That's why its interesting to hear these characters reflect in their dotage. Of course that is the time for sentiment and revision, especially from the Cold Warrior Borman, but it is still instructive and illuminating to hear. And that's what modernity does: sacred and profane juxtapositions that leave you hanging.
I love growing books, especially in my mind! I have been thinking of "the Cosmic" lately, what that term means, how it is bound up with aerospace, psychedelics, science fiction, and of course California...might be smarter to return to James, anything to keep the staleness at bay, all these routines, in the head and not...time to blast off!
Sadly no. There was a whole list of folks I intended to see, but teaching was more time-consuming (and fatiguing) then I expected. I did manage to see Wouter Hanegraaff, Marco Pasi, and media scholar Megan Phipps. Next time!
What a great sentence Stephen: "The carceral solar system we are embedded in features fierce torture along with the shining." The divination of the day! I admit I didn't grok the part about the 12,000 year cycle...which you see ending soon?
Who knows why but there are regular long-term cycles of Solar System and “local” galaxy events involving vast sheets of electromagnetic energy flowing around even though celestial objects—planets for example. It’s all complicated beyond imagining but on a regular beat, the Earth is forced to reverse its magnetic poles. Serious changes take place. The protective magnetosphere diminishes admitting biologically marauding cosmic radiation. Extinctions and mutations are triggered. Volcanoes, earthquakes, floods and massive climate changes happen quickly. The record of all these changes are written in rocks, so, though fragmentary, the chronicle of these events over the ages are undeniable.
Wouldn’t you know it, but the cosmic timer seems about to go off again. The magnetic poles are wandering drunkenly around the polar regions. The Earth could actually flip over. This seems insane but the cosmology is solid.
Back to Earthrise. If only the photograph of a splendid and proud little orb, so defiant and self-confident, was anything close to being accurate. What’s missing in the picture is any indications of the web of electromagnetic tentacles and energy circuits grappling the Earth and, on long term but regular schedules, throttling our little biological haven pitilessly.
It’s always scary to be on the brink of something so momentous. Earthrise is important because it shows a plucky little planet which has bobbed to the surface over and over again over the long slow past.
Brills. Your next book? Add water and footnotes! You already had my New Right/New Age idea in your back pocket. Thank god, now I can get back to Henry James and the origin of speculative capitalism and the Modernist novel (but is it a "form" or a "genre)?! Or fade into despair as a stale Associate Professor while gazing at the moon ...
I still have my WEC with that image stashed away somewhere. It was a glorious picture, even though what it didn’t show is more important than the naive gleaming simplicity of our valiant little blue agate.
What looks like a black void is filled with electricity and magnetism, charged particles of a fierce solar wind, and the blazing plasma assaults of Coronal Mass Ejections from a de Sadean Sun. The carceral solar system we are embedded in features fierce torture along with the shining. The astronaut photographer would have done better with a Kirlian film stock in the Hasselblad to show the invisible stripes and scourges Earth endures every day.
Although the Cosmic Realtor claimed that Earth was in a sweet Cinderella neighborhood, it isn’t. The archaeogeology of the planet proves how bad a zone we live in. We survive only because of our well-battered magnetosphere already full of holes and now poised for a seriously catastrophic event that will be the eternal end and return running on a 12,000 year cycle.
Indifference too is a poetic trope. The effects are similar whether random or merely wanton. Cosmic events are fair game for the judgement of poetry since biology emerges from cosmic complexity, it seems to me.
The indifference exhibited by foundational aspects of the material cosmos is legitimate grist for poetry, I suppose. Not at the top of my list for deriving poetic inspiration, but I've read some worthy examples.
In the case at hand, referencing Sadism doesn't resonate metaphorically. I view it as akin to futurist speculations on the potential of AI that imbue the algorithm with human power drives.
Yeah, I guess the flipside of the Overview Effect is the “Cthulhu Effect”—realizing that we live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and the vistas of reality opened up by images like Earthrise are actually quite terrifying. Space utopianism, like all utopianism, wants the yang without the yin, heaven without hell, but can’t find it even in deep space because it’s based on a profound metaphysical error. Love the line about the “presidential Mad Max motorcade” btw—hilarious. Peace and safety of a new dark age, my ass!
Well basically what I said, the idea that you can have yang without yin, heaven without hell, defeat dukkha, vanquish evil, or whatever. The larger perspective of space may bring a sense of global unity and connectedness, but inevitably it will also bring new depths of cosmic despair and new opportunities for Darth Sidiouses to build bigger empires. And so it goes, worlds without end.
I think Universe is big enough that all of the evil- or nearly all - of it can get banished to some remote place where it can pursue its private ends as a solitary indulgence. Preferably in the Eternal Past.
That's why its interesting to hear these characters reflect in their dotage. Of course that is the time for sentiment and revision, especially from the Cold Warrior Borman, but it is still instructive and illuminating to hear. And that's what modernity does: sacred and profane juxtapositions that leave you hanging.
I see him! He looks...confused.
I love growing books, especially in my mind! I have been thinking of "the Cosmic" lately, what that term means, how it is bound up with aerospace, psychedelics, science fiction, and of course California...might be smarter to return to James, anything to keep the staleness at bay, all these routines, in the head and not...time to blast off!
But who guards the boundary where the evil is banished? Don't they have to take on some of what they guard against? Oh wait a second...ROBOTS!
Sadly no. There was a whole list of folks I intended to see, but teaching was more time-consuming (and fatiguing) then I expected. I did manage to see Wouter Hanegraaff, Marco Pasi, and media scholar Megan Phipps. Next time!
What a great sentence Stephen: "The carceral solar system we are embedded in features fierce torture along with the shining." The divination of the day! I admit I didn't grok the part about the 12,000 year cycle...which you see ending soon?
Thanks. A compliment from you makes me glow.
Who knows why but there are regular long-term cycles of Solar System and “local” galaxy events involving vast sheets of electromagnetic energy flowing around even though celestial objects—planets for example. It’s all complicated beyond imagining but on a regular beat, the Earth is forced to reverse its magnetic poles. Serious changes take place. The protective magnetosphere diminishes admitting biologically marauding cosmic radiation. Extinctions and mutations are triggered. Volcanoes, earthquakes, floods and massive climate changes happen quickly. The record of all these changes are written in rocks, so, though fragmentary, the chronicle of these events over the ages are undeniable.
Wouldn’t you know it, but the cosmic timer seems about to go off again. The magnetic poles are wandering drunkenly around the polar regions. The Earth could actually flip over. This seems insane but the cosmology is solid.
Back to Earthrise. If only the photograph of a splendid and proud little orb, so defiant and self-confident, was anything close to being accurate. What’s missing in the picture is any indications of the web of electromagnetic tentacles and energy circuits grappling the Earth and, on long term but regular schedules, throttling our little biological haven pitilessly.
It’s always scary to be on the brink of something so momentous. Earthrise is important because it shows a plucky little planet which has bobbed to the surface over and over again over the long slow past.
I know me too! I have missed the ones at Fort Morgan. They don't happen every year but I bet they will happen again...
In that photo, if you squint real hard with the right kind of eyes you can see the Man In The Earth, as if drawn by William Blake. Or Goya, maybe
Brills. Your next book? Add water and footnotes! You already had my New Right/New Age idea in your back pocket. Thank god, now I can get back to Henry James and the origin of speculative capitalism and the Modernist novel (but is it a "form" or a "genre)?! Or fade into despair as a stale Associate Professor while gazing at the moon ...
I still have my WEC with that image stashed away somewhere. It was a glorious picture, even though what it didn’t show is more important than the naive gleaming simplicity of our valiant little blue agate.
What looks like a black void is filled with electricity and magnetism, charged particles of a fierce solar wind, and the blazing plasma assaults of Coronal Mass Ejections from a de Sadean Sun. The carceral solar system we are embedded in features fierce torture along with the shining. The astronaut photographer would have done better with a Kirlian film stock in the Hasselblad to show the invisible stripes and scourges Earth endures every day.
Although the Cosmic Realtor claimed that Earth was in a sweet Cinderella neighborhood, it isn’t. The archaeogeology of the planet proves how bad a zone we live in. We survive only because of our well-battered magnetosphere already full of holes and now poised for a seriously catastrophic event that will be the eternal end and return running on a 12,000 year cycle.
Ahh, you're anthropomorphizing the sun. Cosmic indifference is not Sadism.
Indifference too is a poetic trope. The effects are similar whether random or merely wanton. Cosmic events are fair game for the judgement of poetry since biology emerges from cosmic complexity, it seems to me.
The indifference exhibited by foundational aspects of the material cosmos is legitimate grist for poetry, I suppose. Not at the top of my list for deriving poetic inspiration, but I've read some worthy examples.
In the case at hand, referencing Sadism doesn't resonate metaphorically. I view it as akin to futurist speculations on the potential of AI that imbue the algorithm with human power drives.
Yeah, I guess the flipside of the Overview Effect is the “Cthulhu Effect”—realizing that we live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and the vistas of reality opened up by images like Earthrise are actually quite terrifying. Space utopianism, like all utopianism, wants the yang without the yin, heaven without hell, but can’t find it even in deep space because it’s based on a profound metaphysical error. Love the line about the “presidential Mad Max motorcade” btw—hilarious. Peace and safety of a new dark age, my ass!
Nothing to add here, you have clearly experienced the Cthulhu Effect. Curious though: what is the metaphysical error exactly?
Well basically what I said, the idea that you can have yang without yin, heaven without hell, defeat dukkha, vanquish evil, or whatever. The larger perspective of space may bring a sense of global unity and connectedness, but inevitably it will also bring new depths of cosmic despair and new opportunities for Darth Sidiouses to build bigger empires. And so it goes, worlds without end.
I think Universe is big enough that all of the evil- or nearly all - of it can get banished to some remote place where it can pursue its private ends as a solitary indulgence. Preferably in the Eternal Past.
I want to go to the PKD fest! Didn’t even know that existed. Thanks for compiling this.