Chapter 19 of Between Two Deaths
Let’s continue to quote Emmanuel’s blog before his soothing philosophy gets swept under the rug and eclipsed by the stridency of war.
“Remember Seneca, the Stoic? He said it’s more difficult to take pleasure in moderation than to refuse pleasure altogether. The body gets used to satiation as fast as to deprivation. It’s called habit. In the direction of more there is always more; and in the direction of less less. Asceticism, prolonged virginity is no more difficult to achieve than excess and debauchery. But drinking, eating and, we’d add today taking drugs in moderation, knowing how to curb pleasure and find pleasure in self-discipline, that’s more difficult.”
Emmanuel had admired Stoicism since his early readings in philosophy. Instead of vast systems of thoughts like Plato’s and Aristotle’s, the Greek Stoics offered a refined, elegant, thoughtful attitude to keep their heads above water by stormy weather. Stoics lived actively, creatively, and the philosophy was taught roughly from 5th century BC to 5th century AD, one thousand years.
“Stoicism was born in the collapse of the Greek dream, when short-lived democracy evaporated and tyranny came back. When enemies fight for your pelt, take refuge in yourself, invest in your choice, decision, nothing other than your reason. Though considered a Cynic, Diogenes is a good example: Get out of my sun! He dared give an order to Alexander the Great who, passing by with his army, had come to visit the famous philosopher. Far from greeting Alexander, Diogenes remained sprawled in his filthy barrel, covered by dirty rags; he drank some more, blinked and grimaced while asking Alexander to get the hell out. And Alexander let him live, didn’t make a martyr out of Diogenes, admired his impregnable attitude. For the rest of his long life the bum persisted in vociferating about living in the moment and getting attached to nothing of the past or the future. No authority, no property, not even your body and, within it, your life should define you. The choice you make now does.”
“Nothing else than what is purely oneself, the freedom to say yes or no, I don’t want to. If one is ready to leave possessions, family, legs and both arms behind, ready to surrender being and body, then, the Emperor and his generals cannot do anything. The empire is powerless. Authority, fear, submission wash over you and dry up on your mental skin.”
“I cannot let Intelligence, no matter how clever, not only know better than me what is good for me; but, nourished off of me by her incessant harvesting of data, act in total impunity against me.”
“It’s up to you to carve a maneuvering space within the most strenuous and overwhelming circumstances. Intelligence is invisible and hiding behind everything; in response, you must wear the mask and take refuge behind it. But you cannot be alone wearing it; we must be conscious together.”
“Yet one more interesting step would be to make her believe we think this when we think that and fudge with the information she’s getting. How about wearing masks even when naked and adopt phony characters, defend borrowed opinions, present bogus habits and tastes in her presence?”
“But ain’t we always in her presence? I hear you, that means hiding all the time, even in the virtual toilets, even in full exposure. Even to yourself? That’s crazy.”
“Once in a while, we may peep out from within.”
“Finally, we have in our hands only that to oppose, our silent consciousness together. It’s nothing and it’s huge.”
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After the revelation that good old class-struggle had mutated into version 2.0 controlling version 1.0 of the same specie, Desistence veered into active, and then dangerous resistance.
Michael and Emmanuel didn’t fight about ideas. They shared the same love of the western literary and philosophical canon, same admiration for science; same desire to devote the rest of their lives to Desistence. However, their stewardship pointed toward opposite directions and action.
After the revelation that dead-alive souls drove their train, and even after the creation of Desistence.com, its hidden basements and its underground pyramid, while Emmanuel was still heard and his Fragments passionately discussed, the Desistant movement could very well have remained contemplative. Desistants would have learned how to navigate the forbidden recesses of the World Wide Web and be content to witness anomalies in systems and store precious cargo; but Desistence would have kept hands off, arms crossed in terms of changing an iota to the corruption they’d see festering from the top down of whatever corporation, administration, apparatus of state they turned their attention to. Their proxy would come and go, leaving no cookies behind and, crucially, copying, learning, but leaving intact the unhealthy activities at the heart of the mechanisms, leaving as well exposed the shreds of encouraging behavior remaining. As they started to do once Michael occupied the tip of the pyramid, Desistants under Emmanuel would have stored exabytes of sensitive code, useful to counterbalance wayward authorities out there, in case of crisis. Say, if hacker friends were cornered by the many police of the WWW and restrictions imposed on the freedom to desist, Emmanuel might have raised a corner of the veil on the exorbitant practical knowledge of the phalanges. But he would not have uses that to destroy.
Emmanuel would not have presided over the creation of Josephine, a home-made AI commanding Trojans, worms and logic bombs ready to freeze the digital infrastructure out there and on a critical scale.
With Michael Lagrange at the helm, practical knowledge turns into a weapon. “Let’s go to war against the souls of the old idiots. Do not let them sleep on their synthetic ears!” He is coughing and laughing in the video podcast. “They are smart, but I have learned from Emmanuel Frumm, there is smarter always: the dwarf can climb on the shoulders of the giant and see beyond. The secrets we store in the basements of Desistence.com should be brought out to the open and made to serve as the threat they really are before, not after, someone among us gets cornered. You have it all wrong, Emmanuel!”
And the voluminous echo of his hallway to answer as one man: “Let’s go to war! “
Emmanuel was irked by the phony reverence to his blog, the way Michael maliciously took the baby from his hands. Emmanuel floated, did not find the strength, did not resist when he felt the movement slipping under him and the idea escaping his Fragments. He did not try to splinter, create another school where to keep the pure, original Desistence and have his die-hard follow him exclusively. “The idea that shatters on first confrontation with harsh reality needs revision; I am a true Marxist.” And maybe he was relieved to have to pass the torch.
He was not up to shouldering what had become more real than a philosophy. The moment called for violence. He saw it coming and was resigned to it but it made him sad, depressed, anxious: “The experience of co-presence is frail and silence forms only a tenuous tissue between beings easily torn and ripped apart like gauze by the first strong wind.”
It was miserable comfort to think that he wouldn’t be responsible for the mistakes that would inevitably ensue. He was old enough to have seen radicalism not paying off in the end and, on the contrary, costing dearly to those involved. Yet he also envied Michael for his courage, his strength, his wrongheadedness and obstinacy. There is respite in action, release of pressure even when you’re acting on reality as indirectly as in hacking; in the case of Michael, vituperating in front of a console. Adrenaline gushes while you’re scoring. And when you are heard. Emmanuel had enjoyed the ego-trip, for there was egotism, particularly in the Desistant who’s supposed to give up on ego-trips. And there was also something more refined, the pleasure of hearing his words find a collective echo as he spoke, the intelligent discussions they’d brought about. Michael appeared more relaxed and more talented at rallying his troupes with each new virulent post.
