corporate personhood as a red herring for the problems created by limited liability

deathtokoalas
it's quite the opposite. individualism doesn't make any sense in the context of socialized production. corporate personhood is conceptually a collectivist concept, rooted around the idea that the entire corporation exists as a singular entity, rather than as a collection of individuals. abolishing corporate personhood would be a return to liberal individualism. pretty much everybody across all spectrums is terribly confused on the topic...

the function of corporate personhood as a "legal fiction" was simply to provide standing. let's go back to before corporate personhood. let's say a corporation sold you something with false advertising, or endangered your health. you would have no legal remedy to reverse the situation that involved the corporation itself because you couldn't sue because they didn't have standing because they weren't people. rather, you'd have to sue the individual within the corporation that was responsible. this was considered impossible, due to the socialization of production (which is just a fancy way to say that the nature of modern production is not reductionist). it neither made sense to sue an individual worker, nor a middle manager, nor a corporate director. so, we constructed this fantasy that the corporation itself is an entity.

that itself is not a problem. without the existence of corporate personhood, many important environmental and aboriginal cases could not have gone forward at all, let alone amounted in victory. the left doesn't really want to abolish this. it's just infamously (and stereotypically) clueless about law.

rather, the thing the left should seek to abolish is the other side of corporate personhood, which is limited liability. see, we live in a class system. so, when they set up this fantasy of a corporation as a person, they naturally set up a legal shield around investors. certain people will make lame excuses about how this is designed to encourage risk in investment. even if this is true, and it isn't, it was just the investor class blatantly legislating itself above the law, we shouldn't want to encourage investments that are risky because they're environmentally damaging or investments that risk people's savings. it's institutional insanity.

...but what's going to happen if you abolish corporate personhood is that the worker on the oil rig making shit wages is going to become legally liable for any mistakes he might make. collectivists of any kind should strenuously oppose this!

============

Bushrod Rust Johnson
What a load of collectivist, progressive shit.  Corporations have the same rights as people because the individual persons who are part of corporations do not give up their individual rights just because they form groups.  The law does not say and has never said that corporations are literal people.

George Merkert
Corporations are collections of people working together to achieve goals but they're not the least bit democratic. "One person one vote" is the democratic ideal but that ideal has no place in governance of a corporation. Corporations are governed by boards of directors whose charters demand that they pursue profit as their only goal. That leaves out a raft of important goals like providing clean water for all citizens, administering justice, securing our country's borders. The law does, in fact, give corporations literal Constitutional rights. Notably, the right of free speech which has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United ruling to mean that corporations have the right to give unlimited amounts of financial support to any political cause or public official. That means that the small groups of people (Boards of Directors) that govern corporations and who can command control of many million$ use that money to influence whatever political issue they choose. That means corporations – whose wealth comes from the collective efforts of many people but whose wealth is controlled by only a very few – have vastly more power to influence our country's political process than any one individual US citizen can have. That violates the democratic principal of one person one vote. With which part of this thinking do you disagree?

Bushrod Rust Johnson
+George Merkert 
The reason why constitutional rights, such as speech, should apply to corporations is that denying them any right would effectively also deny an individual's rights.  When an organization "speaks", it is actually an individual choosing to speak or a collection of individuals choosing to speak. Preventing anyone from spending money on causes they support also results denying individuals or organizations of individuals the means to communicate or organize.  Anyone should be allowed to spend as much of their own money, including any money they have been authorized by others to spend, as they want on any cause they support.  If this results in undesirable political outcomes, then the real problem is the stupid powers granted to government.  This includes all economic and social issues.  Without these powers, there would be much less reason to spend money on political causes. If someone does not like what a corporation or other organization is doing with its money, that person can choose not to invest or do business with the organization.  Once you voluntarily give your money away, it is no longer your money.  And you are still free to vote however you like, how a corporation spends its money actually has no discernible physical effect on anyone's ability to vote.

George Merkert
Thanks for your answer but I don't understand how denying a corporation a right denies an individual a right. A corporate executive when speaking for his/her organization is speaking with the power of the collection of individuals that make up that organization. Executives hew to the ideas that the Board of Directors of the corporation have authorized the executive to promote. The BOD represents the interests of the organization as a whole and not the interests of any individual within the corporation. Individuals with less power in the corporation may have very different ideas than the official line of the organization that they work for and depend on for a paycheck. So I don't see how when a corporation speaks it's speaking for an individual. If I'm missing your point, please clarify so I understand.

Bushrod Rust Johnson
+George Merkert 
Quite simply, there are no exceptions in the first amendment.  Corporations don't actually speak unless at least one real, individual person speaks.  The views of a collection of individuals are still also the views of at least one or two individual individuals, and any of them has the right to speak or refuse to speak as an individual or as a representative or in support of the views that a collection of individuals may or may not hold. If any member of a formal organization feels strongly enough against the views of the majority of the other members, they are free to attempt to persuade them otherwise or are free to stop supporting it, working for it, giving money to it, or owning a part of it.  The other members should be free to send them packing, too.  Nobody is entitled to be a part of any private voluntary social structure or force the other members to run it a certain way.

deathtokoalas
it's quite the opposite. individualism doesn't make any sense in the context of socialized production. corporate personhood is conceptually a collectivist concept, rooted around the idea that the entire corporation exists as a singular entity, rather than as a collection of individuals. abolishing corporate personhood would be a return to liberal individualism. pretty much everybody across all spectrums is terribly confused on the topic...

the function of corporate personhood as a "legal fiction" was simply to provide standing. let's go back to before corporate personhood. let's say a corporation sold you something with false advertising, or endangered your health. you would have no legal remedy to reverse the situation that involved the corporation itself because you couldn't sue because they didn't have standing because they weren't people. rather, you'd have to sue the individual within the corporation that was responsible. this was considered impossible, due to the socialization of production (which is just a fancy way to say that the nature of modern production is not reductionist). it neither made sense to sue an individual worker, nor a middle manager, nor a corporate director. so, we constructed this fantasy that the corporation itself is an entity.

that itself is not a problem. without the existence of corporate personhood, many important environmental and aboriginal cases could not have gone forward at all, let alone amounted in victory. the left doesn't really want to abolish this. it's just infamously (and stereotypically) clueless about law.

rather, the thing the left should seek to abolish is the other side of corporate personhood, which is limited liability. see, we live in a class system. so, when they set up this fantasy of a corporation as a person, they naturally set up a legal shield around investors. certain people will make lame excuses about how this is designed to encourage risk in investment. even if this is true, and it isn't, it was just the investor class blatantly legislating itself above the law, we shouldn't want to encourage investments that are risky because they're environmentally damaging or investments that risk people's savings. it's institutional insanity.

...but what's going to happen if you abolish corporate personhood is that the worker on the oil rig making shit wages is going to become legally liable for any mistakes he might make. collectivists of any kind should strenuously oppose this!

Bushrod Rust Johnson
+deathtokoalas
Actually, in limited liability, individual employees, board members, and investors still can be held legally liable for fuckups or deliberate wrongdoings that can be traced back to them.  Limited liability protects individuals who weren't personally responsible for a problem, but investors and owners still risk losing up to their entire investment. Speaking in terms of individuals making a personal choice to include themselves in or leave an entity consisting of a collection of other individuals at will does make sense, this is not the same thing as "collectivism" of positive-rights based rights, responsibilities, and entitlements.  When I use the word "collectivism", anyway, I am talking about people telling other people what to do for intentions (but often not results) of a subjective "greater good".

deathtokoalas
+Bushrod Rust Johnson
"Limited liability protects individuals who weren't personally responsible for a problem" .

..and this is equivalent to the investor class legislating itself above the law. if you profit from organized crime, that's called money laundering. if you take part in it through financial aid, that's called abetting a crime. yet, shareholders are protected from accusations of the sort through the concept of limited liability. shareholders are guilty by means of enabling and should be prosecuted strenuously for it. this would provide a strong disincentive for investing in unethical companies, which would prevent them from existing. it's the thing that leftists actually want, even if they lack the education to articulate it. it's a neat trick to use a concept of collectivism that isn't remotely relevant in context. collectivism is a dozen different things depending upon how one applies it. it can be a type of political organization, sure. yet, that's not what we're talking about. it's obviously certainly not "individualist" to gather a group of people together that function as a unity and declare them a singular entity - a corps, or a machine. a holistic whole. a hierarchical (unfortunately) hive. politically, that's called "corporatism", which is a type of political collectivism, and forms the ideological underpinning of our concepts of corporate legal personhood. right-wing liberals and individualists oppose this idea, by definition. of course, one can also have right-wing collectivists (like nazis or stalinists) but i don't wish to commit the error you did.

Bushrod Rust Johnson
+deathtokoalas
Money laundering and abetting involve intent to support a crime.  Limited liability doesn't protect people who directly enable or cause something through deliberate actions or negligence.  It provides a limit to how much an employee, officer, or investor can be held responsible for not being able to babysit every fucking thing every moment.  Companies already have plenty of incentive not to operate unethically because of the risk to owners and investors, and potential investors.  Anyway, you know limited liability isn't going anywhere and you can't do anything about it. How is it not individualist for an individual to choose if he or she wants to associate with other individuals, as opposed to being forced to associate with others (what collectivism actually is)?  Corporatism is what happens when you give government powers to set policies favorable to one business or another- which is what really enables most of whatever your hangups with THE CORPORASHUNS are.  I'm not sure you can be sure you didn't commit a bunch of errors.  Lets get one thing clear:  collectivism is using force to tell other people what's "good" for "everyone".

deathtokoalas
+Bushrod Rust Johnson
i'll say you're providing a consistently right-wing idea of responsibility, but you're not addressing the core of the argument, which is that leftists do indeed think that shareholders should be liable for the consequences of their investments. investing in exxon comes with a high level of foresight that they're going to likely be involved in both negligent and genocidal behaviour. it ought to be the shareholder's responsibility to do that research before they invest and, if they don't, they ought to be prosecuted for it when it happens. the legality is something that would swing on a shift in philosophy. i mean, you're deriving your ideas from liberal axioms, but if we were to reject those liberal axioms then other conclusions would follow. obviously, the current incentive systems aren't working very well. corporatism is not at all what you think it is. you're using a colloquial definition that aligns more properly with a type of mercantilism. corporatism came out of an idea to merge guilds with the state by creating monopolies across industries. that worked itself out in the fascist era through the creation of large trusts that were under the control of state departments. i don't have the interest to explain this much further, other than to say you're not even close to it and you need to read up on the topic if you want to converse about it. mercantilism and corporatism are not related ideas, but you seem to have confused them as equal. none of this has anything to do with my basic observation that supporting corporate personhood is viewing the corporation as a holistic entity (a collectivist idea) and that rejecting corporate personhood is viewing the corporation as a collection of individuals (a liberal idea). to extrapolate it further through analogy: if these concepts were properly understood, thatcher would have said that corporate personhood could not exist because a corporation is merely a collection of people, and all the opposition to thatcher would have gasped and said she was out to lunch about it.

Bushrod Rust Johnson
+deathtokoalas 
"Genocidal behaviour", prosecuting shareholders, your simplistic view of things in terms of "left" versus "right"... I can see you are a well rounded and level headed person to have a discussion with.  If someone within a company really did initiate some form of genocide, it should be really easy to hold that person accountable.  Even the shareholders would have a valid moral and monetary claim against them.  You are fucking hyperbolic and ridiculous.

deathtokoalas
+Bushrod Rust Johnson
not at all. it's relatively common for mining companies in latin america to literally commit crimes that are banned under the rome convention, which was a convention on war crimes. mass rape. burning entire villages. i claim that investors share responsibility for these crimes by enabling them through their investment. and i'd argue that the directors of these companies should be prosecuted as war criminals.

Bushrod Rust Johnson
+deathtokoalas
This is shit that happens with easily manipulable and corrupt governments in third world shitholes that don't respect individual liberty, markets, and property rights.  It doesn't matter how companies are set up.  They get away with shit.

installation file:
zoom.kmm

i'm a little neurotic about checking the weather. well, i walk everywhere, so i like to plan around a warmer day. for example, i did some groceries today because they were forecasting it was going to be around -8 today, and -15 all week (it was cold all last week, so i'd been planning on it).

well, sort of. a few days ago they said it was going to be cold saturday and warm sunday. then they switched it, saying it was going to be around -3 today. then, last night, they switched it to -15 today and -24 tomorrow. this morning they said it would be -8. so i said that's good enough. but it seemed warmer - sure enough it hit a high of -3 around noon (it's now -7). this is all the same forecaster.

sounds awful. they can't even get it right an hour in advance which is firmly in completely useless territory. but it's the wind. the wind we've been getting this year simply doesn't blow through here like this. i was saying something about that a while back. -40 wind chills overnight are really unheard of in this city. yet, they've become the norm this month. and it's clearly just confusing the fuck out of the weather people.

so, it's sort of fun to watch and laugh.

they've changed the long range this week at least three times over the last ten hours, and major changes, too. a few hours ago, the forecast for tomorrow was a high of -24. then -16. now -6. it'll no doubt be different in a few hours. all because they've never seen this kind of wind here before...

...which is humbling. we think of the weather and climate as something that has to do with clouds, jetstreams and greenhouse gasses and cycles itself around familiar orbits that the earth has in relation to the sun - around approximately every 365 days, and on it's axis over ~ 24 hours. sun goes up, temp goes up; sun goes down, temp goes down. on a functional level, grover could explain this: near - HOT, far - COLD.

sometimes, though, the wind will completely abolish all of that soundness, sense and logic. temperatures will drop ten or twenty degrees as the sun is rising, then bounce back by 15 overnight when the sun is down, making a complete mockery of the expected order of things.

there's some thought that solar processes have an effect on the wind patterns that develop at the north pole (only the north due to the earth's tilt, but think of it like introducing energy (here, entropy) into the system), meaning it hasn't really lost control, just the illusion of it. but that requires some calculations to understand that reach well beyond the intuitive ordering that it totally shatters.

so, here's to the wind, and it's ability to pulverize normalcy into incoherency.

Nice to hear from you.

From: the surviving uncle
To: <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>

Yeah, the first few months are usually a bit up and down as you get familiar with your new surroundings, but I've always found it's good to actually take a chance in life and try something new. To what do you think you can attribute being more content than you have ever been?

re: got your card and check...

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: grandmother's email address

believe it or not, it is actually almost that cold here. the lows for the last week have been pushing -25, and there's another week of it. it's definitely unusual. they're consistently just missing records by a degree or so. but it is unusually cold here...

it was supposed to warm up this morning, but they shifted the forecast. now i'm debating whether i should do groceries in a -15 windchill or wait it out with spaghetti. i made sure to get several weeks worth of spaghetti, but it was for financial emergency not cold weather....

there's a few little things i need to get around the house. that's where it will go directly. but, it could easily be accounted backwards as a replacement for more frivolous spending last week.

....but, yeah. it's cold, but i've seen this before. people that have lived here their whole lives are in shock.

j

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/04/aids-hiv-vaccine-western-university_n_3865059.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/bashar-al-assad-interview-the-fight-against-terrorists-in-syria/5365613?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bashar-al-assad-interview-the-fight-against-terrorists-in-syria

i think he gets it mostly right, but he doesn't answer the question of "why now?". ok, the arab spring was an opportunity. it's only half the answer.

assad was actually democratizing before this mess. he wanted to move to a party system. the west is casting the guy as this authoritarian nut, but he's actually an eye doctor by training. he inherited power from his father, but didn't want it. far from wanting to extend his power, he's been trying to step down in an orderly fashion.

so, why not just step aside? because he's trying to be responsible. he doesn't want to hand over power to an american or saudi-backed military dictatorship (see egypt). he wants to set up a democracy on his way out. maybe not a really liberal democracy, but where does that actually exist?

i know this sounds incredible, but do the research. assad is an eye doctor that wants to relieve himself of the power he inherited and didn't want and focus on his practice. seriously.

the reason the saudis are invading now is that they don't want a democracy in the region, which is the same reason they're hostile to iran.

so, do you see what they've done? they've tricked you into thinking we're supporting forces that desire democracy. in truth, we're suppressing democracy. just like we do everywhere else in the region...

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11368

working in a university v. living on social assistance...

pros:
- don't have to teach classes
- are not forced into writing pointless papers to maintain your position
- more control over research
- do not have to communicate with institutional colleagues (can use internet instead)
- do not have to deal with peer review
- no hierarchy
- income is comparable, but assistance-based rather than debt-based.

cons:
- less people will take you seriously (less prestige, too)
- less access (perhaps marginally)
- no social support
- less incentives / more potential for distraction (it's really the latter...)

peer review is kind of a double-edged sword. i'll argue in favour of it for everybody except me. i do think i'm special...

in the above list, i mean it less in terms of formal peer review and more in terms of informal peer pressure. but i used the term consciously because they're inter-related.

i mean, it's something that's needed to catch frauds. no argument. but it also functions as a way to shut down debate. in fields like math and philosophy and economics, and even theoretical biology, there's not a lot of really valid potential for peer review that functions beyond a basic "dude, that calculation is wrong" level. it's almost all peer pressure.

escaping from that in the short term has some potential value.

in the end, it's gotta be peer reviewed. but maybe i'd rather wait until i'm almost dead and can present ideas as a whole before i bother going through it...

dave
hello, I'm looking for that article that had socialists talking about how identity politics is gutting the effectiveness of their movement, do you happen to have the link still?

jessica amber murray
it's on the page. i wish i could search it. that's why i'm cataloging it. there's actually a few of them, but the search term isn't going to be "identity politics" but "intersectionality" (they're the same thing).

installation file:
PreSonus Studio One 2 Installer.exe

a deconstruction of alcoholics anonymous

Jessica Amber Murray
i saw your AA post. i know you're going there because you're looking for help and maybe because it helped in the past. but i also know that AA is sort of a cult that preys on the weak and that their programs are not empirically confirmed. i have a bit of an axe to grind with organizations that prey on the weak while not passing basic tests of science. and i think you know that that is what AA is, too. i just want to point out that there are secular alternatives to AA. obviously, i can't comment on what kind of people they attract. but i think it's worth drawing your attention to. good luck on how you choose to approach this...

http://ffrf.org/faq/feeds/item/16468-finding-secular-alternatives-to-aa

mom
I know...I hear you...I already got some 13 stepping arse-hole that tried to add me as his friend on here. They are everywhere! ... And, I won't be adding any people from there to my friends list on here!

I just thought, I would try it out....Didn't really know for sure though, that everyone can see all...I guess everyone can though...Not much privacy at all! Although, the page does warn people of that.

I am hearing about some kind of an implant that people can have that helps with the cravings of alcohol!...Not sure it is in Canada yet...But, am going to check it out! I really do want to get out of this merry-go-round alcoholic living! I am still sober!

Jessica Amber Murray
it's because it's an "open group". facebook is kind of stupid. ....but with the dude, that's the thing. i don't know what kind of people that different groups are going to attract. but the secular groups take an empowerment approach based by empirical research rather than a cultish spirituality based approach... i've seen a few academic papers that suggest that AA is more of a problem than a solution, in the sense that it really emotionally damages people. all the deconstruction and victim blaming. they tell you it's a disease, and you're powerless to stop it, and you have to get closer to god. but that's just a cult being a cult. it's like scientology. the secular programs focus on the idea of changing lifestyles, developing (non-religious) meaning, coming to terms with things. i mean, i can't say what will work and what won't. but if you're feeling constrained or whatever by the religious aspect there are other options...

mom
I am going to apply to places(anywhere) for a part-time job...Just want something very part-time...Don't really care where it is...Just to get me out of the house for a few hours a few days a week. I felt so much better about myself with the last little job I had.

Maybe, I could be the little old lady at the McDonald's counter serving breakfast a few mornings a week! lol

Jessica Amber Murray
yeah, i think that defining purpose is hugely important. what purpose is is another question. but i think the lack of purpose is a big factor.....

mom
Yes, for sure! I don't have that much of a problem with the religious aspect of it...I mean, I used to...But, I just call it my higher power...Which, could mean, anything...Just something bigger than myself...A feeling even. I just take what I need and leave the rest...I learned to do this many, many years ago...And, it did work for me way back then....It is just a place to relate to others suffering as I am, so as not to feel so lonely at times.

I did learn to be grateful in the rooms of AA...If, I remember all the things I have to be grateful for... I have a much better day!

Jessica Amber Murray
well, ok. i just wanted you to be aware that there are other programs that take other approaches. and i guess what i'm thinking is that you've relapsed a lot of times over the years, so maybe you might want to try something else. but if you're confident, it's a better idea for me to be supportive than to question.

mom
Thanks J! I just read about that implant thing....NO, it would not work for me at all! First of all, I do have hep.C, so no good...And, not liking the sound of it all anyways.

Jessica Amber Murray
that strikes me as pseudo-science, to begin with.

i'm sorry, but when i see waves of people standing up for personalized mail delivery, i interpret it as a lot of people that are fighting to uphold the status quo because they lack the vision to see beyond it and because they're used to the convenience it provides, at the expense of the freedom of workers.

you really can't get your own mail? you really require enslaving somebody to bring you your letters?

and your spam?

do you tip them when they arrive?

"it provides jobs!". ugh.

first, people that are arguing that obsolete industries should be maintained because they provide jobs are completely missing the entire point of socialism. there's no path to communism in maintaining humans in wage slavery jobs that can be done by machines or distributed equally across the population. that's some kind of wonky capitalist keynesianism designed to uphold the propertied classes, or something. communism is centered in the idea that monotonous, crappy work should be abolished either by mechanization or by distributing it equally amongst everybody.

second, what to say of these workers? "no, please, don't emancipate me from slavery!"...."as workers, we must unite to ensure our continued exploitation!". ugh. it would make me depressed if it didn't enrage me.

when you take a step back and see it from a distance, you realize it's reactionary. it's a conservative knee-jerking to uphold existing social relations. if i were to show up at the rallies, it would only be to ironically distribute pamphlets written by edmund burke. or perhaps jonathan swift...

yup. predictable.

that's not to say that there isn't legitimate dissent and anger and shit, but it's the same thing we've been seeing in russia for a while - it's being organized by western forces seeking to destabilize the area.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-struggle-for-ukraine-protests-made-in-germany-america-and-the-eu/5360501

i've been watching this come up for a few weeks and it's finally here: i now officially have more followers than friends! woo!

and that doesn't include the ~300 people i've deleted over the past few years, several of whom are apparently still getting updates...

re: got your card and check...

From: grandmother's email address
To: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>

I'm glad to hear you received it, buy something frivolous with it!We are back in a deep freeze again,how about Windsor?We are in the minus 30 degree range I doubt it would be that cold there.Oh well January is nearly over & I can see the days are getting longer now.All for now~~ Ta Ta.

installation file:
accel.kmm

i don't really want to get moral on the guy. i mean, i share the revolted reaction. but his real problem is that he doesn't understand what drives people. he'd rather base his concepts of human behaviour on what some philosopher deduced than on any kind of actual study. it's a bigger problem than this guy.

they've done studies that have determined that the only people that think like economists are economists. that is to say that homo economicus is a pretty good description of economists, but a terrible description of everybody else. which demonstrates that their concept of "human nature" is something that economists *learn* in their academic training, rather than a universal constant.

most people don't care about working hard and building empires and being rich (forget the plausibility...), they care about being able to spend time with family and friends and engage in however they define recreation.

so, we need to take power away from the economists. we need to stop pretending that economists understand human behaviour. this guy is just a symptom of a false worldview.

http://www.thealbatross.ca/27691/kevin-o-leary-fantastic-news

i mean, we need to shift to behaviourist economics, yeah, but the focus of that shift is taking economics out of the center of human decision making. this entire type of thought, from mill through to marx and hayek and beyond, is just not reflective of what we are as creatures. we're about the theatre, and the academy, and not the agora...

"In 1956 the American Medical Association voted to define alcoholism as a medically treatable disease so that such treatment by physicians would become eligible for payment from third parties (insurance companies). The decision was not made on the basis of any analysis of the scientific evidence -- it was made on self-serving economic grounds."

https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/is-alcoholism-a-disease-heres-the-evidence-and-logic/

perceptronium, huh?

i don't think it's as complicated as philosophers would have you believe. they've just been stumbling around in the dark all these years, looking for a light switch. i hardly think somebody that lived before the age of computers could possibly have a single worthwhile thing to say about consciousness. i'm not really interested in hard or soft problems. i'm convinced it's just electricity running through circuits, and we just have to understood the physical properties of the circuits. while we understand that quantum mechanics governs the behaviour of matter, i don't see any reason why it's at all fundamental to understanding consciousness. the classical approximation is probably good enough.

a dozen philosophers will object, but what they have to say isn't based on empirical studies and is not worth seriously contemplating.

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/5e7ed624986d

so, no. this is crazy talk.

i mean, you could say something about a system working holistically. but you could apply the same reasoning to a paperclip factory. you take out a component, the whole thing falls apart. that doesn't mean you can't understand how it works by examining the components, and deduce that the functioning is a result of the components working together.

clearly, it's a complicated thing. but i reject the idea that it transcends mechanical explanations.

if you're really convinced that there has to be something deeper, the answer is going to lie somewhere in studying dna. which seems like i'm putting off the question. but i reject the idea that there's something more to it than that.

as mentioned: i'm not really interested in this (i'm suspecting this appeared in my feed as a reaction to some recent rambling and feel obligated to respond, but i have problems with solipsism), but a quick run through wiki suggests i roughly agree with daniel dennett. there isn't really a hard problem. well, it certainly *was* a hard problem to somebody living in even the not so distant past. but lots of hard problems turn out to have unremarkable solutions...

regarding qualia, i'll never forget the way i watched a philosophy prof take down a stoner in a class on german idealism.

"how do we know that what's red to me is red to you?"
"because we understand the theory of wavelengths."
"but..."
"no. it's a wavelength. it's not subjective at all."

i smiled. it was nice to hear.

- Evolution can be explained by what we know about genetics, and what we see of animals and plants living in the wild.

ok.

- The variety of genes (alleles) carried in natural populations is a key factor in evolution.

ok. obviously, variation is necessary for selection, otherwise nothing can be selected.

- Natural selection is the main mechanism of change. Even a very slight advantage can be important, continued generation after generation. The struggle for existence of animals and plants in the wild causes natural selection. Only those who survive and reproduce pass their genes on to the next generation. We find the strength of natural selection in the wild was greater than even Darwin expected.

i don't particularly like the exact words used here, but ok. i would like to see a larger role attributed to randomness and a lesser role attributed to competition. i'll get to this in a moment...

- Evolution is gradual: natural selection occurs, and small genetic changes collect. Species only change little from one generation to the next. Big changes do occur, from time to time, but they are very rare.

for the most part, sure. i would further put forward the idea that those big changes are largely hybrid events, and suggest a "family graph" as an alternate model to a family tree.

- Genetic drift is usually less important than natural selection. It can be important in small populations.

this one, i have serious problems with. there's a huge list of "adaptations" that seem to be defined by random genetic drift rather than natural selection. note that my opposition to the way evolution is understood is that it hasn't entirely eliminated a deity, not that it has. it's still too religious, not not religious enough! vestigial traits are one example that seems to be better described using random genetic drift than natural selection. it's not that i deny competition as a force for evolution, it's that i think they have the primacy of things backwards: randomness defines most evolution, but natural selection can be important when competing over specific scarce resources (and situations of scarce resources would be the exception, rather than the rule, in biology).

- In palaeontology, we try to understand the changes in fossils through time. We think the same factors which act today also acted in the past.

ok - except when evidence exists otherwise. it's really an untenable assumption, when analyzed. but it's necessary - unless it can be demonstrated otherwise.

- As circumstances change, the rate of evolution may get faster or slower, but the causes are the same.

same thing as the last comment. that should be read simply as "the rate of evolution is not constant".

wendy makes it clear, here, that she's actually an atheist. and that her focus is on promoting christianity because she thinks that it will create a society she wants to live in. it's a means to an end; it's actually some kind of positive nihilsm. and dawkins (the secular humanist) makes it clear that he realizes it.

you know, if being king or pharaoh or caesar or grand poobah or whatever were grounds for resurrection and immortality, i might think twice about rejecting hierarchy and trying to climb up the ladder a little.

on the other hand, if i was already the king or pharaoh or caesar or grand poobah or whatever i'd probably be educated enough to understand that i wasn't actually going to be resurrected and live forever. i'd probably just be irritated that there was this entire class of ignorant fools that thought they could gain immortality by killing me and taking over my property. unfortunately, i'd also realize that the myths upholding my immortality were inseparable from my claims to power in the first place. i'd be stuck in a loop. unless i realized that what they wanted was not power, but immortality. upon coming to this realization, the problem would reduce to finding a way to convince the masses that they, too, can be immortal - leaving me safe(r) in my position of power.

so, maybe i'd take some ideas from the isis myth that were already swirling around, the plebs seemed to have already mixed it up with the time that inanna went to hell for three days. then, make horus a jew (they were always the most problematic of subjects) in the hopes that they'll pick up on it. and saturate it with moral philosophy to stop people from raping each other....savages....

that's a comparably good trick as setting up a representative democracy to replace feudalism, then telling people that elections over aristocrats define freedom.

i'd love to be able to split myself in half, go do two things, then recombine. impossible? maybe not.

it's not outside of the realm of possibility to think we could clone ourselves in real time, using a more advanced analog to 3-d printing, and then download the experience carried out by the clone at the end of the day, before the body is put to sleep and the chemicals within it are recycled for further printing.

conceptually, it's not much different than synching your mobile device to your pc.

the type of printing, and the idea of downloading experiences, are both entirely science fiction at this point. i was born far too early. fuck this boring century....

it might be easier to just use a robot rather than constantly reclone yourself.

these books weren't written by jesus, and may consequently be burned.

as others have pointed out: they're not even selling them. it's just barbaric.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/health-canada-library-changes-leave-scientists-scrambling-1.2499217?cmp=fbtl

i really wish there was a filter in google that removed all religious results.

i'm googling something about the sun. i don't want a hundred hits from the book of joshua. in fact, i want precisely zero hits from the book of joshua. i want a hundred hits that cite physicists...

*sigh*. internet, you're just full of so much false promise...

"-joshua". yeah, i know.

answers.yahoo.com.
ask.com.
wiki.answers.com

yeah, that's better. </sarcasm>.

*cries*

i was wondering what happened to that:
http://www.google.com/reviews/t

well, this will do for now.

excuse me, while i block 75% of the internet...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-unwanted-results-of-go/

it's scary, though, to consider a future where search engines are restricted to answers in genesis.

they'd do it if they could.....and might still, and forget to tell us...

"a jury in racisttown, indiana found that the black man is guilty"

ok. the source sucks. this shouldn't be a jury trial, it should be a judicial review. and the idea that you should need a petition to run for office is not an idea that upholds democracy. it would have been far worse had they ruled obama ineligible on a technicality, as he was winning state after state.

but my memory recalls a lot of fishy shit during this period. obama's campaign was praised for it's "efficiency" in going after exactly the right demographics. but if you spend any time analyzing the results (and i spent a little time going through district-by-district and looking at how things were breaking down), the amazing "efficiency" starts to defy reason. it seemed a little *too* efficient, if you see what i mean.

it's not a new thing. both parties do this. the system is fixed to get the establishment candidate. it's no secret, either. jimmy carter is recently on record for stating that the united states would not pass his own foundation's regulations for "free and fair elections". and jimmy carter is not some obscure pinko out to discredit american democracy.

but it demonstrates the lengths that the democratic party, itself, has gone to to keep hillary out of power. this is a story i'm going to be following in the next few years, if she decides to run. just because i find it curious...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/26/officials-found-guilty-in-obama-clinton-ballot-petition-fraud/

the big question is who the democrats are going to run against her...

i got into an argument this evening.

listen: we could build a society where we're not exploiting each other. we have the technology. we just have to do it.

but all anybody ever says is "human nature this" and "work is sacred that". people don't want to build this society, they just want to be the person doing the exploiting.

to an extent, i realize how brainwashed people are, but to an extent they're fulfilling their own prophesy. they don't want to build a society that prevents themselves from holding the whips. people secretly conspire to be monarchs, running their own fiefdoms.

so, fuck you all, then. if you all insist on an exploitative society, i'm not about to bend over and take it. just because you're convinced you can be queen of make-believe land doesn't mean i should have to go do some stupid nonsense all day.

so, i'll exploit y'all by free loading.

don't like that? well, i have plenty of ideas if you want...

oh, i'm a utopian, am i? well, too bad, then. i have alternatives, but if you're going to fix my choice between getting fucked over and fucking you over because you want to fuck me over, then i'm going to fuck you over.

and fuck you for getting upset about it.

no rational individual would choose being exploited by others over exploiting others. it's not the choice i want, but it's the choice i have.

(the truth is i could fudge the accounting so that i'm living off of excess production, meaning i don't actually cost society a dime that they wouldn't have flushed down the toilet anyways, but it's an arbitrary exercise, and it really ignores the point.)

(at the end of the day, 75% of the money they give me goes back to them in taxes - most of it in property taxes. almost all of the rest of it goes towards food that would get thrown out if nobody bought it. i don't really cost the system anything in any kind of measurable terms.)

the day the local supermarket runs out of food, get back to me on this, but i'm not holding my breath on that.

Ali Haider
I agree with Professor Chomsky on many issues but he got it totally wrong on Syria. Should we intervened at early stage ( like what the opposition and Syrian people kept begging us to do ) by arming the Free Syrian Army and providing aerial cover for them ( NFZ) then tens of thousands of souls could be saved. By lack of decisive leadership we made it very disastrous to Syrian people and complicated to us. Now FSA had to fight both Assad and his Hizballah mercenaries and Al Qaida forces in the north. History will witness that our leadership failed miserably on Syria and sometimes you need a president like Bush who talks the talk and walks the walk.

deathtokoalas
the united states has been intervening the whole time, on the side of the saudi-backed rebels. if it weren't for that american intervention, there wouldn't be a conflict there in the first place. the issue is over escalation, not intervention.

the question displayed the ignorance of the interviewer, and old noam would have taken him to task for it in his clearer-minded years.

the world has changed very little; in this interview, jon snow does not come off much different than william buckley.

publishing j’s adventures in guitarland (inri045)

so, after some months of denial, i've come to the sober realization that most of my classical guitar monstrosities are now forever lost in the consequences of a snow-flooded backyard shed. i would shed a tear, if it weren't for the reality that they've been lost to my mind and my fingers for far too many years to recover them, anyways.

i would have laughed at you if you would have told me i'd be sitting here, thirteen years later, lamenting the fact that i never recorded these pieces. yet, here i am.

there's not really a good reason why i never recorded these. i just didn't. it's true that i was distracted by other projects, and that i wanted to make sure they were perfectly imperfect before i let them out. that doesn't explain why i never bothered demoing them, or even just recording them half-assed for historical purposes. alas...now they are gone...

i took classical guitar lessons for about a year from spring '00 to spring '01. by that time, i'd been playing guitar for almost ten years and had been through many years of blues and jazz training, albeit not for several years before then. i didn't want to go back to rock-era instruction, but i felt i could benefit from approaching the guitar with a different perspective. i also wanted to learn a little about counterpoint. so, we went with renaissance pieces to start off with (and which comprise this short offering) and more avant pieces by the likes of leo brouwer near the end.

a punk with a classical guitar is still a punk, just a punk with a classical guitar. throughout the experience, my cobain instincts and hendrix flairs overpowered any demands to play nicely. the truth is the guy i was paying absolutely despised me, but he also had a muted level of respect for somebody with the panache to actually think about even trying to pull this shit off. i caught him open-jawed a few times, as impressed as he was shocked.

there were almost twenty of these things written out. he'd present me with a score and i'd just go to town with it, scrawling notes all over it, changing chords, making up notation symbols, just whatever i thought sounded better. the results were a legitimate fusion of noise rock and classical guitar music in a way that stressed technical playing over atmospheres. what is present here is the very tip of this iceberg.

yet, i didn't want to just record them. i wanted to recreate them. the version of little suite that is here is a good example of where i wanted to take these things. the problem i ran into was that i didn't know how to. which isn't to say that i didn't how to do what i wanted but that i couldn't conceive of what i wanted to do. so, i kept putting it off until that stroke of inspiration would finally come...

it never came, and is now lost.

there will be a second version of this; how far in the future that will be, i cannot say. i think a part of me wants to wait until i'm older and is happy i now have the excuse to do that. for now, though, i'm closing down this project, restricting it to this short ep and an album of unrealized dreams.

recorded in the first part of 2001. initially released as a bandcamp upload in august, 2010. re-released on january 18, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - classical and electric guitars, ebow, effects, organ, synthesizers, sound design, sampling, sequencing, drum programming, vocals, digital wave editing

original authors forgotten. please contact if you recognize these pieces.

released may 10, 2001

RE: windsor

From: stepmother's email address
To: death.to.koalas@gmail.com

Well I am glad you are settled and able to do the things you enjoy!

Re: Hey.

From: "Jessica Murray" <dfhldgdhdlhfdla@gmail.com>
To: the surviving uncle

now? the first few months here were up and down, but i'm currently actually probably more content than i've ever been. i'm not using this address much, though. i'm more responsive at death.to.koalas@gmail.com.

j

Re: windsor

From: Jessica Murray [mailto:dfhldgdhdlhfdla@gmail.com]
To: stepmother's email address

hi.

i wasn't checking this address at all after i moved in. i think i needed some space. so, i was sort of ignoring the channel of communication, but not anybody specifically. i'm using my other address (death.to.koalas@gmail.com) more frequently.

it's been sort of mixed over the last few months. the first little bit was difficult, but i had a lot of things to keep my mind focused on. i had to get the shower replaced, for example. the landlord did that.

he's pretty good, considering it's a divey place in windsor. he inherited a big chunk of money from his family's concrete business as well as responsibility over his slightly autistic brother and more autistic niece. they live upstairs. he's got three other units in the place rented out to cover costs, which basically means property taxes. so, i lucked out in finding a landlord that's not really interested in maximizing profit on the unit. one of the things we agreed upon is no rent increases, for example. that makes the living arrangement very stable, so long as i can continue to find a reasonable source of income. this is a huge two-bedroom basement apartment that is roughly similar in size and layout to the entire basement on arnot (knock the wall behind the tv down, put a kitchen in the back room and separate out the two bedrooms and it's virtually identical) for $650.

at the moment, i think i'm fairly content. i've been focusing a lot on music and reading - the things i really care about. i don't know anybody here, but i'm introverted enough that i'm not all that concerned about it.

regarding the city itself, it's sort of weird. i'm used to having everything located downtown and didn't think that there might be a city that's arranged the other way around. in windsor, everything is in the suburbs. so, if i want to get to a store to get anything that's not groceries, i need to take a bus ride. what used to be the main street through the italian district (i'm just north of little italy and just south of a mostly arabic district) is now mostly boarded up. you can really see the effects of the urban decay. the downtown core is mostly dilapidated buildings that are decades beyond the point of repair and would be torn down if the property they're on was worth anything and instead are a mix of dying businesses and low-rent apartments. there are little pockets of upkept buildings, but the reality is that the city would actually benefit massively from a huge fire.

i'm kind of more interested in the music scene in detroit than i am in windsor in any way. i haven't bothered getting a phone yet, which has made it impossible for me to get across the border. first i have to get a phone number (and i'll probably finally get a pay-as-you-go internet phone in the next few weeks), then i have to get a nexus card. i can't get a passport because i'd need a ridiculous 6 references. the nexus card is for "low risk travelers". but they won't just let you across for the day with a birth certificate like they used to, and like i sort of assumed they would. so i can't really say how much i like the city yet because i don't feel i've really experienced it. i made it out to a punk show in october, but windsor isn't the destination that most of the bands coming through here that i'm interested in are going to pick (although the casino here will sometimes outbid detroit for moderately large acts that don't want to enter downtown detroit).

regarding the safety of detroit? i don't know yet. i've read some things that suggest that there are areas to avoid but, overall, it's not any worse than any other major city - so long as you avoid those areas. i can't think i look like much of a target. and most of the destinations i have circled require going through the core on a bus. so i get the impression it'll probably be fine. i guess i'll find out, though.

i think i'm legitimately happy, here, though. the whole arrangement plays into my introversion and is maximizing my ability to be creative.

j

grappling with my own writing

"bear patrol"

my laptop died on the 5th. i resurrected it! but the push out of schedule has got me focusing on cleaning up my discography as a sole priority. i'm almost at the point where i've caught up to unfinished work that i always intended to complete. a few more days. when i get there, i will pause and spend possibly as much as a week cleaning up this page, as well as a few days dedicated to my proper web page.

i knew that if i started focusing on genealogical links then i'd lose focus. years ago, that meant falling into obsession. nowadays, considering that i have a stronger grasp of the genetics of the situation (we're all relatively closely related) and a better understanding of the social science of sexual promiscuity [some studies estimate that as much as a third of people are born into families that include males that are not aware they are not the biological father *and* women that are aware of this - this kind of "trickery" is a normal and natural aspect of human sexual behaviour that attempts to combine female intuitions about genetic superiority (dna daddy) and financial security (non-biological daddy, but in every functional sense actual daddy). while this recognition doesn't really have an effect on my underlying arguments regarding class, it does make the research meaningless. even if you get through the childish myths and legends of aristocratic control, there's no way to actually know who daddy ever actually was in any specific situation. in many cases, centuries-old gossip about the queen sneaking out late at night to meet her chosen genetic suitor has been preserved, and is probably true on a very real level. "he doesn't look much like his father" actually usually *does* have an obvious explanation!], it means losing interest. i wanted to ensure i was doing a certain amount of "formal reading" a day. i want to get back to it.

so, i'll be back!

....but it's quiet for a few more days on this front...

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/simpsons-co-creator-rescues-bears/19645/

some species of birds do this. we're not unique in it.

some people will counter that women were under strict control until relatively recently. well, i may question whether the examples provided are general or extreme cases. i may question how large a period that really applies to (does it apply to the "anarchy" of the early middle ages and periods before it?). but, excluding these academic questions, patriarchy is a system of control and comes out of reasons to control. that is, it gets the causality backwards - men exerted control over women's reproduction because it was the only way to ensure their dna would carry on, for the precise reason that women were constantly faced with this biological contradiction between ensuring that their own offspring had the best father and being coerced into this breeding system defined by land and wealth. women had to be forced into it to overpower their biological urges.

now, liberal-minded people of both sexes would, today, universally accept that treating women like child-bearing chattel vessels is morally wrong. there's no real debate there. but, how much of that follows from the social systems that have developed since the modification (i don't want to say collapse, because i reject that) of feudalism is a serious question. the old feudal logic no longer applies. yet, recognizing it's inherent injustice is not the same thing as understanding it or why it became a dominant system of controlled reproduction. as morally reprehensible as patriarchy is, it made sense relative to certain axioms - and as a reaction to natural, biological behaviour.

the flip side of this is that, throughout the history of patriarchy, we find examples of "enlightened land owners" that didn't really feel the need to enforce it. one could suggest it was only necessary to enforce it under the conditions that the male dna was coming from a less than ideal source. see, and now i'm starting to build a biological theory of patriarchy and class dominance, which was sort of what i was getting at in the first place, albeit very modified from my initial beginnings.

the point being that the argument isn't debunked by patriarchy. rather, it works as a mechanism to explain it along biological terms.

so, what i've shifted that aspect of the site to is away from mapping the lines out and towards examining their validity, even as i constructively build up these historical classes from their obscure roots in the collapse of roman control of northwestern europe.

marx & engels could not have fully understood the implications of modern evolutionary biology on their ideas. they're just too close together to each other. they were certainly aware of darwin's ideas, and engels particularly actually spent a lot of time with certain aspects of them, but they just hadn't developed enough at the time. while i may not agree with the social darwinists (a disagreement i share with scientific darwinists), the extreme political movements that followed social darwinism or their watered down equivalents in neo-liberalism, i have to at least give the right credit for actually adjusting to darwin. the left has not done that. well, kropotkin tried, but, he, too, was too close to the source. leftist theory has to be rewritten to take these ideas into account.

to carry on from my earlier point, the person closest to actually doing this (that i'm aware of) is actually that old liberal-in-a-hurry richard dawkins.

unfortunately, the left has tended to lean more towards freud than darwin. that's not going to get anybody closer to utopia, it's just going to trick workers into accepting conditions of dystopia.

this is what modern scientific socialism is actually about:

Nine Inch Nails: Happiness In Slavery (Uncensored) (1992) from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

got your card and check...

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: grandmother's email address

thank you kindly :)

j

on taking nancy grace seriously

deathtokoalas
ok. hold on. why are so many people entertaining the delusion that she (or the anti-pot guy) have any intent whatsoever to win a reasoned debate? this is propaganda designed with the purposes of social engineering a population into an officially approved "good worker" lifestyle. she seems to be completely aware that she's full of shit, and doesn't have the slightest amount of interest in whether she is or not. she's getting paid to push a point by all means possible, not to come to some kind of understanding of what is "true".

calling her a moron is consequently missing the full context. what she is is diabolically evil and interested in nothing more than her own career trajectory.

Scorpionloses
If you really believe she's consciously inventing this persona or argument for some grand scheme and not because she's just wrong you seriously need professional help.

deathtokoalas
these demagogues operate under a type of nihilist reasoning that goes something along the lines of "it doesn't matter if what i say is actually true, what matters is if i can convince you it's true".

...and understanding that this is how they think and act is a pre-requisite to stopping them. so pass it on.

it seems like the guy upstairs has moved to the third floor. which has some short-term benefits. i think i'm now free to make smoothies between 11:00 PM and 8:00 AM. not that i wasn't before, but it's common courtesy to keep that kind of noise down. generally speaking, the larger noise buffer is sort of relieving.

nobody has said anything to me about noise, and i don't think that was the cause for the move. rather, i think the recent cold snap produced an evacuation.

personally, i saw it coming and prepared by cranking the heat a few days in advance. when the wind was blowing around out there near -50, the thermostat in my room was a hair under 24 degrees celsius; it was admittedly not able to hold itself there, and the temperature on the thermostat doesn't actually reflect the temperature in the room (which was more like 18 or 19) but the apartment was comfortable.

i realize, though, that it could have been very uncomfortable down here if i just let it sit at 20, oblivious to what was happening outside. i suspect that's why the guy upstairs retreated to safer ground.

which would be fine.

....'cept that the heat seems to now be off, altogether, upstairs. i'm a little worried, but at the same time the mild breeze is actually sort of refreshing. in addition to that meaning i'm going to have to boost my heat a bit, which is a mild adjustment if an adjustment ever was mild, i'm not entirely sure the plan was thought out; part of the reason it's hottest upstairs is that it's being heated by the two levels below it!

so, the end result is we both end up turning the heat up higher and neither is as warm as we were before. i can live through that, but i'm wondering just how bad an idea it is to let the wood floors freeze...

anyways, i think it'll be fine. my guess is that the heat comes back on up there in a day or two when the temperature falls. if not, i'll have to explain the situation, and i'm sure it'll get turned back on. really, i'm just becoming more and more intrigued by my landlord's family....

the silent majority is a different animal than it used to be. but if it quacks, and it walks...

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/blogs/bostonspirit/2014/01/duck_dynasty_ratings_plummet.html

people wonder why i don't trust my mother...

mom
J..You need to get yourself another doctor down there and when the time comes your disability can certainly be extended or most likely be ongoing till you are 65...But you need to get yourself a doctor. Love You.... If you need to talk, I am here too!

Well...First find a gp and they will refer you... You need to talk like in your last post...That you feel very suicidal and stuff... I know, I know....A mental disability is much easier to get than a physical one. Play the game, if you have to... I mean, it is there for people...So, take advantage of it.... You can also pick up another $250.00 a month for a food allowance. You are sooooo slim, you can say that have been anorexic since you were a teen. It is ridiculous that they give the whole amount of the money for that syndrome.

But, they do.

Jessica Amber Murray
it's a two year short term odsp that runs out in september, when i'll have to go to an interview. i'm very much hoping it will get extended, but i'm not confident of it. "dysthemia" is total fucking bullshit, and they're going to know that. so it's going to depend on the attitude of the people, etc. but i was just thinking that i could probably get a diagnosis for something more serious. i bet i could convince a doctor to put me on the autism spectrum, then explain why that means i can't work. the life expectancy on my dad's side is well under 60. the oldest aunt looks like she's next. i bet the surviving uncle outlives them all...but he's not doing well either.... but, yeah. i should prioritize getting to a doctor. i remember wanting to do this a while ago and then realizing ohip doesn't cover anything psychological....but odsp might...

mom
Also say that you are lactose intolerant, have high cholersterol(sp?)(which, I believe you do).... and there are a few other things that will get you the whole thing...Look it up on the internet. I had to tell my doctor what to fill out and he did without a problem...I was thin like you...Oh and you have the irritable bowel syndrome thingy too...I think??

Jessica Amber Murray
i've never been tested for any of these things. i haven't been going to regular doctor checkups since i was in junior high school. i just hated waiting around for the doctor to finish, and i had a fear of needles i've never gotten over. i don't think i've ever told anybody that i skipped out on all of the booster shots back in jr high school, including that one year where there was a mandatory meningitis vaccination. the doctor almost killed me a few years ago for not having a tetanus shot on record. i skipped so many dr appointments in high school that the dr actually dropped me as a patient.

it's been infrequent clinic visits since...i figure doctors should be an on-demand service rather than something that's done on a regular schedule...

so, yeah. there could be any number of things wrong with me, but i have no idea. i would expect that my cholesterol is very low, actually. that’s not genetics, it’s lifestyle. my blood pressure has always been more or less "perfect". i’m not lactose intolerant. i don’t have a diagnosis for ibs, and don’t think i have it. i’m pretty physically healthy, really.

mom
I remember your cholesterol was high at one point....prolly genetic, cause mine is high and so is Nanny's...The anorexia, they can never know for sure...I just said that I suffered from it since I was a teen...Irritable bowel syndrome has no test...they just go by symptoms...

Jessica Amber Murray
no – i’m certain i’ve never had high cholesterol. you’re thinking of somebody else.

mom
you did!

Jessica Amber Murray
mom, i’ve spent most of my life biking twenty miles a week. i have no memory of being checked, but i almost certainly have exceedingly low cholesterol.

mom
your mother knows

Jessica Amber Murray
she clearly does not.

mom
listen to your mother!

Jessica Amber Murray.
ugh. whatever….

mom
Lactose intolerance....I said I have it...Said I have cramps and diarrhea every time I drink milk or eat cheese...LOL...Yeah right! I live on the damn stuff!...Oh well...They don't test one for it.

Jessica Amber Murray
yeah, that stuff is whatever. if you gave me an extra $200/month, i'd probably just smoke a lot more pot. there's some bookshelves and stuff i'd like to get, but i don't really need it, long term. well, unless the rent goes up, i guess. but right now i'm more concerned about making sure i don't get kicked off it altogether. I think honesty is a better idea.

mom
Remember, my stinky little Charlie Brown's breath! Well...He had 8 rotten teeth pulled the other day, and they cleaned the rest...He smells wonderful now! Well, the extra money comes in handy for sure! You have to get an application form for special diet allowance and get your doc to fill it out. I truly believe that if you get a doc there asap..Your disability will be extended for sure.

Alot of times they start off with the 2year thing and then extend it for ongoing years and then you get a letter saying you are on it till you are 65.

Jessica Amber Murray
yeah, but i've noticed a lot of people seem to give me this "wtf?" look when i walk in there, after they've seen my profile. young, white genetic male with no physical issues and a b. mathematics. how many retarded people have math degrees? oh. she's "depressed", poor baby. maybe cutting her off benefits will get her strength back up... see, that's what i'm worried about: some fucking thatcherite that thinks that Work Makes Us Strong and throwing me to the wolves will Toughen Me Up. these sadistic freaks actually exist. they've become more and more powerful over the last 20 years. it's the dominant mindset of bureaucrats since the mid 90s and may still have another decade or two of getting worse before a generational renewal reverses it....

mom
They look at what the doctor says in his report. Find your own doctor...They have to go by what the doctor says.... And talk alot about how depressed you feel and stuff....They cannot take any chances with a depressed person.

Jessica Amber Murray
i think it does come down mostly to the doctor.

mom
Yes, it does for sure. If you say that you are feeling OK most of the time...Then he/she puts that down...If you say that you are so depressed that it is hard on many days to even get out of bed and you have no energy and you starve yourself cause you feel fat all the time and you feel you are not in control of your life and you are not sure what you may do to yourself sometimes and you idolize suicide....They will NOT take any chances!

Yes...They will throw a script at you...Fill it...But just don't take it and get it refilled when necessary....throw them away.

Jessica Amber Murray
i'm really going to aim more for the asd or schizophrenic diagnosis. i think they're both accurate. i mean, there's obvious reasons why i've wanted to avoid those diagnoses. employment opportunities are going to dry up for autistic people. but that logic is no longer really applicable. i do not think i suffer from anything remotely close to clinical depression. i do think i have schizophrenia. and i do think i'm asd, in the broadest sense.

mom
Just come across as rather neurotic and that you are not sure about life anymore....That you cry alot and you feel deep down that you are unworthy and stuff....Don't diagnose yourself to them...Let them do it.

Jessica Amber Murray
but, i don’t cry to myself or feel I’m worthless. i’m not going to lie to them. what i *actually* tell people when they ask is that i'm on disability because i'm just flat out mad. and in all honesty that's the closest thing to the truth.

mom
Talk alot about being paranoid and stuff...

Jessica Amber Murray
i think it's a sort of a controlled schizophrenia.

mom
Yeah, well perhaps...But true schizophrenics are unaware of their condition...They believe these things are true and cannot tell the difference....So, don't tell them that! Let them diagnose you.

Jessica Amber Murray
i don’t think the part about schizophrenics being unaware of their delusions is actually true.

mom
I'm not sure either...But, I have seen a few over my lifetime and they appear to believe their delusions to be true.

In different therapy groups and places where I have spent some time many years ago when I was young...

It was very strange listening to them talk sometimes....

Jessica Amber Murray
in the most severe states, sure. and that's of course the fear that all schizophrenics live with. but i think the general condition is one that has more to do with balancing deductive and empirical reasoning. what happens is that deductive processes overpower empirical ones, leading people into these fantasies that make perfect sense to them on a rational level, and yet have nothing to do with reality as it's measured sensually. if you study my behaviour, that type of difficulty with deductive reasoning overpowering empirical reasoning goes right back to jhostbusters. it explains a lot of my behavioural problems, which in a lot of cases had to do with me being unable to construct the logic underlying the rules (and, rather, having my own sense of deductive reasoning that concluded my actions were justified). there's a big overlap with schizophrenia and mathematics. i don't think that's an accident: both are the result of exaggerating logic and deduction over evidence and experience.

anyways, if there's something to that, it follows that it's controllable by paying extra attention to empirical evidence. and that seems to be the focus that the schizophrenics i've read about (i've never met any) use to control it without meds. which is the same method i use.

i really, really don’t want to take the drugs.

mom
You are so knowledgeable on the subject for sure! I can't even understand the half of it....I need a dictionary to decipher much of what you are saying....What does empirical mean?

Jessica Amber Murray
this is sort of what i'm talking about, except i'm inserting deductive for "common sense" (based on a distinction in types of european philosophy): http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/archives/005699.html

Jeff
Your a brilliant person, just need to focus that on something that allows you to make money in the process. Surprised you never ended up in the science field or book writing for example. As far as life goes take it one day at a time and I'm sure you'll find something you like. Music is your passion but your mind was meant for far more! That's why I say science or writing books on sociology. Hang in there k

You might argue sociology due to certain personal traits like not liking other people but it doesn't mean you don't understand human behavior or deep thought into peoples behavior or actions cause from some posts you write I think you do at least write good thoughts on alot of issues so...what I'm saying is write books or papers for universities and see where it takes you,might axially get published!!

Jessica Amber Murray
*sigh*. i appreciate the kind words, but i'm really just venting. i don't think we ever communicated much over the internet back in the day, but these kinds of written rants are pretty normal for me. i've actually had a lot of difficulty separating the perception of the internet i grew up with (specifically, something that does not exist in real life) with the actuality of the internet in my adult life (something that does). ten or fifteen years ago, i would have posted that rant on a message board somewhere...now it's facebook...the difference is more in who sees it. that is to say that, while i don't think there's much of a path there, i do think i'm ok. i'm mostly just working out thoughts...

Jeff
Just thought id let you know that I hope you figure it out and stay positive Jess.

i've been informed by multiple people that that last post was hard to read and have changed the privacy settings on it. i apologize if it upset you. i'm acknowledging it was upsetting.

i should probably start a livejournal site or something. is that site still up...?

except that this *is* that.

see, if i release the evil energy through my fingers then it escapes and floats off into the galaxy, leaving me free of it's consequences. i felt better not after posting it but while i was typing it. and that's the real point. you'll note that i'm sort of unflappable, aren't i? except i'm not, i just have my yoga typing rituals. public/private distinction.

...'cept, due to the adoption of various internet conventions, my latrine is now at the front of my house and y'all are on the lawn. what was once a way to expunge negative thought through a well hidden back out is now airing soiled laundry. and i don't quite want to yell at anybody to get off the lawn just yet.

but, this is a journal, and i'm going to exaggerate a bit sometimes. i'm agreeing that that was a tad heavy, heavy enough that it only needed to be posted just for me, and mostly because it is, in fact, hard to read, but a journal is the nature of what this is, and it's going to get a little prickly sometimes.

it doesn't seem to matter what i do, that crushing feeling of emptiness is periodically inevitable. it's tied into realizing that the meaning i've temporarily tricked myself into creating is entirely constructed. and, getting out of it for another few days is a process that requires fooling myself once again. sometimes, i look back and actually cry about how trivial my motivations are. but they're the only motivations i have...

i don't need drugs. i'm not malfunctioning. i've come to a series of careful, reasoned conclusions and if you allow me the space to lay my arguments out i could very well convince the cheeriest people alive of these empty feelings that they seem to be oblivious to. to me, that's the head-scratching part of it. i really don't understand how so many people can be so happy - or bother pretending they're so happy - in the face of so much pointlessness. i don't want to understand this, either, as i feel it would necessarily require destroying a substantial number of brain cells.

i should have killed myself a long time ago, but i can't even really work up the nerve of even that. what's the point of suicide? i mean, these fleeting moments of contrived happiness, as well as these constant trials with myself, are surely more valuable than nothing at all? i'm most content when i ignore purpose and just exist. but i just can't come to terms with that in more than isolated stretches. i'm just constantly overwhelmed.

right now i'm mad at myself for it. i'm usually not. but right now i know i have to take advantage of this small period of freedom before it disappears. i can't be depressed or wasting my time thinking about what comes next (as though it matters, right? but these kinds of delusions are fundamental to building up any kind of motivation). i can't be losing myself in plans. the uncertainty, though, is gnawing.

what would i even do with this time period if i were using it to focus on the future like i'm supposed to be doing? i'm privileged enough to be able to re-educate myself largely as i see fit, but i've basically systematically ruled out any possible professional designation as a process of intellectually enslaving myself. the reason intellectual work is supposed to be more rewarding is that it provides for some freedom of thought, but that doesn't work when you can't get beyond any existing system of axioms without an objection that is so strong as to require mutiny. i'd actually have to suppress my views less as a wage slave than as a lawyer or a professor. there's no intellectual freedom there, there's no garden to frolic in - there's just the repetition of lies, the observance of conformity and the problem of cognitive dissonance.

i can't do tradeswork. i lack things like physical strength and motor skills. and i couldn't market a steak to a starving person.

so it's a process of looking forward to the reestablishment of my own enslavement, or getting lucky in extending my existing conditions. and why bother preparing for that? why not just hope you get lucky, and deal with the consequences if you don't?

there's no possible happy ending, it's just different levels of enslavement.

i realize they're going to throw it at me. "we gave you two years on disability to recover from a mental breakdown, and you wasted it in a scorched earth policy at carleton, followed by moving to the worst job market in the country and sitting around listening to music?"

well, yeah. it might be the last opportunity i get.

installation file:
wlsetup-web.exe

installation file:
winLAME-2010-beta2.msi

the only audience i've ever reached is the secret service.

*cue drumroll*

dawkins is a liberal in a hurry. a misunderstood one. the freedom of thought argument bothers me when trotted out against religion, because it's such a system of enforced thought. the freedom to be exploited into conformity. hurray for hierarchy.

there's been a long debate on the place of religion in terms of it's use as propaganda on the left, but never any real idea of taking it seriously, until relatively recently. it's an unattractive characteristic of the modern left to take these really classically liberal views on religion. i'm really closer to nineteenth century leftist ideas about religion.

allowing religion to thrive is just opening up the opportunity for a parasitic weed to take root. which doesn't mean force is a good idea. sometimes ripping those nasty weeds out just makes things worse, sometimes you need something more subtle.

see, here's the thing: religion has managed to convince these millions of people that they should actually want to believe in it. sometimes the tactics have been shady. repressed guilt. maybe these aren't actually good models. but maybe the idea of occupying the benefit of the doubt, of being a basic instinct, is a position that is a pre-requisite for becoming a dominant pattern of thinking. maybe science needs that before all these grand liberal ideas of humanism and rationalism can operate, socially.

there's a problem, though. we've spent thousands of years evolving into religious creatures. i know, i'm pulling a rabbit out of a hat here, i agree. but it's hard to think there's been no movement, towards a religion (which is a superset of a morality) as an instinctual attitude. there might even be a definition there.

i've stated before that i like to hope we look back one day and realize dawkins was essentially correct, but i'm not sure that outcome is certain. there are group survival characteristics that religion acts as a mechanism for and they may, in the end, be superior in force to enlightenment rationalism. i've often wanted to read that text of porphyry with the curious title. alas.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2101256/Richard-Dawkins-How-man-high-IQ-low-views.html

whether the weather is better depends on whether the weather hither there-or beyond where there isn't a feather, just concrete and pleather, and pleather should be recognized by the dictionary here henceforth, as a word of not particularly modern origin, and should have been acknowledged some time in the not-so distant past, but weather the weather is better depends on whether the weather hither there-or beyond where there isn't a feather, just concrete and pleather, is better or not-better, on a relative perception to whether the weather is better.

star rays beam down through a haze of fog, setting off chaotic disturbances that wreak havoc on the surrounding areas. it's almost like it's worth inventing a god out of it. the angry solar beast. yet, that angry solar beast is a machine with perturbations - error bars - the same as any other machine we've created, human or mechanical. error rates are a function of any process, not something determined by the source of it's fuel. it's just that maybe we can understand the error rates as something patterned and rational. forces from other galactic bodies. some insights in fluid mechanics that have escaped us. that's an amazing thing to study and make sense of, as magical as it seems.

this is why i think immortality has some benefits. it makes me utterly depressed to realize that i have a time restriction on the amount of time that i have to learn and analyze and contemplate things. it's not enough time to even get a sketch of things, so why even bother? there's the argument for anti-intellectualism that triumphs everything. it reduces education to a hobby. go do stuff...

...but then the stuff that yearns about to be done is just reading. we're silly creatures. doomed to our own irrelevancy.

but is immortality really impossible? there's a medical push to develop technologies that treat the body like a machine. lose an arm, become a cyborg. ok, cool. but eventually you're made out of metal. and then silicon. and that strikes me as unsustainable to service.

so, genetic engineering. but how far do you go with that? is it possible to convert an elderly person into a young one with frequent organ transplants? is that the most efficient way to do deal with it?

i kind of prefer the idea of recycling. bodies, that is. both organically, through a decomposition process, and by allowing for a sort of shape shifting. host jumping.

it would lead to a massive genetic bottleneck on the earth. i don't really see a way to prevent that. yet, it also makes evolution irrelevant. no, hegel, no, don't say that ridiculous phrase...

but the way the rich would use it would be to jump back to their 20s every few decades. people would get into a biological time machine and be 23 again.

first, it relies on the idea of creating human beings through 3-d printing. so, we're a ways away from that. but if we could create a 23 year old from a genetic sampling, without going through the messy phase of raising clones for mental takeover, we could create new hosts out of old organic material.

can your mind fit on a usb key? well, maybe a blu-ray disc. can it be downloaded and reuploaded into that new host?

...and then the old body gets recycled. that's an algorithm for immortality that could work. then, what of reproduction? well, who wants that under those circumstances? new minds, perhaps. sure, but it's no longer a biological imperative. a lot of existing biological ideas just break into pieces when applied to that kind of hypothetical reality. the entire laboratory's been trashed by hooligans, couldn't even enter it. not an unbroken flask in the place. labcoats, stylized into parisian fashions. just a mess.

so, reproduction probably doesn't end, but it probably does become measured in terms of centuries. and it might eventually even become advanced by 200 years or so, in terms of learning, by downloading some libraries at birth. oh, that little tyrant is quoting machiavelli again!

silly fantasies - or projecting hope onto hopelessness? well, the way back to creating meaning out of what we have in front of us isn't going backwards in time. we lost the whole god thing. we're better for it. let's move on. let's take that confident understanding of a godless universe into one where we construct our own existence, and give it the meaning we want.

it's really the choice between daydreaming of utopias and being overwhelmed by the pointlessness. there is a possibility of immortality, if we take an interest in creating it.

publishing deny everything (inri041)

by posting a final final final final final version of this record, i'm transporting myself out of my deny everything phase and into a period where my main focus was playing the classical guitar.

this was the culmination of a year's worth of experiments in almost ideal working conditions, and as such represents a singular moment in my discography. the reason i've modified it so often is that i was in such a rush to get so many ideas out that i got sloppy. i'm confident that everything is resolved in this incarnation of the record, and the five eps i've spun off from it.

--

this is a project that has been through many incarnations and revisions, which should hopefully stabilize now that the tracks are entirely instrumental and the substantial number of outtakes have been categorized into companion eps. i don't expect to modify this further, but note that versions have been created roughly every 3.5 years since 2000 - in 2004, 2007, 2010 and now 2014. that slow, 15 year process of removing samples and reconstructing instrumental sections is now entirely complete.

what's left when the thematic ideas are stripped out is an eccentric and elaborate delve into psychedelic and electronic music that has no clear parallels that the author is aware of.

the record can be sectioned into 4 parts:

- ignorance is bliss [introduction]
- entropy/curious george/gravity's rainbow [program]
- a commercial break [intermission]
- acidosis [finale]

abridged versions of this record entitled 'symphony 1' should contain only the program and the finale, although condensed versions may leave out the beginning parts of the program.

recorded over the space of the year 2000. remixed substantially in 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2014. existing version finalized in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones. 

an audience exists somewhere that will cherish this as the truly unique monstrosity that it is.

credits:
j- guitars of all types, bass, programming, drum programming, sequencing, synthesizers, live drums, piano, loops, films, noise generation, organ, ebow, flute, mandolin, treatments, effects, found sounds, sampling, sound design, generative synthesis, granular synthesis, generative percussion, light-sound synthesis, digital wave editing, production, coughs, a broken equalizer, cover art

the star trek sample in 'gravity's rainbow' is from the episode "errand of mercy" (mar 23, 1967).

the rendered electronic orchestra includes theremin, ukelele, orchestra hit, string ensemble, taiko drums, gongs, trumpet & sax.

released november 11, 2000

a commercial break (original album mix)

the story behind the song is not very remarkable. the working title for the track was just 'progblues thing'. it was intended to be a structured instrumental guitar track that mixed the flair of hendrix with the minimalist structure of steve reich.

it was also the result of my dad getting himself a drumkit for christmas that year, which my step-mother promptly placed in my bedroom as a disincentive for further use. score, i guess. but it didn't survive the move a few months later. in the mean time, i got some recordings out of it - as well as a few moderately crazy drunken weekend jam sessions.

i'll note that that christmas also produced a grand piano a few feet outside my door, which is heard in acidosis. it's intended recipient was my sister, but she wasn't around much. me? new pc, with a convenient recording interface, and some more functional microphones. despite talk of family jam spaces, one might suspect my father was actually conspiring in my favour. there is probably a great deal of truth in this suspicion. these conditions held for less than a year, but i made the most of them.

so, the idea of the track was initially about experimenting with the new reverb system built into my new soundcard interface, by triggering it with the drumkit that had recently magically appeared out of good fortune. it had been a few years since i'd played the kit much, and, unfortunately, it kind of does show. i had spent a little time practicing along with "nevermind" and "siamese dream" for a few weeks to get back in shape, but i wasn't really "there" yet at the time of this recording. i didn't want to program loops into the song, so i compensated by splicing the track up. of special interest in this wave editing is the backwards cymbals, and especially how they intersect with the soaring guitars.

and of those soaring guitars? a fairly simple blues pattern. sure is lovely, though, isn't it?

the original version of this track has a lengthy mlk sample in it and is available over here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/let-freedom-ring

the speech became attached to the track when chance managed to have them playing simultaneously for me. i had cnn on in the corner. it was doing some kind of special on mlk, perhaps related to an anniversary that is related to a yearly holiday. placed together, it knocked me flat on my ass.

the idea in my mind from the start was integrationist, if not really consciously so. on the one hand, the guitar part is raw southern blues. on the other hand, the structure is sterile white minimalism. i didn't just realize this juxtaposition, i was trying to exploit it, even if the racial context hadn't occurred to me. when king's speech was played over it, though, the idea really exploded; the context became much deeper. it was an instant exponentiation in profundity.

in hindsight, there are some problems with this. i was a moderately wealthy white kid from canada. there was never much chance of me turning a profit on this, but if i did it would be a type of appropriation. the dr. king samples were removed from this track by the time this demo was initially packaged, which was november of 2000. that's probably for the best.

the second part of the track was recorded in june. it was a short that i had put aside for further development and then decided against further developing, so it ended up here as a sort of addendum to the track. it's really it's own thing, but it's been placed here so long that i don't want to separate it.

recorded over the course of the year 2000.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/a-commercial-break

installation file:
kmeleon.dll

curious george (replaced album mix)

musically, the track is a combination of an experiment with an idea. i should note that this suite together is maybe the first original track in the style that dominates my output over the next few years, even if it's incomplete (albeit hereby decreed complete). the idea was about creating "guitar symphonies" (and while i was aware of the work of oldfield and fripp, and of sonic youth and gybe!, branca was a black hole for me at the time) in a minimalist, electronic framework that most readily draws to mind the work of trent reznor. this is the first of many expressions and evolutions of that idea. the experiment was with a program called "leaf drums", which is a fairly basic drum machine except in it's ability to manipulate samples with effects in realtime (remember that this is the spring of 2000). once i had that loop running, i started playing some of the riffs i had put aside for the guitar symphony, mostly just to play around with them. it stuck far better than i expected....and that's really the extent of the track.

the bush sample at the beginning is a constructed loop rather than a direct quote. he was talking about gore - "this guy would say anything to get elected, i'd...". that was flipped around to "i'd say anything to get elected" and looped. well, at this point i don't think anybody is going to stand up for bush' honesty or credibility. regardless, the way i looped it purposefully pans it to make it obvious that it's not a direct quote.

the lost version was built up considerably further than this; this version has three guitar parts, the lost version had closer to ten. i was too focused on getting the samples together to worry about re-recording the guitar parts. i don't remember them at this point and will not make up new ones. to be honest, this is far easier to listen to, and, while i mourn the loss of the completed version, i'm actually happy that i kept a more stripped down one.

recorded in april, 2000. samples added in oct, 2000. album version reverted to original mix in sept, 2006. 

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/curious-george

publishing curious george (inri040)

this track was taken from the then lost curious george suite...
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/chimpanzees-cant-dance

...and loaded up with samples to raise awareness. the impression i was trying to create was that bush wasn't going to be a president who was particularly concerned with civil liberties because he had stated as much rather clearly. this is still pre-9/11, it was right before the election, and i still had no idea what was coming. i was just conscious of the fact that this is a guy that isn't going to stand up for anybody's rights, have much interest in maintaining the rule of law (international or otherwise) or have much respect for the democratic process.

even listening to it today, a lot of it is really surreal. at the time, i was focusing a bit on the irony. for example, his "people who are going to commit crimes shouldn't have guns" quote is cited in reference to himself - by that logic, he should have overseen an american disarmament. "this guy's not elected, he just took over office" quip was also meant to apply to him. i think it's largely forgotten that the news of a possible attempted coup hit before the 2000 election did. there was a buzz on the internet that the people behind bush (military contractors) weren't going to let him lose. the "court battle" in florida wasn't a completely surprising turn of events. it was gore's disinterest in fighting the legal battle (because it would "destabilize" the country) that hit people by surprise.

i've split this into it's own space because it belongs in it's own space. deny everything has been converted into abstract instrumental music; the samples don't belong there. it also seems disingenuous to insert it into the lost suite.

i think i need to be careful in stating that historical hindsight inoculates me in explaining what i hoped was obvious: that this is a thinly veiled call for the assassination of bush before he takes over. a tree fell in a forest here. alas.

recorded in april, 2000. samples added in oct, 2000. samples removed around 2010. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars, effects, drum programming, sampling, sound design, digital wave editing

released october 13, 2000

acidosis (original album mix)

and, this is the continuous, single-track version of acidosis. i have removed the jungle noises sound sample collage from the end for this version.

this was constructed over a little more than a month: from 7/7-8/20, 2000.  

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/acidosis

publishing acidosis (inri039)

this is the core of my first symphony. it's a sort of a pun; it uses the medical condition of acidosis, which is when the ph level of a person's blood dips to a level that causes complications or death, to draw an analogy to the environmental destruction being carried out by industrial civilization. it also forwards my intuitive hypothesis that homo sapiens will ultimately end up as an evolutionary dead-end. more specifically, my view is that intelligence, as a trait, is ultimately an evolutionary disadvantage. well somebody else probably has that view too; i honestly couldn't cite anybody, sorry.

the material is presented here in fragmented format to properly outline the structure of the piece. it exists in one section on deny everything, and will be the dominant component of a larger first symphony file.

that sexy cover art is a couple of bitmaps of neurons played with in paint and superimposed onto each other in coagula. the sound of that sexy bitmap is heard in the song.

i think i'd rather let the piece stand by title alone, other than to point out that the reaction explored in the piece is really more general than any specific narrative justifies. it's a systems break down.

the music is half generated algorithmically and half played. the half random, largely atonal notes i had programmed into the generator created unusual jam circumstances that were fun to play with. as an example, the piano part is live, but it's being spurred on by the random synth bass underneath it. the computer was driving me, creatively; i think it produced interesting results, both out of me and in itself. as a rhythm section, the computer holds it's own here - as random as the notes are.

what centers the track, though, is a classical guitar part that i recorded very late one night. i was weirded out about things and wanted to get some shit out, so i recorded myself playing for close to a half hour. i think a lot of people don't realize just how powerful a guitar can be as an alternate outlet for aggression. psychologically, that's powerful shit.

i listened to the jam when i got my head clear and i was sort of fascinated by it's just raw emotion. it didn't make any musical sense, but it expressed an idea through it's dynamics. i ran it backwards through an effect designed to simulate a record player dying over exaggerated lengths of times and that became the idea to build around. the shape grew slowly, all the way into the analogy, from there.

this was constructed over a little more than a month: from 7/7-8/20, 2000. it seems to have been recombined into one track around 2007 but has otherwise not been modified. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars of all types, bass, drum programming, synthesizers, piano, loops, noise generation, organ, ebow, flute, mandolin, treatments, effects, sound design, generative synthesis, digital wave editing, production, coughs, cover art

released august 20, 2000