intellectual properties

reality-based

“In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

–via Corey Robin on the Deep Roots of Conservative Radicalism.

…that post, and Robin’s new book, is a quick reference study on the roots of conservatism, and what it means today vs. what it used to mean, which if you are inclined to debate or discuss politics seems fundamental.

“Reality-based community” soon became one of the most cited quotes of the Bush era — a Google search yields 456,000 results; it even has its own Wikipedia page. It is an affirmation of everything the left ever thought about the right: that it lives in a fact-free universe where ideological purity is more important than pragmatic solutions; that it’s revolutionary and radical rather than realistic and moderate; that it’s activist rather than accommodating; that it’s, well… not really conservative.”

it goes on but to be honest i basically stopped reading there because i was sort of reeling from the idea of the use of “reality-based” as a pejorative term by those running the Empire of America (forgive me that i missed this conversation when it happened in 2004).

on the one hand, i find it philosophically beautiful that those running the world believe that Reality Is What You Create, that nothing is static and everything can change on a dime, and basing long term decisions about humanity on anything seemingly factual is foolish, because what might happen tomorrow? Focus On The World You Want To Create. and who can define Reality anyway?  what it means for one person or community can be radically different from another.

on the other hand, personal existential philosophies about what determines Reality aside, the use of this term as a flip side to “faith-based” creates a dichotomy in which i would have to side with “reality-based” as being the only way i can imagine organizing a global population. collect data, determine current realities, react, adjust, repeat.  “consensus reality” is hard enough to swallow as a middle ground (and also entirely undependable, as it is subjective);  “faith-based” seems a foolish path.

but wait – aren’t those the Dreamers? i thought i supported Dreamers. crap. so i guess it’s fair to say that my personal and political philosophies are divergent in numerous ways. but that is not to say that the personal is not political. oh no no.

(aside: i love that Truthiness is listed in the See Also links on wikipedia.)

anyway, i digress. i just hadn’t heard this discussion when it happened and my brain got a little blown for a second just now when i read that and started extrapolating into current life and Realities, which i’ll spare you further uneducated ramblings on. but i assure you the idea of “reality-based community” is permanently in my brain now.

(thx to Lukas for the link.)

wake me on the softer side of heaven….

i really love this song:
Marina by SLEEPY SUN
Sleepy Sun: Marina

it starts out heavy, but weaves in and out. i highly recommend a listen all the way through.

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Dear Friends:

some relationships naturally fade, some hold steady, some flourish with time. some require “work”, and some don’t.  sometimes it doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen someone in two years. Sometimes it does. i say this because i have had reconnection/clarification conversations with a couple of friends recently and wonder if i should reach out to more people.

someone i care dearly for recently told me that despite the fact i told her i think about her all the time (and told her so), she feels like i don’t actually take the time to see her or make direct contact (not social networking) and don’t invite her to all the things i’m doing, so she didn’t quite know where our friendship stood.

all i can say is that i think of people i love often. i do, and i try to be mindful and i do little things like send notes and gifts at random times. some of the people i feel psychologically and spiritually closest to i don’t see for 2 or 3 months. or years. but i think of them all the time. but our lives are scattered, busy, full of odd schedules, and i keep a personal schedule that sometimes conflicts with social schedules. i will skip a dinner party if it means i won’t get to go to yoga that week. maybe sometimes my priorities are not what others think they should be. and yes, some of the things i do are not open to everyone, and so it’s true that maybe you were not invited to that one thing.

but i will also say that phones and email work two ways. it’s actually kind of amazing to me sometimes that with all my hundreds of friends (not “friends”, but Friends), my phone will go 2 days, 3 days without a single beep to annouce a call or text message if i don’t instigate contact first. i email people and they don’t write back (i’m very big into personal, private email. the art of letter writing! ). it happens. but i almost never ignore a friend when they contact me. if i do, it’s a rare mistake.

so i guess what i’m saying is that if you think we used to be friends but you feel that somehow we’ve fallen out, or maybe i did do something specific that turned you off, if you want to, please call, text or email me. i’m sure we can reconnect.

love~

burning man 2011: addenda

.::. previous .::.

• the WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE guy. we had a burn barrel in camp, which people would gather around especially in the pre-dawn hours when it was cold. and one dawn there were 10-11 people hanging out, and the sun came up, and everyone was jovial and chatting. our village had a lot of people in it and so i didn’t always know everyone hanging around. and so it was sort of weird when suddenly, a burly dude who’d been there for quite some time, talking, just chillin’, suddenly, in the morning light, freaked out a little bit and in a lull in the conversation, looked around and very startled said “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? HOW DID I GET HERE? HOW DOES EVERYBODY KNOW MY NAME? WAIT….WHO are YOU?” over and over again. we started asking him questions and it became apparent that this tripper dude had taken something unknown earlier in the night and the last thing he remembered he was at his camp, which he knew where it was, but now at dawn he finds himself sitting around in our camp, with no idea who any of us are, or how he got there. he then became agitated because he did not have his backpack, which he maintained that he NEVER took off, barely even to sleep, so where is it? he got up and stumbled away and we wondered for a brief second if he might be a narc? but determined that, nah. after a while he came back and sat down, and sort of glazed over and looked at the fire. and then, a few minutes later, this happened again. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? WHO DID I GET HERE? WHERE IS MY BACKPACK? and then he relayed that the reason his backpack was so important, besides all the basic burning man things inside, was that there was a book inside, given to him by the “woman he will love for the rest of his life”, who had written an inscription to him, and he really, really needed that book. he was distraught about this. i felt sad for him. he got up and wandered off searching again, not taking our suggestion that probably, most likely, his backpack was back at his own camp. i hope he found it.
• it’s a standard burning man lost tripper story, but it stuck with us and now, kind of like quoting the “WHAT DOES IT MEAN??” double rainbow guy, we will just randomly say “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? HOW DID I GET HERE” whenever it is even mildly funny.

• the movie theatre at the orange fence, which is a fully functioning movie theatre that seats….20? 30? and only shows movies in the middle of the night was showing this old Veronica Lake film “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941), for which we got in only to see the last ~1 minute. but turns out, the last one minute of that movie is TOTALLY APPROPRIATE for burning man. plus they give you free candy!
•  —–>CANDY POCKET.

I Love Pretty Girls With Bad Habits

I Love Pretty Girls With Bad Habits, originally uploaded by wtbzl.

at the Tuesday Night Party 8/30/11

by Whit.Bissell!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25483871@N06/6150979279/in/photostream

::SMILEY MAN::

Brendan & Amy #1, originally uploaded by wtbzl

shaded

shaded, originally uploaded by sgoralnick.

burning man 2011: all or nothing (you get what you need)

i’ve come again
like a new year
to crash the gate
of this old prison

i’ve come again
to break the teeth and claws
of this man-eating
monster we call life

i’ve come again
to puncture the
glory of the cosmos
who mercilessly
destroys humans

i am the falcon
hunting down the birds
of black omen
before their flights

i gave my word
at the outset to
give my life
with no qualms
i pray to the Lord
to break my back
before i break my word

…

you have set up
a colorful table
calling it life and
asked me to your feast
but punish me if
i enjoy myself

what tyranny is this

-Rumi, from Fountain of Fire

.::.

Black Rock City, 2011.

unlike previous years, i did not write anything in my journal while on the playa this year. not a single word.  never even removed it from my backpack.  it wasn’t that i made a conscious decision not to – i just didn’t.  last year i spent a lot of time reading and writing while there. this year i did almost none.  i was so busy doing….what?

so i don’t know where to start with this right now, as when i try to recreate history without a record  i always end up so confused.  what is appropriate to say and what isn’t, out of respect for boundaries, respect for relationships, respect for art, respect for humanity? what did i really feel then, versus what i feel about it now? after this 7th year, am i just repeating myself?

perhaps.

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QOTD: love for humanity

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love’s not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I’ll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time.

–Sylvia Plath

sifted

dust settling

everything
- body, mind, soul, love, friendship, want, need -
has been put through the sieve
the finer points sifted out
-dust to dust-
only large chunks remaining to be examined.

pyrite or gold?

i can’t tell what’s next.