On 12/21/22 9:44 AM, glen wrote:
I so *wanted* to comment on that 60 page paper. But it's too much. I
ended up skimming and skipping along.
Thanks... I knew it was a *lot*... I read the first dozen pages before
I started skimming myself, but thought you would have a useful
perspective. Maybe others have taken the bait?
One thing that does seem relevantly missing (?) is Strawson's
distinction between diachronic and narrative. An aspect of some (maybe
rare, I'm too ignorant to say) post[structural|modern]ists is an
implied accusation that modernists are *intentionally* narrative,
rather than narrativity being a (natural?) artifact of our necessary
diachronicity.
I had a hard time with your episodic/diachronic the first time you
mentioned it (or more likely the first time I actually *heard* it) but
it has grown on me as I've observed *others* who have strong *episodic*
modes (in some cases almost to exclusion of any recognizeable
diachronicity?) as well as my own, though as you have identified I have
a strong diachronic self-identification and a near-fetish for narrativity.
And I didn't see much mention of *meta*narratives, as opposed to
narratives. Even we episodics have, in our episodes, narratives. The
main difference, as always, comes in how one *composes* one's
episodes. [⛧] Similarly, a more nuanced understanding of postmodernism
relies on the criticism of meta-narrativity more so than narrativity
writ small.
I appreciate that distinction. A hard thing for me with PM style is
that it (seems to?) fetishize (or at least depend heavily on)
deconstruction which can feel a lot like obstruction and nihilism. I
think narrative/storytelling is a huge part of what binds a culture into
an amoebic monolith (capable, even prone to polyp, fission and
differentiation), not unlike microtubules in cellular structures, not
just providing structure but also mobility and likely intracellular
communication. On the other hand, the episodic elements, the
artifacts, the nouns without verbs phrases, the subjects/objects with
partial or ambiguous relations also seem critical.
I wonder if this distinction (Strawson probably said but I forgot or
missed it) is that episodic atoms are powerful because they can be
softly recomposed many ways while still having their own inner
logic/consistency?
I find meta-narrativity (if I understand it properly) quite *obvious*
and powerful and open to recursion (what ARE the PMs trying to tell me
when they are telling me what I am trying to tell them with my stories?)
In that way, we can imagine gradations of posthuman[ism|s], where we
go through ordinal "stages" ... higher order operators can be built
upon priors when and only when (wwhen? whenn? like "iff"?) the priors
have frozen into manipulable building blocks. And if we imagine it
that way, whatever meta-narratives *emerge* depends on the historical
accidents of those freezing stages, the "shapes" of those building
blocks.
I find this language appealing in the general background of adaptive
complexity but specifically in the quirky history of how we humans
became this hyperdominant species capable of a wide range of subtle
philosophical and artistic expression/reflection whilst also jamming
red-hot pikes and nuclear weapons through one another's entrails for
entertainment and personal gain. What a beautiful mess we (the whole
damned world/universe) is!
While I think Musk is a dangerous narcissist, I suspect that of just
about anyone with significant power (financial, political, spiritual)
over others. But the vision of a human diaspora seems inevitable...
I'm more a fan of a Belter Frontier over a Mars-bound one, but the solar
system is huge compared to human bodies and if managed with a little
thought and care, the material and energetic resources in this solar
system are quite vast. On the other hand, geometric growth is never a
game for sissies and I also have visions of grey-goo-like scenarios
engulfing the whole solar system at speeds limited only (or maybe not)
by the specific impulse of whatever propulsion tech dominates once we
get ourselves out of this gravity well.
[⛧] Maybe also in how one decomposes/analyzes/deconstructs one's
episodes.
The differentiation/speciation/(re)integration that would ensue will be
quite a froth, suitable for Spider-Robinson's Crosstime Bar or the
Quark... Your observations about the nature of episodic/diachronic
here and elsewhere gives me a different vocabulary to think about how
such a froth will compose and (d)evolve.
On 12/20/22 16:36, Marcus Daniels wrote:
I’ve been thinking I580 along the East Bay would make a nice place
for sea creatures to hide, and a good concrete foundation for a bike
lane on piers. So quiet it would be without the cars. Bring on the
sea level rise!
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 20, 2022, at 2:43 PM, Steve Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
Here's my latest positive hit from Academia
Countdown to Extinction? - Posthumanism in Science Fiction
Raoul Guariguata
https://www.academia.edu/2061036/Countdown_to_Extinction_Posthumanism_in_Science_Fiction
I could rattle on for pages about my take on this, but the short
version is that I found this *very* readable and helped me
appreciate the role of postmodernism and it's relationship to
posthumanism cast in the backdrop of a century (and a half) of
scientifiction/romance writing/speculating.
Oh yeh, and also with the backdrop of the impending
extinction-by-excess arc humans are on as we argue over when to
*start* the Anthropocene when it is likely it is also about to *end*
in the shortest-lived geological epoch of all time?!
@EricS Fermi Paradox indeed!
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