The weather is different. The genes are different. The Platonic ideal human in Montana acts differently as a result of local conditions.
"To imagine “Montana culture” is to imagine that there is such a thing as
a Montana armiger—a specifically Montanan path to human
self-actualization."
The wildlife is different. The local hazards are different. The latitude and thus sleep's path of least resistance is different. And so on, and so forth.
This?
"What is Montana to them? A beautiful, low-tax AirBNB—a set of GPS coordinates."
A disease. A fundamental delusion. Without powerful subsidies it would not survive long.
"But how else can you do the armigers justice?"
For one, realize that 19 parts in 20 of these 'armigers' are fake. They're LARPing. Havel's greengrocer, except they're required to have entire Twitter accounts instead of a few bulletins. Much of the Prussian school system can be seen as an attempted scholar-caste transmutation device. Belief flows from the barrel of a gun and if they're not required to pretend anymore they'll turn on a dime.
I was watching VDH and noticed he's become consumed by shamanism. It's all about appeasing the anima - except he doesn't call 'globalization' an anima, so it's definitely different. Moldbug has the opposite problem, a total lack of shamanism.
The sky tells you how to live. It's impossible to look at the stars and say, "Oh that reminds me, I need a good passive-aggresive line for Barbara in Marketing for tomorrow." Reading the sky isn't hard, and thus Americans don't like to look up.
Montana's sky is not the same as the Veldt's sky or the Outback's sky.
Cold. Warm. Deleuzian--all the Montana is different, he knew that, and it came with a heavy dose of egalitarianism-loathing, probably somewhere in Mille Plateaux. I had an immediate image of wild lupines all over the place, although I thought they were mainly Southwest. I'm pleased to have thought that spontaneously before then finding out they're tourist-popular very specifically in Montana.
ReplyDeleteI don't ever wear sunglasses except at night sometimes, and never wore a watch my entire life. So I noticed as clocks in the subways and in stores began to disappear over the years so that there are now about 0.1% as many. Never wanted a microwave. I do like fancy restaurants and sharp clothes though.
Like the phrase 'appeasing the anima'. I never do it anymore (on purpose) except to quickly finesse if necessary in order to get past it and move to something more solid--because it can really block you. But I used to do it voluntarily, which was a kind of wasted space--and once in a while residue pops out when I'm euphoric, and I punish myself for this. I like perfectly solid structures or I don't feel I own them, although after I've punished myself mentally, I can still get them back in shape without having to try to do another version of the scene of the crime (which is impossible, of course): The central attraction was left wholly intact if it had been so when it was *everything*, so the error is not seen as error but rather as punctuation--which you finally accept when you see that such euphoria is not sustained indefinitely, but instead has to be repeated, and the desire to sustain it is held by the attempt at the closest possible reproduction of the original. The whole 'woke' horror is about appeasing the anima, isn't it? Globalization as anima seems to make sense to me, but without my knowing for sure if it does, which means I don't have much of a grasp of it. I start thinking of the other Planets again. Of course, anima on such a large scale may be inevitable--how could it not, since that's been the momentum for quite some decades? Or at least for a while longer.
The small-scale versions would sometimes be liberating if they're self-limiting, but corrupted if delimiting anything is felt to repress or be oppressive--the transsexual phenomenon completely eluded me for a ridiculously long time: I thought it had at least something to do with sex, but it doesn't, at least not usually; I've heard of a few cases, but they sound impoverished and reached-for. It's mostly concerned with gender, which I didn't know was such a distant thing...and is thus excruciatingly boring to hear anything at all about, but it would be much worse to 'get physical' with one--I doubt there's a one who's 'maximized *their* human potential; they must all have no technique to speak of. I guess it should be difficult for a tranny to 'reconcile with an alleged reactionary'. I can't reconcile with a tranny because they are masochists, and masochists always want impotent whining. Does that mean that the transwomen are 'all anima'? (which would destroy all the competitive pleasure?
ReplyDeleteHilarious about the sky as automatic cancel culture to 'passive-aggressive line for Barbara': The sky tells you how to live. It's impossible to look at the stars and say, "Oh that reminds me, I need a good passive-aggresive line for Barbara in Marketing for tomorrow." Reading the sky isn't hard, and thus Americans don't like to look up.
That's right. Looking at the stars makes you be able to take getting the right passive-aggressive line for granted (if you need it, and we all need some of those kinds of mundane things sometimes), so you have to look away from the stars less and less: The line comes out exactly as you need it to--and when--as if by its own horsepower. Do you still like color-enhanced photos? I think I don't, as with not wearing sunglasses or looking through tinted bus windows, which an older couple in Moorea didn't mind, but I was adamant at opening the window. I click "Not a Fan" if Bing forests have all this pink-magenta colorization of trees.
The Platonic ideal human in Montana acts differently as a result of local conditions.
Ah yes. That alone should get rid of a lot of cheap, futuristic dystopia-images. All that variety!