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).
