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A shorter gemlog for rambly things. Inspired by solderpunk's pikkulog, in turn inspired by shufei's weiphlog.
I spent some time today with close family. We visited a park of sorts; there was an exhibition inside with videos and small exhibits on the ecological damage humans are doing to the Earth (pollution, climate change, and so on).
While none of it was new to me, I wonder if the exhibit was the first time anyone had begun to really understand just what is happening out there, without it being some abstract thing. It's one thing to know "global warming" or "climate change" is happening, and another thing to see video of e.g. deserts of bleached coral, or collapsing glaciers, or of wildlife dying en masse from drought.
And beyond that: the exhibit was a sort of pre-packaged experience, a mediated one. You don't have to go out and read through the news or the research, or wade through lots of analytical information, assuming that you would do such things to begin with. This is what you need to know: we are killing the Earth. Belching smokestacks, dead animals, withered crops. The sun, red and weeping, seen through wildfire smoke. But then sunlight, gleaming off clean solar panels. Tidy and reassuring nature. This is the green path.
How many will never engage any more deeply or directly with the subject?
It's strange to think of just how much my world has contracted over the past year. In Nov 2019 I had just returned home after spending a year overseas, and I was already planning further short trips. I had to take three or four different timezones into account when calling friends and family. Now almost everyone has come home and I barely leave the house.
This itself is probably commonplace, since most of us, wherever we are, have been affected by the pandemic. We're all just hunkering down, and sheltering in place. But I wonder if I would have been as inclined to slow down and find a slower pace of living (fewer activities, simpler itineraries, less distractions) if I had not been forced into it by events.
I came across the writings of Georges Bataille and man is it a trip. Just focusing on his concept of expenditure and the general economy, and from there to his writing on the accursed share and on the meaning of sacrifice -- everything feels topsy-turvy, like looking at the world through a funhouse mirror, or through a glass darkly.
I don't know what I'm taking away from Bataille just yet. But that's not a new situation, either. Earlier in the year I read Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology" and just following his argument took a while; figuring out what I took away from it took even longer.
It's Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day, depending on where you are in the world. It's also Singles Day in other parts: some places have events to bring single young people together, but mostly lots of online shops have sales and special offers. There is something jarring about having both events on the same day; Switching between sombre recollection and hypercapitalist consumerism is giving me mental whiplash.
It seems like the only thing on the news this week was the outcome of the US election. Lots of other people have things to say; I don't really need to add to any of it. My main reaction was relief. And yet even if things won't get worse, they also won't necessarily get better. Many changes can be undone, but any significant reforms or new legislation will have to go through the Senate. We are still some way from meaningful action on climate change or campaign finance / electoral reform.
The other question, and to my mind the more pressing one, is how the country is going to deal with nearly half of its population that seems content living in an alternate universe and that is either heedless or uncaring (or worse: actively approving) of the chaos caused by the loser.
And in the meanwhile, the pandemic continues its killing path.
I missed pretty much all of Halloween. That doesn't bother me much, since it's not a holiday I'm used to celebrating, and dressing up in costume always seemed like too much of a hassle. But after Halloween it feels like the year's almost up, since it's just Christmas left, and that's always been a melancholy sort of thing before. Then again, we can only hope that 2021 will be a less God-forsaken year. In doing this I frankly expect little -- things will not get better quickly, and there are many things that can get worse -- but nonetheless, I still find myself hoping for much.
I'm still in the process of setting up my own gemini space here on circumlunar.space but I have to admit it's been interesting so far. It's not like I have zero familiarity with the command line, but the experience of working on a remote machine, much less one shared with other users? That's new. I grew up in the personal computer era, but before the Web was ubiquitous. What are multi-user systems?
There's a little bit of work involved in figuring out how I want to do things: how to organise my space here and the things I want to put up, how to transfer drafts from my local machine to circumlunar space, how to write and format content. None of it is particularly difficult, and it's all good. The best way to learn is to do.