Land Grabs 5: words from a corner of the Liminal Web: A bowl of emergent soup please…

Previous “Land Grabs” articles:

Land Grabs 1: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-bf15df1d52f4

Land Grabs 2: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-2-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-4d3e6c9989a2

Land Grabs 3: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-3-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-bitches-gotta-eat-17ad4460399f

Land Grabs 4: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-4-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-who-owns-what-600a932c1ba6

“Time not utilized properly and efficiently on freely available platforms like Facebook is one of the most extreme examples and subsequently one of the most looked over as a massive blind spot even in some of the most intelligent nuanced and creative people. It’s because historically the entire trauma system relies on a distorted view of time that is sympathetic to not having enough time, and being desperate to buy it or earn it from someone who has the same amount of time as us. Conscious karma/ Dharma from the experienced Western lens, in real time, to maybe not compete, but to match properly and synergistically with powerful technology that is in a way unbiased, and also even if minuscule, in favor of more damage and destruction as it was unconsciously developed and programed that way (significant to our internal and externalized unconscious, darkness and stagnancy) as we are now, as we try to sustain development being advanced civilizations.”

Since Luke Pagano posted the above, he’s posted some more updates clarifying his position; I’ll try and fold my readings of those into this too. In that light, let’s begin with a summary of the points as they land with me:

• Time as limited. “Correct” use of and “effective” way’s to use time.
• Social Media and it’s challenge to the “correct” and “effective” use of time, not least disembodied uses of it
• Addiction (Social Media as an example) as tied and connected to trauma.
• Conscious will, as applied to counteracting the damage caused by addiction, in service to “the good”.

Additional themes emerging from his posts linked to Land Grabs since, too:

• Exactness and utility of expression / approachable and translatable language.
• “Bottom Up”ness.
• The Land Grabs series, as one of a number of emergent cultural artefacts, at least partially informed by Jordan Peterson’s explications regarding hierarchy and the strength’s and weaknesses of it.
• The Great Simplification.

A response:

I’m going to begin by defending all the people who’ve ever been called lazy (either by themselves, or other people). Lazyness doesn’t exist. So if you find yourself wanting to say “you’re lazy!” to someone in the future, please rephrase as follows: “I have a set of beliefs about how you aught to be spending your time. As I very nearly stated ‘you’re lazy’ with out acknowledging my own prior assumptions, there’s a strong chance that this belief about how you aught to be spending your time was provided to me by someone else, rather than being arrived at through my own careful study and deduction. I don’t want to try and understand why you’re spending your time the way you are doing and life feels easier if I simplify things down so I can judge you, dehumanise you and dismiss you. In fact, really, I should be saying ‘I’M too lazy to really bother understanding why you’re spending your time the way you are, don’t want to try and problem solve alongside you by genuinely supporting you into a different way of doing what you’re doing and don’t want to admit that to you or myself, so I create an easier life for myself, by projecting my lazyness onto you.”

As I said back in Land Grabs 2, so often the “that” is really held inside the “this”. Here, the that we think is a problem outside of us, presents echo’s of itself inside the “this” of our own interior.

That aside, I do think it’s possible for us to make things better. There are better or worse uses for our time and as discussed in Land Grabs 3, the Liminal Web could begin to construct a sense of direction for itself. We don’t have to fall foul of the Post-modern trap of “The Truth is entirely arbitrary”. I think I agree with Pagano, in pointing out that a social media addiction is not good for us. I also think our disconnection from our bodies is a huge problem for a wide range of reasons, but not least because it doesn’t support us in coming to understand what it is we actually need, which I argued aught to be if not at, but close to the centre of Liminal Web problem solving in LG3. On that note, there are better and worse ways of coming to know what we need to do with our time.

One way, is the way it seems to be touted by Jordan Peterson (sometimes, I’ve also heard him contradict this, but anyway…) and other Youtube “Alpha’s” such as Jocko Willink and Gary V. This is some or other version of “working hard”. In spite of pain, frustration, difficulty and suffering, we should nobly “bear the cross”. We should rationally, using the power of The Word, produce a list (probably in a journal or something) of targets (notice the language) outlining what we “should” do and then, we execute (notice the language), the actions (notice the language), on the list through painful grit and perseverance. If the execution happens at some time or other when we should be asleep, or aught to be spending it with our families, or otherwise doing things that are really important to us, then even better! Unless we’re sacrificing something really important, it doesn’t quite count somehow. The ONLY way to be happy, these people will tell you, is by not actually being happy.

I’ve discovered, by trying this stuff, that usually (for me at least, at least for now: please don’t introject my experiences, go ahead and try some version of the above if you’re so inclined, it might well work for you), that this is total bullshit. I can manage probably one or two days of telling myself what to do, before I just won’t listen to my bossy and aggressive prick [yes… notice the language :-D] of an Ego, demanding my body and wider / unconscious self do a bunch of things IT thinks are important. There’s a deep, internally projected Narcissism present in the act of producing a list and demanding that your wider self follow it, whilst ignoring a whole host of messaging from it, informing you you’re on the wrong track.

Now, the wider self is not the Ego. Due to that, it probably won’t speak the same language as the Ego. I don’t get a nice list from my wider / unconscious self that my Ego can read and simply enact. Maybe I’ll get depressed, or feel pain some place or other, or be bored, or maybe synchronicities will ramp up, maybe I’ll have a pertinent dream, or maybe I’ll get a deep sense of everything just being okay, or maybe I’ll feel anxious around the thing my wider self wants me to engage in (sometimes I get hints from the unconscious / wider self via. an increase of what lands to my Ego as certain forms of “negative” emotion, as if the unconsious wants to give me more of the “problem” feelings, so that I might notice and process them). I don’t always know whether I should do a given thing until after I’ve done it. If I feel an upswell of “good stuff” during and after it, it’s usually a sign it was the right thing to do. Sometimes, I’ll know exactly what I need to do due to a package of sensation, emergent symbolic imagery and other “Wyrd feels”.

Other’s might use forms of trance / hypnosis, different forms of emergent creativity etc. My inclination is to believe that the particular form(s) a given individual can receive messages in, from their wider self / unconcious is entirely their own, mapped to their specific biology, culture, learning’s, stage of life, environment etc. etc. and so “the work” if it exists, is in coming to know oneself as one might come to know another, accompanied by a deep respect, flexibility and acceptance of the fact that forms of communication might change. Part of the reason addictions are so damaging is the simple monotony of them. We can’t flourish if we’re trapped doing the same things over and over again.

Which leads me onto the damaging impacts of Social Media, as raised by Pagano. To use a fairly simple lense, social media works by hacking our genuine and all too human desires to connect with and relate to other people (potential / current friends, potential / current sexual partners, potential / current collaborators etc.), seek out and learn new things about the world and gather resources (for those of us who market our wares via. them for example) for ourselves and perhaps our significant others. We intuit that these drives and desires exist for reasons (human relating, pro-creation, survival, effective childrearing, love for it’s own sake, providing for ourselves and each other etc.) and so when they’re directed towards a form of enslavement and profiteering, rather than a genuine wholesomeness, it makes us angry, resentful and depressed. I say this, because social media and other forms of media addiction (too much TV, too much News, too many Podcasts, too much Porn etc.) have a positive side to them which we sometimes miss, namely that addiction is so often a redirection of a (set of?) libidinal, creative and in fact “wholesome” drive(’s). If we can work out where and how to point that creative and loving energy, so it might produce something beautiful, rather than neutering it, by directing it towards damaging forms of social media and other forms of lie, we might be on to something.

A big part of this is embracing our own agency. Are we consuming, or creating? Whilst we’re genuinely creating, we can’t be enslaved. Which is part of a wider point, how do we not only stop falling victim to broadcasts from others, or broadcasts into ourselves, but how do we stop broadcasting AT others? How do we encourage mutual emergence and creativity, where we share in how any metaphorical “land” is managed, rather than grabbing it all for ourselves? I would argue that we don’t need any Titans and where they already exist, they need taking down a peg or two! Before you (and by “you” I mean me probably) start another flipping Podcast, where you get all the people you think are important (probably they’ve got x years experience doing something and have a PhD in something or other and are like, you know, a big deal or whatever), to broadcast fancy and important words at everyone, how about you try and work on forms of collaborative creation instead? You can be awesome still I promise, you don’t NEED to grab land as evidence.

Speaking of which, a new (to me) Titan has crossed my path, Nate Hagans, with all his talk of The Great Simplification… and he is great, genuinely. I’m working my way through his Podcast (named The Great Simplification), which is doing a good job of impressing me (what with all his expertise and all the experts he gets on) AND scaring the crap out of me (nearly everything IS f*cked) AND not, as yet, leading to me doing anything actually useful about any of the problems raised. Like a rabbit in the headlights, I’m frozen in fear and awe as I hear warning’s made by impressive people with great social and in some cases excessive financial capital, struggling themselves to enact the change needed; with what feels like nearly zero capacity of my own to do anything much about it.

What’s worse, I’m by myself as I listen, trapped on the return from the school run, learning how my kids lives are going to be shit in some way or another, the low hum of the engine, burning petrol as the breath to a whisper “it’s all your fault…”. Not only am I intimidated by the “calibre” of the Titan’s and scared shitless by them, I’m now guilty and lonely to boot. Whatever the thing is the LW aught to be producing, it’s surely not that?

I can’t be the only one feeling this way around here? Maybe I should start a business and sell a product, purporting to solve the packet of problems kicked up? “Are you feeling intimidated, fearful for the future, guilty and lonely!? For only $9.97 I will tell you how to stop feeling that way!”

I’d rather not though, I’d much prefer it, if you’re feeling like I am, that you reach out to me, or some other Liminalist, so we can get started doing something about something, rather than each of us sitting by ourselves, staring into disembodied expert abyss.

If you do reach out to me, as long as whatever it is, isn’t already mapped out and planned; as long as there’s a bowl to be filled with tasty emergent soup, which we can make together, alongside our good friend ‘the third’, then I’m game.

Links to the follow up:

Land Grabs 6: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-6-some-stuff-with-achievement-at-the-end-486b01124178