Hyborian Bridge 183

In order to follow the Hyborian line of "ecological" trade-routes (prev) I'm taking as a contemporary example the protracted dispute in India between Modi's 3 farm bills and the small farmers.

There are reasons to believe (see "The Light" prev) that the overhaul will favor bigness over smallness and diversity. The freeing-up of buying and selling restrictions - formerly to states and government - creates uncertainties that should benefit the efficiencies of size. The vast majority of small farmers have no access to the transport infrastructure apart from basic pack-animals and tractor-haulage.

It has been suggested thst, rather than a complete overhaul, rebuilding in the context of expanding mandi (state markets or auctions) serves the needs of small farmers and harvesters.

While it's true to say that left-wingers such as those journalists who write for The Light will always cotton-on to the size and infrastructure advantages to global business vis-à-vis small farmers in Modi's overhaul, it's also possible to view it from an ecological perspective.

This means being rather elemental. For a start, economics is advantaged by efficiency and order whereas the spirit of place is advantaged by disorder!

The destruction of products is ecologically advantageous while being economically inefficient. One of the problems with inefficient transport is that grain is stored too long and creates wastage, piles of detritus such as fruit husks are left by roadsides.

The problem is that modern systematizers only look at the economy of a situation; ecologically-speaking rotten fruit is very good and beneficial for fertility, as well as adding to a spirit of place (fertile and disordered.)

The primitive side of things is quite dynamic, cluttered and fairly illogical, but it does not suffer from the weaknesses of a global economy.

On the one hand is a system of straight-lines that attracts the ego (monetary, numerical, size); on the other is the proportionate psyche that is soothed by places of power.

Places of power are disordered and have the dynamic of fertility. Efficiency can kill this in the name of global.logistics.

On.the one side information is a belief; on the other, there are beliefs in local gods of fertility and the hearth.

Efficiency in itself tends to lose sight of such things as poetic pace (of Earth spin) and allusive roots (to the heavens above). The Noto-esque strength of rooted entanglement in the fires of the underworld. Revival and picturesque weirdness; Persephone.

There is an even.more fundamental difference in that economic efficiency is hygienic, while local ecologies are fairly filthy. This was brought home by recently reading Kipling's Kim, set somewhere before 1900.

The ecological tendency of a belief in demons and deities of the barren or abundant fields is much in evidence, such as in this scene where Kim is threatening a Jat.

..if, by any chance, O man from Jullundur, thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the elders sitting under the village tree, or in thine own house, or in company of thy priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will come among the buffaloes, and  fire in thy thatch, and rats in thy corn-bin, and the curse of our gods upon thy fields that they may be barren before thy feet and after thy ploughshare.' This was part of an old curse picked up from a fakir by the Taksali Gate in the days of Kim's innocence. It lost nothing by repetition.

'Cease, Holy One! In mercy, cease!' cried the Jat. 'Do not curse the household. I saw nothing! I heard nothing! I am thy cow!' and he made a grab at Kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the carriage floor. (page 300)

Fertility is a type of destruction that involves decay. Light is also absorbed by trees and transformed into foliage (Daphne of the laurel, prev.) A world without destructive tendencies is hygienic and efficient but also weak, full of psychic uncertainties.

There is a type of dichotomy, meaning any logical system.is incapable of renewal. Because a logical order is imbalanced, it is more like a continual mutation into micro-monstrosities (of DNA or AI) - see "BEM' P180.

Revival has strength; a frayed tapestry rather than a purely factual endeavor. Modern medicine acts as an information system but not on the psychic luster that makes life worthwhile.

In Kipling's India quacks abound, their herbal and animal.ointments at the ready. Their efficiency is completely dubious, but their existence in a state of rapturous disorder and fertile strength is not (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.)

An inductive system (of light and logic) will always be attracted to logical states of straight-line disbelief by the ego of acolytes (of the mirror of illusions). Psychic weakness is liable to follow; pray that's not Modi's agricultural legacy.

Hyborian Bridge 182

Logical mutations of order produce monstrosities, is an interpretation of "BEM" (P180). There is a hidden side to order which is that mutations occur purely randomly to create monstrosities. Castle Radium's schizophrenic delusions are actually very real.

DNA is a signpost for the modern dilemma - like AI - since that is the age we live in. The ego is attracted to the facilities of logic, and steps inside the mirror of illusions where resides the profane serpent of endless mutations.

Where "land developers" represent real estate and money (the wormdollar), architecture in its primal condition represents balance and proportion - the Greek temple 

While a framework of logic enables many mini-mutations, and the modern monstrosity, a disordered framework has an internal logic of desire.

Disorder simply means lack of an overall plan that has a logical basis; the only rules are balance and proportion.

A man who knows his way there can defy all the police of India"s summer capital, so cunningly does veranda communicate with veranda, alley-way with alley-way, and bolt-hole with bolt-hole..

Together they set off through the mysterious dusk, full of the noises of a city below the hillside, and the breath of a cool wind in deodar-crowned Jakko, shouldering the stars. The house lights, scattered on every level, made, as it were, a double firmament. (page 214,217 Kim.)

Of course, these scenic townscapes that blend into landscape are familiar from Hyborian settings. The situation allows for psyche, in that desire and free-expression (dance, sleep, rhythm) are enabled in a disordered framework that a logical one mutates into monstrosity.

The monster in "BEM" is just the other side of the striving for order in society. It becomes more obvious where "smart-buildings" act like programmable DNA and mutate at the expense of the ability to soothe the psyche.

The psyche is the missing element of modernity. Where Yimsa is calming to the psyche in its quaint proportions and odd lighting effects, modern buildings act as efficient programs.

The reason for this is again that AI is a signpost of modernity. The heads that are attracted to AI are the standard-bearers of modern design (as with Apple.)

This is partly why I previously said the psychic intoxication of Charlotte Perriand (P179) seems more suited to retro-futurism than futurism per se. The retro trending Japan being one of her influences.

In the modern sense, the Japanese strike one as schizophrenically conservative while pursuing futuristic dreams. These retro-elements also hark back to the 60s, as this quote from Grace Slick's memoir makes clear.

As you walk onto the dance floor, you have the feeling you've just entered seven different centuries all thrown together in one room. The interior of the building is turn-of-the-century rococo, and a man in red briefs and silver body paint is handing out East India incense.  A girl in full Renaissance drag is spinning around by herself listening to some Baroque music in her head, while several people in jeans and American Indian headbands are sitting in.a circle on the floor smoking weed. (page 97).

While there is a standard "type" of modern head, those halcyon days would invoke native Indian lore in the same breath as Art Nouveau and Baroque.

The monetary system of information in resolved space (straight-lines) has the effect of using money to create convincing spaces that are prone to mini-mutations with no food for the psyche.

On a personal basis, in bygone days I frequented Aberdeen University Student Union (near Upperkirkgate), a fantastical  warren of a building in the granite city.

As one's eyes adjusted to the dark hall, lit here and there by dull pools of white-green fluorescent light, it wasn't hard to reimagine the reckless abandon and cathartic expression that the Union provided for its student body; the smell of alcohol seemed to still linger in the air, on the carpets and floorboards, consuming much of the open space at Sivel's Bar which operated in the largest, mural-covered hall.. (Our Abandoned Union, The Gaudie )

An epic rumble, with the apparent claymore, put a finish to the vaulted presincts as a den of dubious delights. The abandoned shell has been replaced by a student "Hub" of the sort that resembles a school canteen.

The logic of desire - which is food for the psyche - has been replaced by purely functional requirements.

This is the logic of the modern order that convinces the ego while ushering-in mini-mutations of monstrosity. With the psyche weakened, belief in information replaces the cosmic-oneness of a disordered state, a frayed tapestry of stars and human destiny, kismet.

Hyborian Bridge 181

 Hyborian pragmatism, or the belief in archaic fertility goddesses and obscene deities (Yaple) that validates information that gives strength to the rural economy(HB178), is the idea that goods are valued for the pragmatic purposes of trade.

Information is subservient to belief, in other words, which is a typical tribal doctrine. The modern order, in making the assumption that information is universal, arrives at the present efficient monetary order whereby balance and proportion have no intrinsic value. 

As was previously noted, economy and ecology were in past ages combined in the sense that trade-routes were occupied by pack-animals and unsanitary vessels that transported a mini-ecosystem with the goods. There was a balance between the pests and germs with the need for cleanliness.

Information has now become the belief itself (DNA or AI) and the previous picturesque state of affairs has been abolished. The acolytes of this order assume there is no need for disorder, when it is needed both ecologically and for psychic strength (desire).

Ecologically-spealing, predators need controlling and in order to do this a balance has to be achieved with sensitive species. This is so on grouse-moors where ground-nesting birds are preyed-on and require gamekeeping.

The ecological order is a bloody one that has the strength of roughness and disorder, where rotten wood is home to many species that are prey to.predators, and those to others.

Balance is the natural order, but we happen to live in the monetary order that runs the information system of resolved space (or straight-lines) that attracts the ego of acolytes.

To take the most high-flying example, Bezos in the sky (with dollars). Bezos is an aficionado of smart-machines (algorithms) that operate like reflections or copies of reality. Once Branson had been up.it seemed there was little purpose left to a copycat billionaire, but purpose and meaning are not the exercise.

All these acts may lack purpose, though Branson's design of a belly-pod accelerator in the stratosphere has some flair. Even the FAA (Fuck-All Astronauts?) seemed to think Bezos ought to have made an appropriate action in space, and clipped his buds!

Where money is running the show to such an extent, the billionaire is riding the algorithm into space without performing activities culturally appropriate to the medium.

This is where the vanishing-point of technique goes; everything is a reflection (electromagnetism), and nothing is culturally appropriate. Money is essentially manipulating resolved space, rather than the true space that is self-ordered (organic).

Naïve belief has to exist in disordered situations since these are situations of strength. No tribal or archaic belief could survive in a state of weakness (for long.)

Living in our present state of information delusion, there is an anomaly with our genetic identity to our forebears, who lived in untidy, rural and rough situations of disorder (or squalor). 

I noted the other day Liverpool lost its "Heritage" status owing to anonymous modernist constructions over the dark and doleful Mersey.

Where I am, there are two semi-subterranean Victorian edifices of unparalleled worth on the cliffside Leas that are being gradually overridden by residential monstrosities.

Our genetic identity as information represents the logical side of things only, not the balance and proportion that constitute reality. "The illogical borrows from the logical" (Corneille).

The universe may "borrow from the logical", but it is a frayed tapestry that has meaning and strength. The illusion of monetary information gives us logical differences instead of cosmic sameness.

Culturally-speaking, the modern world has a lot of minor differences (between people) but no sense of cosmic sameness (strength or meaning). Contrary to what we're generally informed, where people are different there are also more similarities in terms of psychic affinity (see W11).

I'm reminded of Corto Maltese (P125, Alternates4 currently in suspension) the fictional sailor from the colonial era of Surinam. As an adventurer, his affinities with tribes and outsiders (and gulls) are genuine and felt. One could say much the same of Tintin (in Peru, Tibet, China).

I recently picked-up Kim, having somehow escaped reading this boys' own Empire staple, and was struck by this para.

The life of the parao was very like that of the Kashmir Serai on a small scale. Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs. (page 94, Puffin)

Kim is a sahib who is brought-up Hindu and befriends a wandering Tibetal lama, and it struck me the very differences and disorder endemic in the situation create a sense of affinity, a cosmic oneness. The Afghan horsetrader here likens Kim to a colt.

'As regards that young horse,' said Mahbub, 'I say that when a colt is born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without teaching - when such a colt knows the game by divination - then I say it is a great wrong to break that colt to a heavy cart, Sahib!'

'So say I also, Mahbub. The colt will.be entered for polo only. (These fellows think of nothing in the world but horses, Padre). I'll see you tomorrow, Mahbub, if you've anything likely for sale.' (page 166)

If empathy (spirit) is a manifestation of disorder (strength or ecology), the modern era is clearly heading into the vanishing-point of a spiritual vacuum, as epitomised by Bezos's vacant voyage.

Not only billionaires but most politicians of the likes of Modi accentuate order at the expense of the affinity of the bazaar-type of polyglot disorder.

The entire plot of Kim concerns kismet - as well as the intrigues of war. Kismet is strongly linked to a type of naivety in belief that the lama possesses. Beliefs are personal affairs of individual psyche. 

Nor only Modi but others are social-media marketeers who sell information egregiously, where primitive religion and naïve belief are often sufficient for people to establish empathy.

There is common ground, and with commonality insults. What you get in Kim are references to mad pig-eyed sahibs or wogs. The casual use of insults reminds me of a schools playground in a way. On the other hand, ignorance of native speech or ignorance of lore are cardinal sins. 

In culturally adverse situations, the disorder and stress of the situation can adversely affect language. Language represents emotion and desire. One has to distance that situation from the logical order of programming an algorithm! (or flying a billionaire's rocket). In disordered situations the internal logic of desire rules. You could call that Howardesque or equally Kiplingesque or Mundyesque.

Colonial situations are situations where might is right but also where differences are also right. The affinity of differences is what one takes from Kim, and the sense that kismet is a real thing that exists in a state of naïve disorder.

Order cannot exist without continual mutation somewhat analogous to DNA (viruses) or the "land developers" of Gilbert Hernandez' "BEM" (P180).

Pictorial 180

A weak continuum that supports schizophrenic delusions of grandeur (from HB177) could be an apt description of "BEM", from the first issue of Love and Rockets back in 1982.

In this sequence, quasi-scientific expert Paolo P Piñata is so enamored of the monster that the two become one!

This theme goes through the story elwhich reads at times like a 70s issue of X-Men, and at times like magic realism - one of Gilbert's main influences.

It is still a riot to read, with phrases like " valid intrepidness" leaping off the page.

A weak continuum produces the need for bestial strength, the monster which detective Radium is forever chasing (BEM has in fact fooled him.by hiding within his own body!)

But, what is s weak continuum? I would assume it to be a logical order (light or technique) that assumes things have to be tidy to advance onto tomorrow.

This is really the monetary system, possibly alluded to by references to "land developers" (real estate, natch.) However, ecologically-speaking this is delusory.

If you think of an untidy garden, it could either be left by laziness or deliberately wilded so as to allow bugs and predators to revivify it (see Monty Don, prev.)

Prince Charles at Highgrove took this action by letting borders to crops on the farm grow wild (prev.) The difference between "wild" and "natural order" is zero in that where pests are allowed in is strength and fertility.

Where monstrous situations tend to flourish is actually in ordered settings of mono-agriculture where there are sewage-disposal problems. In England, sewage-treatment plants along the banks of rivers regularly release untreated waste, resulting in algal blooms that kill fish and aquatic insects.

The ego is attracted to "tidy" solutions that are essentially weak and prone to failure. "The land of logic" that is even more pernicious in the city.

As was noted in Alternates5 (rehsongcycle.com suspended till next week), the "land of logic" has a tendency to nonsense, whereas ramshackle neighborhoods have "the logic of desire". There is an internal logic associated to disorder (Corneille, prev.)

One only has to go back to the 70s to see how much more equable were city neighbourhoods which were to a large degree self-governing.

It's a type of low-level feuding in disordered situations previously alluded to (W11 and Rab Nesbit). The drama of the situation resolves the conflict; drama is required for resolution. This necessitates a rough attitude as opposed to the robotic management of modernity.

Take the 1970 Blaxploitation film " Cotton Comes to Harlem" ( by black director Ossie Davis). Two black officers aggressively restore order to the streets of Harlem almost in the face of white chiefs.

The white chief is inclined to credit the tall tales of community favorite Reverend O'Malley, while the two black officers have their ear to the nitty-gritty street. It's sexy and violent and neon-lit, with a dingy shabbiness that is fairly alluring.

Back in the 70s, the cultural and political milieu of neighborhoods was more right-on black and far less federally-managed. The allurement is cultural - with pockets of Swahili - and has the intoxication of desire - as opposed to rational order.

PAPER BAG SEQUENCE

Neighborhoods which are rough are like wilded gardens where insects lay eggs and get eaten by predators. One can't have a healthy neighborhood without some risks, be they enticement or physical violence. 

Societies manage the risks with law-enforcement, but the idea that society has to be managed is a deadly delusion of the ego. There is instead a desire for law-enforcement, a rough  hand tempered by restraint, by the fact the officers are part of the communal.pattern.

And the right-on patter. "That's police brutality", asserts the Rev when Digger knocks aside his cig. "No, brother, that's cancer prevention."

Disordered societies have an internal logic of desire; pure order only produces weakness and delusion. The choice for the future is stark. Between belief in a monetary order of "facts" and gadgets for weaklings; or ease-of-access to places of power that soothe the psyche.

Instead of dismal, authoritarian sameness, differences can get on in similar situations (see Black Mama, White Mama, prev.). The situation is cosmically the same for everyone. The cosmos is rough and textured, a frayed tapestry and not a literal reflection.

The Hudson Bay forms a backdrop to the film, a moodiness that frames neon-candles that glimmer in the starlight. 

BILLY JOEL

On a side-note, the turmoil in South Africa speaks of the deactivated vitality of the suburbs under the authorities of the city. Activating the agrarian is something that could expand white-owned farm-holdings by uptraining suburban blacks into agrarian pursuits of economic worth. The Chinese psycho-blasters are waiting in the wings to complete the monetary stranglehold.

Pictorial 179

One good way to explicate a situation that is not logical and light-bound is to take a physical example of such, in this case Charlotte Perriand's Les Arcs ski resort, often perceived as futurist and brutalist.

These are just words, though, so it's worth going back in time - actually right back to the Roman Emperor Trajan! For a start, the Les Arcs villages are cantilevered from the slope of the mountain.

This style of rugged engineering against rockface was practiced in the Danube way and crossing described in

HB2

Perriand's goal was in overridingly functional design that has much in common with Roman forebears.

The buildings are offset on a slope so that each tier catches the sun. Ornamentation - both exterior and interior - is kept to s minimum as the principle is to allow the landscape to speak with its own voice.

The effect is to be almost precisely mechanical in much the same way Roman aqueducts were - or even the skeleton of an animal.

In a way, she designed it from.the inside with the view of enabling an equal view of the mountain, in egalitarian fashion.

This also puts one in mind of medieval castles, which are built mechanically to be brutally functional and with egalitarian spaces (for those in favour with the Lord, obviously.)

Because these types of mechanical buildings utilize the strength of the landscape, they have common features.

For a start, there is a natural sense of well-being, a boost to the psyche from.the feeling that the building is at one with the landscape, rooted or almost merged or emerging from it (within it.)

The power of the mountain is both physical, and affects the psyche. The way I want to put this is that the foundation of things is illogical. A mountain is an irrational force of nature (like the Danube or a castle on a crag.)

Through the genius of her design, Perriand uses trees and slopes - and also snow on roofs - as a type of camouflage so that the buildings can appear to disappear.

Trees in forest create shade, so one way you could put it is that the villages are designed half in shade and half in sunlight.

When.buildings are designed with natural forces in mind they have the internal logic of the irrational in their actual construction.

The American Frank Lloyd Wright designed in that type of way to forge elemental buildings over water and through trees (PS there's also a Japanese connection in that Perriand lived and worked there.)

A landscape tends to be composed of light and dark forces; a forest is dark, water is dark - or can also be reflective light - crags are moulded by shadow.

In nature this is highly obvious since there are very few straight lines and therefore there is a continual gradation in tone. Trees absorb light through photosynthesis and so actually create shade (foliage.)

All this is obvious enough, but the fact that sunlight is continually being destroyed in the natural course of events doesn't seem.to occur to our modern Utopia of electromagnetic advance!

The fact is we live in a logical world of straight lines and light, as opposed to an irrational one of curvilinear shapes and shade. Diana the huntress is only ever going to be a force in this irrational kingdom 

In ancient days, buildings could be hidden by forest or natural formations because of the dominance of nature. Light is only half of the story; the other is the absence of light.

It's because we live in a logical world (of light) that that fact is consistentlt overlooked. A world of pure light could not have spinning objects such as Earth which is half in darkness (night, moon.)

The irrational tends to come less from building per se as from.letting things happen in inspirational ways.

As was noted back in Alternates5), the city of O'Henry was irrational but with its own internal logic. Desires are enabled to breath; drama is in the air.

This world is not thousands of years old but only goes back to the 40s, 50s, 60s. Inspiration comes from natural formations in the Art Deco skyscrapers of the 30s.

The foundations of nature are irrational, whereas the foundations of modernity are rational. It's more true really to see Perriand as a retro-futurist with one foot in the past. To her a mountain was physical and mental exhilaration, and her desire was to retain both.

In the modern order, both the physical strength of nature, and the psyche that makes people feel good are lost in the equation of real estate and the Almighty Dollar (be it Biden or his predecessor.)

Hyborian Bridge 180

 The neoplatonic 9th century monk Dun Scotus's doctrine of hylomorphism - which he called haecceinty - was a medieval anticipation of the Aristotelian Aquinas's materia signata quantitate.

This makes it clear enough that the medieval mind had an interest in the material knowledge of things -as had the Greeks - and only lacked the "facts" of quantum theory.

Haecceinty is analogous to Heidegger's "thingness", which is itself a move away from the material-minded Enlightenment! 

The implication is that the facts of a material universe may not satisfy the cravings of will and destiny. Thingness can be related to a cosmos of psyche, whereas matter can't.

The pursuit of matter since Galileo has done without psyche in the pursuit of "reality", or the universe seen through the lens of a perspective vision (P56).

The real problem with this approach is that facts can be a type of nothingness, as one continually approaches the vanishing-point of technique (sun, Apollo, ego P178).

One seems to enter a mathematical universe where coffee and haircuts are the order of the day, and nothing happens (no action.)

Action is the missing quality in this universe of facts in that we on Earth are spinning through the void and experiencing the seasons and fertility. In other words, fact is not a priori but fertility is.

Fertility is the tantalizing spinning of the Chinese Dragon, a story popularized by Lao Tzu in the classical era. Instead of logic, fertility proposes strength. Instead of information derived from a perspective system (of lenses P56), information is valued and verified by belief in strength.

This is a very tribal notion, and is mirrored in the ancient Greek dichotomy of Dionysus and Apollo.

A universe of action has pace so therefore one's view of the universe is seen through the medium of pace - the stars at night.

The patterns in the night sky are allusions to the stories told by the ancients. Stories are allusive and not factual.

The simplicity of this is alluring in that it represents the view of the general - as opposed to the particular of inductive reason (from Newton.) Well-being and rigour are dynamic and self-governing in this primeval situation (and setting.)

However, as noted in P178, techniques are convincing and produce results in resolved space (electromagnetic gadgets such as drills, information such as DNA).

Yes, but a belief in fact negates both pace and the allusive (or literary) meaning of the cosmos. Human beings could live to be older in a negative-zone of pure fact.

This could be the mistake of a material universe, in the sense that matter is an illusion. The truth is proportionate, and soothes the psyche with ease of access to places of power.

The poetic vision of the universe cannot have technical certainty, which is an illusion, but has the strength of belief in dynamic fertility.

The Hyborian cults - as described by Yaple, prev - are gross and curious - and that is their strength. A world of infinite facts invites the ego to a mirror of nothingness, where sameness replaces the vitality of difference.

A world of differences exists like a type of low-level feuding (see W11) which mirrors the vitality of nature in-the-field. Problems are solved through the drama of the situation. The rewards are the harvest and the open range.

These rugged aspects of healthy living are negated by a society of information in an illusory world of sameness. The problem with these information-theories is that they will.inevitability produce sameness instead of the vitality of difference. The theories attract the ego of acolytes so that the system is inevitably run by acolytes.

This makes a nonsense of race theories advanced by academics! The real problem is that the theories imply a certain type of head is needed to run society. The same type that runs Silicon Valley, natch.

In fact, differences are strong and produce strong societies. Psychic sureness as opposed to weakness of psychic indecision and delusion.