Tuesday, January 29, 2008

One Small Person, One Giant Supersystem - Too Many Speeches

Of course this is maddening. It matters not, all of it. My life, and so with your life, is sustained by envisioning consequence, which ipso facto cannot be possessed by one person before the weight of all social ritual and practice. Nonetheless, we should notice that the old left died this year, somewhere in the newly-poured tarmac of Tikrit, or in the carpeted halls of academe with another tenure-protected near-retiree talking past hungover frat children, or in the text messaging of their over-scheduled cyber-progeny. Some of these anti-imperial warriors have lived good and honorable lives, but I don't know them, and I don't imagine them to be the masters of humility that we all need to be before the soft juggernaut of the current agglomeration of semi-ordered institutions.
Why write, or think, or "battle," when you cannot get an honest response to a single line? The main problem in confronting our futility is that we chatter like birds in our modes of speech, unable to find others to perform the give-and-take that would be an evolution of our speech and communication, not a devolving into puerile social obsessions. Books, where one savant goes on at without surcease, without the ennobling intervention of amplifying voices, should become relics, and so should speeches, and so should lectures, and so should pontificating spouses, and all the other Asperger's displays, but we just can't seem to make that leap from atavistic self-involvement to strengthening social interaction. But, hey gang, there's still time and hope - you betcha!

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The supersystem and atheism - Part I

Although atheist books have enjoyed a banner year, the post-upsurge has been lackluster within the happy tents of the resolute atheists. The supersystem theory is dependent upon atheism, because it is so materialist and rational, so it must advance the cause, even when others blather on about this or that quibble with the word.
Religious beliefs in transcendent divine providence have arisen from atavistic needs since campfires and caves, and as humanity has gone out to commingle in agricultural enclaves, it has kept its yearning from a fearsome organizing principle of death, destruction, and now individual salvation through incantation. However, there has not been a single moment's evidence to even begin a proof for a god or gods, so we can conclude that religion is a fruitless endeavor. And given our collective understanding of the natural world, we cannot find not a single possible development that will announce a supernatural agency to help govern us in our reality, so we are left with nothing to show for all of this. We trust, we know, we imagine, only that which can be established by rational analysis, but we are light-years behind in our social understanding compared to our capabilities. We know that neither socialism, nor communism, nor capitalism will describe a passable global economic and political order, yet we persist down these dull avenues. The supersystem is directing us all: to work tomorrow, to school forever, to think of limited options, to keep our heads down, to listen to fantasists and autistic savants. Instead, we need to have others find our faults, to keep an eye open for social reformation, to see the humility of our lonely selves and the majesty of the far, far greater social world.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Disclaimer - Part I

Obviously, the Internet has been a major disappointment against the forces of the supersystem. Blogging is pathetic, the comments section of even our preeminent journalists' blogs (Chris Floyd, Allan Nairn) are tumbleweed desolation itself: "Comments: (0)" Way to go!
This is the Beyond Information Age. We are deluged with one-author musings, missives, pleadings, ruminations, all disconnected and mutterings before the void. Whatever "community" has been engendered by these boy Google/Microsoft billionaires is fantastically nowhere, an inert flash mob of rank stupidity, housewife commiseration, and moribund fan-worship. On top of all the textual sewage that runs our way, we have spent years in death-spiral supplication in classrooms, so we are accustomed only to an advertising-based panting after our own image.
I do not counsel despair, unless you can handle it. The supersystem can be approached, seen, and even removed for security purposes (okay, not the third). Atheistic secular rationalism is advancing across America, and it is a wonderful, ennobling, vainglorious cause. For every institutional actor in the supersystem, there are great observer/participants who can show you the endemic forces that govern them to puerility, and you will be directed to them here. For law, find Thomas Geoghegan. For religion, seek out Michel Onfray. For warnings of current malaise, unearth Bertram Gross' 1980 Friendly Fascism. Or don't - read for your own benefit, and especially not just white men like me. These guardians may have individual failings, and they can only cover a few of the multifarious heads of the supersystem, but they are accessible, brilliant, and free at your local library.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

The Supersystem - Theory Part II

So what do we encounter when we enter any social area? People that act according to the laws, logistics, imperatives, and contoured realities of their positions within the larger institutions that claim them. There is a modest degree of what earlier philosophers have called "free will," but please, come on, people are socialized animals, and think and do with measurable patterns of motivation and cause.
The theory of the supersytem is that there are great commonalities between institutional areas. The Supreme Court, for example, is made up of nine men and women governed by known lies, fears, social myths, that they are bound by, and can violate only under extreme circumstances. Professors, to swing towards another institutional pole, are also circumscribed by the precise sociological dimensions of fear of censure, desire to validate traditional norms of savant individualism, inability to read social cures of disinterest, and careerism.
We humans are all unique as arrangements of DNA within the supersystem, and can occupy various roles and spaces within the supersystem, but every institutional reality is dominant, without written out, talked about, or even moderately understood.
If this is too pedantic, it is because the theory is just moving into its initial phase. However, you should think about all that you as adult will see from your day tomorrow, and the next day. It will be a version of what you have fallen into so far, and its "meaning" will be too large for you to grasp. Why people are doing what they are doing, and what is going on in the larger world over you, is due not a god, not to some sci-fi novel, not to a hands-in-the-air unknowable vastness, but to the supersystem, which was there much before you were born, was made by all others, and is working and based according to principles that are often irrational and putrid. We think we have control over this, we think we have influence, we think that our social reality is "progressive," but we as species are far too given to credulity, to sway by charlatans, and to mulish passivity. Improving one small area of the supersystem is possible yet often purely futile, since so many institutions are reinforced by the implacable workings of others - the sub-prime housing crisis supported by American religious anti-politics, for example.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Supersystem -

The theory of"The Supersystem" is meant to supersede all prior sociological, economic, political, cultural, literary, and social scientific theories. However, the theory of the supersystem is basic, accessible, and fun.
The supersystem is the superstructure of all the institutional systems we encounter. Because I am American, the supersystem that I will be most concerned with is the western one, but all humans exist in an invisible, nearly impermeable, inter-connected set of institutional areas.

Every neologism can be instantly offensive, oft-putting at inception, and subject to withering disinterest. No problem - this one is only meant to save the human world.

The foundation of the theory is in existential nihilism, backed with intense happiness at unearned privilege. History conspires to give us a world based on myths, traditions, superstitions, honed human instincts, and we endeavor to use our genetic temperament and strengthened awareness to manage, and even improve, our lot. This in turn depends immensely on others, either in the immediate environment, or in the colossal, incredibly complex sense of much wider realities of highly contingent greater institutions.

We have so very little control over social reality, yet for those with a functioning mind, social reality is what we seek to mold to our liking. Thus, enormous frustration. The goal of this blog is to develop observations of how the supersystem is devolving, governed by deleterious, destructive, maddening, inhumane structures and practices. Of course, should there be fundamental shifts within the supersystem, such as progressive tax regulation, jailing the plutocracy, creating public works programs, arresting the destruction of the environment, why, we'll be the first to join and celebrate - oh yeah!

Usually, though, this means finding sociological meaning in the true nature of work, schools, the courts, entertainment, sports, politics, family life, corporate fascism, autistic theory, sex, spelling, shopping, in the whatever and whereever, and given the current status of our supersystem, we are not likely to find much that is big that is in any way passable.

The supersystem is real. Not until now have we given a name to our master. It is not a god or gods, not our parents, not our spouse, not our overseers. The Supersystem - it's here to stay. And since you will never, ever, get away from it, I will spend the Internet's resources to try to get this understood, worldwide, using this means.