Morrison’s Cassandra Nova storyline happens to encapsulate the dilemma of modernism. The plot, as previewed in P149 has Angel pilfering a DNA sample of Nova under the guidance of the Cuckoos. Emma Frost is able to cybernetically insert the DNA into a bum-faced alien invader called “Stuff”. The plot proceeds when Jean Grey is able to displace Nova to her bodiless (mummudri) state, and Emma Frost then entices her to think Stuff is her true body.
This is the sort of pseudo-scientific super-science that Morrison is renowned for – corporate entities being a speciality. See this link to Biden’sWestExec ) affiliations.
Modernism is delusional and doesn’t know its ass from its elbow. See prev on “smart meat” (P130). Nova is massively intelligent and has the X-Men running in circles but – in the end – their human fire defeats her dry-as-dust machine-mind.
New X-Men #126, Quitely art
This could really be a motto for the modern dilemma. However advanced the method, it is synthetic and not organic, not natural and able to be left to its own devices. The corporate-executive head deals increasingly in the efficiency of numbers (algorithms) which produces sameness (P149). However, in a bodiless state there are no physical rhythms of the body; meaning, a community that sings together, that breathes the same air, that swallows the same food.
Obviously, communities exist but their physical reality doesn’t enter the equations of the alien heads – who deal in numbers and charts. The physical reality – as mentioned previously – is the balance between body and head, the romance of the throat, speech and song. Proportionate balance is something outside the agenda of the aliens.
A good example of a physical reality is a South American barrio – as depicted in Love and Rockets (prev.) It is a place where efficiency and numbers don’t really exist, but where physical rhythms of living and breathing are powerful and visceral.
I happened to read in a piece on Diego Maradona that, growing-up in an Argentinian barrio, he once fell into an open sewer. His uncle directed him to, “Keep your head above the shit!” A philosophy he apparently followed.
By saying that the human body is primitive by origin, it’s merely stating a truth that we are part of universal rhythms. We are in a state of balance rather than a corporate state.
Outside the barrio is the loam of the fields which cleanses naturally and destroys pathogens. A more primitive existence is more realistic and it’s a case of coming to realize modernism exists inside the reality of a reflection. A reflection that creates sameness. The rebel, who exists in physical reality, represents difference- that is the history of Man. The small-scale conflicts and psychic strength, especially where different people and types come together. That is the history of America in her original rebellious incarnation.
Journey #4
Where there is a state of difference and balance you always know your ass from your elbow as it’s blatantly obvious – you’re staring at it. In Journey, it’s also noticeable that MacAlistaire is the primitive. In #2 3 and 4 – the Sasquatch story – he is employed by the Huron to track a missing squaw.
Elmer Craft askes him dumbfoundedly why the “savages” should need a white man. “’Cos I’m not civilized”, replies MacAlistaire. “The Hurons are mainly farmers and fishers, I’m a woodsman, game-hunter, spoor-tracker.” (TofF11)
Without the primitive side of existing naturally – without assistance, independently – modernism faces the dilemma that any state of advance is really a state of conversion into something else. Something not natural (“unnatcherul”).
A conversion from universal rhythms. I happened to read that “DeepMind”, a British cyber-bio research group, has managed to decode protein folding. It’s an impressive advance, but it’s still synthetic in that they’re converting what is a natural phenomenon into the numbers of a super-computer. The result facilitates synthetic proteins. They forget