Very fond here of talking only about what really matters. (Not football, not ice cream.)

But let’s briefly mention some things that typically don’t matter, and how they, sometimes, elliptically can in spite of themselves.

I love indulging myself in, distracting myself with, ‘essays’ about things like film (and ‘literary’) criticism.

Mostly, none of it matters. The best interpretations about the meaning of Twin Peaks — don’t.

But doggedly tracking down why David Lynch practiced and advocated for TM most of his life — that definitely did, and I got to what mattered via the vehicle of something that ultimately doesn’t.

Even more remarkable in this regard was the ‘19-minute film review‘ from a couple of posts back. Kubrick, genius or not? Whatever. The mechanics of slipstream imagery? It might be interesting to know if you were going after a job at DreamWorks, but … not only do I not want Any Job, but no one in my small audience is going to be headed to Hollywood for one either. And yet …

There are some profound ideas in this video. A mystic/esoteric view of our nominal species versus a materialist/transhumanist one?

Oh yes please.

***

Next we come to the WhatIsPolitics guy.

Politics is the attempt to solve the equation that says Civilization = Inequality. I won’t get too deep in the weeds (this time) on that subject, but my perspective essentially says that there’s no such thing as ‘inequality’ in the modern sense without the concept of a surplus (of grain, for example, leading straight to granaries and who controls them).

And so, Politics is useless, and doesn’t matter at all, unless you think that there is a way that humans can invent a way to have their civilizational cake while magically chowing down on, existing improbably in, a ‘civilized’ society without inequality. This is the premise of Star Trek in a nutshell and … it’s complete wish-fulfillment bollocks.

However. Mr. WiP’s latest video does provide us with a remarkable way of framing that fact:

 

 

And additionally gifts us with a stunning revelation. IF The American People had the opportunity to vote for someone who believed as they themselves do …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… then a slim majority of all voters, and an overwhelming majority of ‘Democrats’ would vote for someone that was at least as far out on the lower-left fringes as the Green Party.

If you had that chance, and you really know yourself, and you’re a good person, so would you.

But … you never will.

Not only will the system of ‘democracy’ make that opportunity impossible …

But even if you had the opportunity, and all the cards were on the table, you’d kick and scream blue murder when this mythical candidate quite logically came for your SUV, and shut down quick easy jet travel to your beloved white ancestral homeland, in the name of not cooking ourselves to death and being drowned by rising sea levels.

This is the fundamental paradox of ‘politics’, and the reason why practicing it, insisting people vote, insisting they vote for your candidate (regardless of who they are) inevitably all end up as errands for fools.

The average person cares FAR less about inequality in the abstract (or equality for those lazy brown people) and far more about how and where they see themselves as being inequality’s own special victims.

(‘Wull, I played by the rules; of course I should benefit more, even if all ya’ll benefit less’. And of course that goes double for foreigners, and quadruple for those from ‘shithole’ countries.)

Civilization, and thus inequality, profoundly and even pre-consciously encourage thinking about equality in these viciously distorted and self-interested ways.

You may well have the opinion that your friendly local anarcho-primitivist is fundamentally headfucked and that what you imagine his or her ‘prescription’ to be (de-civilizing, de-domesticating, ‘re-wilding’) is laughable and absurd magical thinking.

I feel much the same about all the ways you might offer up as broken and inevitably flawed (dare i say worse) alternatives.

***

That’s not why we’re here though.

I really just want a way out of the ten thousand year old civilizational Matrix.

With or without you.

Toward that end, I’m going to have to be much more careful about what kinds of content I let into my head.

About where I spend my Attention.

For the most part, I’d be far better off staring at the inside of my own eyelids than watching a video (or a tiktok or whatever you kids are spending attention on these days). Better off, even, collaborating with an AI to grapple with the Hard Question of Consciousness and the other hard but useful questions.

There’s pretty much zero chance I’m kicking the YouTube habit in the short term.

There’s pretty much zero chance that I’ll click without thinking though, in the weeks and months to come.