Resisting the Pipe

 John started a blog!  

And in communicating with him directly, reading his post, and following one of the links I see how much of a freak I am... this time in ways I am actually proud of.

Blogs? I don’t read em, so I don’t really manage how I read em (Ran and now John being my exceptions, and Ran is the homepage, so I’m really going to have to figure out what to do to see them regularly).

The piped society? ...  Well, my phone is de-googled and not on any chat app mentioned in the article. When I do blogging, Bluesky, or banking, I am doing so with laptops or Linux desktops.  I acknowledge that not everyone “realistically” can do this [1], with a special, parental nod to the problems here:

Now, your [default] is to be stuck in a forever chat with local acquaintances, many of whom you soon discover have extremely diverse views on life, parenting, and what it is appropriate to say about their (kids’) bowel movements on a group chat with 50+ members (most of whom they wouldn’t clock on the street). 99% of it is verbiage-garbiage, but if your kid is on one of those chats, you can’t afford to miss what passes, and so, if you’re a ‘good parent’, you have to monitor it regularly, or you’ll/ they’ll miss lifts, downpayments, parties, etc etc – and you’ll be seen as an irresponsible, bad, rude parent. Who knew the digital future would be so infinitely-indefinitely banal and hard to escape?

For even this, I have had a solution that has worked so far: I outsource it to my wife. And she doesn’t even see it as a sacrifice (!!!),  so I take no hit to relationship capital...  As this is the place where my freak flag flied (“no my wife’s allowed” it says on the sign in front of the metaphorical tree fort), I want to express how grateful I am that my wife isn’t capable of scheming against me, lacking vision and being quite low in conscientiousness, even though she would like to be controlling.

The article also provides a nice little document that supports a fifth critique I have of using horizontalism and/or trying to build local alternative institutions: people just want to normalize things, and I just straight up think they are wired to defer to people higher up in their social group.

What I’ve encountered in trying to raise this is that almost no one has concern, let alone ‘shares my concerns’. This tone of indifference has a new and specific texture, one that’s different to the fetishist disavowal of the Insta or X addict. With WhatsApp, I am met with nonresponse. It’s as quiet as WhatsApp. Raising something about WhatsApp, in my experience, is like expressing a preference against flush toilets or drinking water: you seem weird, you seem a bit tinfoil, you seem touched. What I can’t say – which would seem weird – is that, to me, this is the nonresponse of people who have internalised the loss of control over their lives and choices that dependency means in the piped society.

We get angry at people online and feel lonely ‘with’ people online – but we never notice the pipe, and, socially, in this culture, it’s almost impossible to have legible anger at its grip on us. If information is a difference that makes a difference, then the current cultural atmosphere is an indifference that makes indifference.

Okay man. Push as hard as you want against how normies think. Like fighting squirrels eating seeds, it’s a daoist trap -- the harder you fight, the more you’re thwarted, the more unhappiness you get. It’d be like trying to tell people to not adopt televisions in the early 1950s. Critique is not how these things end, or even lessen.  It’s not even how sub-cultures get started... Fuck the macro, build the micro, sure. But first make things as good as you can for yourself. Your air mask first, so you can then help others.

If you’re not part of a cool scene from it, there is no reason to be a radical.  AND if you can be part of a cool scene (or a scene that has parts that are cool) without being a radical, you really should do that as a consumer choice.

Blessed is the person who does not need this spelled out. But I had to spell it out for myself, first.

==

[1] Although I guess I am somewhat “committed” to my path of technological disobedience -- but I am doing so for personal comfort rather than to signal I am part of anything.  If I had to have my phone hooked to these apps to function professionally, I’d get a burner phone. As is, I might get a burner flip phone and use my current smart phone as a camera... Or I might get deeper into photography and by real cameras when I have money flowing in.

The Horizontal Mambo

My most frequent reader [1] over the years -- and only regular correspondent -- expressed an interest in Bookchin.  I think that being my reader is worth a lot, so I tried to wrap my mind around some core ideas, and provide something I hope at least is amusing to think about, and find responses to.

So the following is my critique of Bookchin’s horizontalism, written without reading the source material.  It is a true essay; an attempt. If I am in error, I am open to learning.

[Update: looks like I did not refute Bookchin, as much as Graeber and the anarchist society depicted in Le Guin's "The Dispossessed"...]

 
1. the need to exclude.

One of the fundamental flaws in purely horizontalist organizing is the lack of effective mechanisms to exclude bad actors, whether they be infiltrators, opportunists, or even just disruptive individuals. Any movement serious about building power will face sabotage—both from external forces trying to undermine it and from internal dysfunction. The problem is, without some form of structured authority, there’s no way to enforce discipline or maintain strategic focus. Decision-making by endless consensus leaves movements vulnerable to concern trolls, agent provocateurs, and the paralysis of bad-faith actors who can derail efforts from within. True democratic organizing isn’t just about inclusion; it’s about defending itself from co-option and sabotage, and that requires some level of hierarchy. Even if leadership structures are decentralized, there must be clear lines of accountability and the ability to remove those working against the movement’s goals—otherwise, it’s just an open door for disruption and decay.

When I was a debate coach, with about 50 kids in my program, I was into anarchism, and ran my program on as anarchistic lines as you could and still have kids about to show up to tournaments and follow the rules of the games. We had a lot of success, in part because my students learned how to think strategically... by doing (Cp They Hate your Freedom).  But one problem, among many, was that this created a power gap that was filled by some really shitty kids. This bad dynamic would grow to the point of them humiliating and bullying me -- which happened to be after my father had died, so I was not in any place handle that... Oh well, moving on; what’s a week without linking to something by David Chapman, especially that piece on Geeks, Mops, and Sociopaths? Bookchin better have real strategies for dealing with this that take into account charisma and misaligned incentives.


2. shock doctrine

Back to the macro-political picture. The right understands that power is not won through moral arguments but through readiness and opportunism. They have perfected what Naomi Klein called the shock doctrine—using moments of crisis, whether real or manufactured, to push their agenda while opponents are disoriented. Historically, before the rise of the modern bureaucratic state, the right was often disorganized, relying on old aristocratic wealth, and frankly lazily constructed mystique, rather than strategic coordination [2]. This gave liberalism and the left (mind, not the same thing) the openings for their greatest victories. But since the Baby Boom, especially in the U.S., that dynamic has reversed. The right has built a network of think tanks, media ecosystems, legal organizations, and donor-backed political machines that allow them to act decisively the moment an opportunity arises. Meanwhile, the left, often stuck in reaction mode or internal debates over process, fails to seize its own moments, allowing the right to dictate the terms of history again and again.



3. Occupy as test case.

Occupy Wall Street was a warning. I understand there is a lot of room to come back with “that’s not real Bookchinism,” and I am willing to learn on that score, but my essential point is still that rather than experimenting with leaderless consensus organizing, that was the moment to have concrete policy demands. It became proof became proof that without a strategy for power, even the most explosive movements can fizzle out. The refusal to articulate (non-process) goals or establish structures for decision-making meant that, despite capturing global attention, Occupy couldn’t convert momentum into lasting change. This really saddens me when I consider David Graeber, with whom I had a few pleasant interactions with on Twitter. He was kind, insightful, and deeply committed to the idea that new ways of organizing were possible. But in the end, the movement’s aversion to structure made it easier for the establishment to wait it out, while the right-wing machinery kept grinding forward.  A “central committee” to craft the party line is pretty damn helpful for leftist politics. Movements that follow the Occupy play book will always be outmaneuvered by those who actually know how to wield power.


4.  “cultivate your garden”

At a certain point, you have to ask: Is this really worth it? Dedicating your life to a struggle that will likely crush you, alienate you, or just leave you exhausted feels like a losing bet. At best, people see you as a weirdo; at worst, you make real enemies who will ruin your career, your reputation, or worse.  And what’s cool, is they won’t even do it in the open...  They’ll fuck you up by smear campaign.  Hell, that’s why I go by "Candide" in the first place. Like Voltaire’s character, I’ve come to realize that all I can do is cultivate my own garden rather than chase grand political dreams that will only drain me. As an autistic person, I’ve also come to see just how unpersuasive I am in these kinds of spaces. Organizing, persuasion, rallying people to a cause—these aren’t my strengths, and if I’m not able to effectively spread ideas, then I’m not a viable link in the chain of political change. Some people are built for that kind of work, but I’m not one of them. And if that’s the case, why spend my life fighting a battle I’m not equipped to win?

==

[1] Well, I do have at least one more dedicated reader. Me. Two metaphors for here: a scrapbook, and a place to let my freak flag fly. I am a mild mannered, church attending family man. But that leaves me craving something that is my own... And this, as well as a lot of hiking, is it.

[2] Watching that mystique slow, veeerry slowly, wear away (and on the flip side, continue to work in situations where to modern eyes it should have been impossible) was one of the more interesting things I gained from my systematic historical study.

Fasting, Both Total and Natural

So far, I am 17 pounds down, many more to go.  My diet started as Slow Carb with the modification of one serving of carbs a day.  Then I was able to go full on Slow Carb. And then when went on a trip her sister and my daughter, I fasted and found it so damn easy that I have been skipping breakfast and lunch M/W/F, making a 23 hour fast from one dinner to the next each time.  

The game changer has been electrolytes.  Consuming one drink that has the full range of them (not just sodium, but potassium and magnesium) has helped me not feel brain fog or lack of energy on these fasts. I don’t even feel hungry, as long as I am not around food smells.  I just make sure to sip the drink over hours, as minerals too fast on an empty stomach can cause discomfort.

I buy that human beings are not supposed to eat a steady stream of carbs three meals a day, as we we did not involve in circumstances that allow that. And it makes sense that if long fasts are going to happen anyway, the body might as well use that time to make repairs... So look up autophagy, if that is a new idea to you.

But this then created a puzzle for me. If people are “supposed” to function under fast/feast, why is it that if you eat too quickly after a prolonged fast, you can get refeeding syndrome and actually  die from it?  How is that an example of the body being adapted to its natural environment?

Well, in the hunter/gather context people would still have small finds like nuts, berries, foraged greens, even honey.  And they wouldn’t refuse those opportunistic snacks.  Thus, their bodies were rarely in a state of total deprivation for days and days.

But what about autophagy? Doesn’t it need fasts of several days to start kicking in?  Turns out if your calories are restricted to around 500-800 and almost entirely from fats (thus not from sugars or proteins), the body can start autophagy [1].  Nuts and leafy vegetables would do this. So I plan on in the future taking several days eating meals consisting only of nuts and veg -- while sipping my electrolytes. I believe such an intervention will drastically reduce my odds of getting cancer.

Lastly, I theorized that people have long known about refeeding syndrome and have done things like make broths and start them before feasts. Yup.  Turns out that they have done so.

[1] See this guy https://valterlongo.com/biography/

Aesthetics 1

Lately I have been doing a lot of work on applied philosophy. You could call my main project “unfucking my life.” From this experience, I see how much of applied philosophy requires aesthetics -- haircuts and clothes and all shorts of shit that I have never cared about before. But here I wish to communicate the best piece of applied philosophy through applied aesthetics I have come to lately: enjoying squirrels.

Too often the people who try to find pleasure from nature end up feeling either indifferent toward or actively against squirrels. They put out seeds to feed birds, and find that they end up feeding squirrels more than the birds. And this becomes a daoist trap -- the kind that proves John’s point about the Daodejing as strategy guide -- the more you fight the squirrels getting your “bird” seed, the more they thwart you, and more hatred you have ground to feel (assuming no outside re-framing -- applied philosophy[1]).

I have been one of who has put seed out in the past, and of course I mostly feed squirrels. But at least I did not do battle with them, and perhaps that has made all the difference. This year I did not put out seed in the winter, and after some consideration, I have decided to not have a garden this year. Instead, I am in a position to enjoy what comes.

...

Much like Melville’s hundreds of pages of details allowed him to just blast through the action at the end of “Moby Dick”, I hope the paragraphs above were adequate set up to say the following: I recently went on a walk to Sutton Urban Wilderness, a wooded area with several trails and side trails. I saw squirrels being their glorious selves, and I paused to marvel at them. Bio-mechanics. Mammalian shine. Pretty... And I believe my ability to appreciate the real world around me is much better for it.

...

Also, the common grackle is another gift from God. They add beauty and interest to parking lots of big box stores and strip malls [2]. They show the dao is undefeated, at least with humans as the adversary.

...

Learn to love what is really here.

==


[1] Out of the Buddhist tool kit you have the lens of dissatisfaction (and then suffering) coming from the attachment to a conception.  I believe the term dukkha tries to represent this whole cycle.

[2] In fairness, I never have to deal with the full bulk of their migration, as people apparently do in Texas. You would really need to find ways to appreciate grackles before these moments.

Homo economicus 1

Posted first on the ERE (early retirement extreme) forum.

===

I was unemployed for a year and two months. Fuck that shit. It has been 21 years since I started working, and I only now realize that I need to have my next job lined up before I leave a job. Staying within the narrow and undesirable field of education allowed me to go in and out, as well be complacent with -- hell, unaware of -- my lack of interview skills.

Currently, I sub for one or two days a week and am putting the money earned back into my appearance. For example, this is the first time I've had two professional hair cuts in a row since I was a child. (Since childhood, I think it's been two: one was right before my wedding, and another was a time I had an interview to part of the library system, the failure of which broke my heart -- shit, rereading that is brutal; I also didn't realize how much I already knew about the problem at that point). There is also a balancing act going on in my mind between how much to put into one good interview outfit versus improving my about-town game. Also, I could put thousands, even tens of thousands into my outfits right now, but 1) I somewhat enjoy the gamified aspect of using just this earned money and 2) I need more experience before my decisions would be any good ...

I have the extra problem of needing to not overdress for what I am going for. I am not swinging for the fences here, but trying to get a single on the board so I don't have to return to teaching: IT help desk, technician (mostly inventory manager) for a school, Geek Squad, Costco. And it's that rock and hard place of needing to dress but not overdress that puts me at my stupid, neurodivergent limit when I think about it too long. If the goal was to look as good as fucking possible, I actually kinda know what I would do [1]. But normie shit has to be so hard, and so exacting.

Eye contact. Have never made that with someone I wasn't trying to sleep with, and even then, not that much. I think that was what cost me another job I interviewed for a few months ago. This was with a affluent school district with small enrollment at the other edge of the metroplex. The drive would have sucked, and the pay was a joke (though more than my expenses, and more than I earn with my subbing), but I would have loved the work, as they do as much hands-on repair as they can with Chromebooks and the job has prospects to grow with the ability to in-source more and more tech services -- failing that, it would have been my year or two of IT experience that would allow certifications I earn to actually count.

The head principal was a positivity peddler [2], and he seemed amazed by my combination of education experience and recent certifications. I'd also worked on the script for interview questions pretty hard, so I do think I nailed my Zoom interview. But they had me "come in," which I had hopes would have been to sign papers, but instead it was this fucked up walk around shit that could not have been designed better to expose that I am on the spectrum. I am really good with my tone of voice, at least when I am "on," and so I was still saying a lot of the right things, and even said had moments where they were laughing at wit, but yeah, I am sure at least the assistant principal thought I was shady and shifty. There is a certain type of person who shows up late to things but thinks they are "type A" that I absolutely cannot vibe with... or at least, they cannot vibe with me. They make everyone else to clean up their messes, linguistically, work flow, etc, yet think they are the hard-nosed force everything the world together. Anyway, I think he thought he "got me" in the end with his question about my willingness to commute -- which I was, and was willing to use that time to do audio content, but my eye contact didn't say it, now did it? ... Eh, I was probably leaking other stuff at lots of other moments, too. I wasn't ready to get through that hiring process.

My wife has us pretty involved in a church. We have been there now long enough that the dues paying is over, and people like to see us. This will give me a chance to practice eye contact stuff. I'm not sure that subbing actually will work for this, however, as the kids expect distance now (could not care if I live or die... It was not always like this).

Speaking of my wife, she has actually liked and benefited from my run of not working. I have been able to watch our kid when she is sick, and just in general take care of stuff. So, one thing I am doing is stretching this gap in my work history for the next two months. During that time, I should have quite a bit to work on with appearance and trying to practice human social behavior. May 2nd, another wave of applications go out. Can't sub during the summer any way. If any job sucks bad enough, or if I fail to get a job, I will sub again one more school year, wear out my cash reserves, but then become a teacher again before I dip into selling stock.

==

[1] I am amused by the idea of a speed run to high fashion. I mean, I don't have any outfit right this second that I think would be good enough for me to feel comfortable walking into a Dillard's. So, like, what Kohl's to get an outfit, to get into a Dillard's, to then have an outfit where I feel comfortable seeing a tailor. Again, amusing speed run. But it is going to be more a slow and steady deal.

[2] Just for venting's sake, when he called me and told me I didn't have the job, he was crestfallen when I just flatly said "that's that, I guess... have a good rest of your year, and a good day." He honestly thought some more ass kissing was coming, and hell, if I lived closer by or if I hadn't been busy at that moment and pre-drained by watching my daughter, I probably would have. Well, he can enjoy the fruits of his positivity during other moments of his life. I would have liked to have worked with him.

 

===

 Two chatGPT conversations today.  First, over the basics of eye contact: 

https://chatgpt.com/share/67d091f1-32e4-8005-b69d-cc797203abd2

Second, a reaction to the piece, but with it not knowing I wrote it, so there is more criticism of the plan: 

https://chatgpt.com/share/67d09149-ffa0-8005-a7a3-28352b9757fb

 

Disclaimer

 Ran replied that he should not be used as the only source of news. 

I wrote back that I would put this as a disclaimer, but I don't honestly know what else to add.  Taking news straight on, especially in these times, causes anxiety and dread in me. If you're not like that, then... get your news however you want. 

 Why am I advising anyone on what to do?  I will try less of that in the future.

Out East 2

About my piece Out East 1 -- which I had left as a stub to start the process of explaining my disillusionment with Eastern thought -- Ran writes:

i had never heard about buddhism being hidden from the public for so long, but i'm generally mistrustful of buddhist authorities. i was reading in some forum where someone suggested doing some different thing in meditation, and got shut down with the comment, "these practices have been tested for thousands of years." and i thought, what happened thousands of years ago when someone had an idea of doing it differently? "these practices have been tested for decades, so we're sure they're right." a living system of practices and beliefs must always be open for experimentation. once it gets set in stone, it's dead.

None of these have been mass practices for thousands of years, but instead practiced in small, highly controlled groups. For the people, there were superstitions, and stories heaped on stories, needing retcons like any other bloated fictional structure. The people weren’t asked to do meditative practices, but instead ceremonies, donations, holidays.  Their daily practices included things like making offerings for good fortune, engaging in protective rituals, or even worshiping local deities alongside Buddhist figures.  

The first wave of Buddhism in the West wasn’t just a natural cultural exchange—it was heavily shaped by colonialism, the pressures of modernization, and the need for Asian Buddhists who were back on their heels to respond to Western imperial influence.  It is not the story of beautiful, untouched intellectual territory, but the strategic ways Buddhist leaders adapted their tradition for both survival and global outreach.

...

But I wanted to believe that there was some ancient book that had answers deeper than this day to day life and diseased culture.  I was searching for the Eternal.
 

"Read not the Times. Read the Eternities."

Thoreau.

So even if I had known all of this above and it had turned me off from Buddhism, and given me earlier ammo against a certain strand of hucksterism, I still would have at some point fallen for the Tao Te Ching (Daodejing). It’s beginning, highlighting something very important:

Dao called Dao is not the eternal Dao

Names that can be named are not eternal names.

Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth
Naming: the mother of 10,000 things

Truly, "rid of desire, one can perceive
the Wondrous."
With desire, one can perceive only outcomes.

I thought that last bit quoted was the key to ... like everything, man. I thought that if we could get everyone to see correctly, whether through meditation or whatever, then people could drop desires and (social) outcomes and live in a world of pure wonder ... Wonder.

And then I realized this is just neurodivergence. It wasn’t spiritual practice that brought someone to this, but autism, one of the ways a person can be shamanic to prevent the group perishing from the effects of too much conformity.