squatters spreads in Spain in wake of foreclosures:

A 285-unit apartment complex in Parla, less than half an hour’s drive from Madrid, should be an ideal target for investors seeking cheap property in Spain. Unfortunately, two thirds of the building generates zero revenue because it’s overrun by squatters.“This is happening all over the country,” said Jose Maria Fraile, the town’s mayor, who estimates only 100 apartments in the block built for the council have rental contracts, and not all of those tenants are paying either. “People lost their jobs, they can’t pay mortgages or rent so they lost their homes and this has produced a tide of squatters.”

As I have ceaselessly explained here for years, this is the inevitable result of financialization and state-enforced rentier arrangements in a Neofeudal Debtocracy:

Bernanke's Neofeudal Rentier Economy (May 7, 2013)

The Fatal Disease of the Status Quo: Diminishing Returns (May 1, 2013)

College Grads: It's a Different Economy (May 3, 2013)

Why Krugman and the Keynesians Are Lackeys for the Neofeudal Debtocracy (April 24, 2013)

What happens to everyone in the ruling Elites and those desperately trying to join the ruling Elites when the debt-serfs stop paying and the tax donkeys drift away to lower-cost, lower-income lifestyles? The ruling kleptocratic financiers and the vast political class of toadies, lackeys, apparatchiks and grifters that do their bidding will be like a bloated general staff who finds their malnourished army of conscripts has slipped away into the night; their parasitic empire will implode because nobody is left to do their bidding.

If you think Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out sounds ludicrous, check back in four years (2017) and eight years (2021) and see how many of your fellow debt-serfs and tax donkeys have quietly abandoned the bloated cost-structure, debt and derangement of the Neofeudal Debtocracy's twisted consumerist dream.

---

Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economy

Complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).

We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, Philip B. ($25), for your splendidly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Kent M. ($50), for your monumentally generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...