Introducing Jane McAlevely, (then) student president and SUNY trustee who organized the effort. In our time, the foundational issue is trust. How much of sexuality is really about projection?
As usual, thanks for a great program, Eric. I have made it to the two hours mark.
I have to disagree with some of what you said in the first segment, while agreeing with much of it. Yes, the digital disembodiment is playing a huge role in messing up the consciousness, both the society's as well as that of individuals. But it's a chicken/egg matter. This is playing in the context of social structural factors.
Humans over the last 50 years have been rendered increasingly unable to think outside boxes because what they're being fed via the "education" system and the mass media which reinforce it amounts to ever more constricted boxes.
And this is deliberate, designed as a counterinsurgency in reaction to the cultural insurgency of the :"Sixties" which made the very idea of collage students being politically active acceptable in any way. Andre Gregory talked about this with Wallace Shawn in "My Dinner With Andre," 1984." New York as a self-managed prison and insane asylum portending the future.
This kind of social environment has made it more possible to implement the digital conditions to their fullest ramifications. We're losing the very notion of what it means to be a thinking human participating in society. We're becoming incapable of doing anything except receiving instructions from experts and making sure everyone we know goes along with them. And this reinforces the ongoing clampdown.
Incredible story of what happened at SUNY Buffalo, 100 cops from 7 departments used to violently subdue 15 demonstrators. Same place where events were happening on campus at the time of the crackdown, same place where much later protests had been allowed recently. Like at New Paltz, like at Purchase, it's all about the TOPIC.
This ties into the third segment, what Jane McAlevey and the whole crew of you did re successfully pushing for SUNY divestment from South Africa. I listened to her interview on Democracy Now yesterday, have comments right below.
But i was struck but how much had changed. With modern surveillance technology, sneaking chains and locks into a campus building just doesn't fly. Indeed, over the last 40 years, the entire idea of involvement in anything bigger than your career ambitions has been attacked into oblivion. "Idiot" used to mean "a private person" in ancient Greece, someone uninvolved in the affairs of the polis, the community. Now, "idiot" is used to describe anyone who IS involved in the affairs of the community, in any but the most sanitized and conformist of ways.
From my Substack post of today.
[McAlevey] went on to become a union organizer, working especially with the UAW. She was interviewed recently by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, and revealed that she had terminal cancer and was in the hospice stage of her life. VERY sad. What a spirited person, great heart. It is with total respect that i still say i have fundamental problems with her notion that capitalism can be overcome via the system with some direct action pressure. And the UAW has made a series of choices over the years which have aligned it with the power structure on many basic matters, including the entire "Pandemic"/"COVID-19"/"SARS-Cov-2” disinformation narrative which has enable;mega-fraud, mass murder and global tyranny.
We've been told since the 1960s -- usually with great relief -- that computers would do our thinking for us. Science fiction writers warned us about this, while the engineers proceeded, and many people found it thrilling they would be relieved of the burden of thought and feeling. And all the while, the ground was shifting in that direction. The idea that there could be some omniscient, omnipresent entity became our concept for god, and now it gives you pizza (if you have enough in your account). Turing, their inventor, believed computers would be our companions. Being who he was, he was profoundly isolated from the human world. Figure and ground is not chicken and egg. The figure beings with what you can see. The ground beings with what you cannot see until you stretch your vision and the rest of perception.
I have in my bookcase the 1968 NY Daily News World Almanac (came out in Dec '67), with an intro by Isaac Asimov (!) noting that this marked 100 years of the Almanac, and predicting the next 100 years. Key to the prediction is the takeover by computers of every facet of decision making, and celebrating this as an advancement for "rational decision-making."
Do you mean "The figure begins with ..." and "The ground begins with " Or "The figure being what.."....and "The ground being..." ? Either way, i think i get it. One is your immediate perception vs what you perceive once you stretch out. I'll restate: There has been a deliberate effort to limit what people perceive and, even more, limit what they seek to perceive, i.e. "Don't bother, someone is looking on your behalf and will let you know if there's anything to be concerned about." Remember the NY Times about the folly of doing your own research? This has been getting drummed into the public consciousness since the early '70s, it's been deliberate. See :"The Cancer Stage of Capitalism" by John McMurtrey and "Rich Media, Poor Democracy" by Robert McChesney, both of which came out in 1999. It's the cultural counterrevolution. This has not been from the ground up.
By 67 it was obvious. I have the first Nat Geo after WWII ended, something like October 1945, and they make 10 predictions for the future -- none of which meekly mention computers. Not a word about processing, data, nothing -- they are talking about fast trains and waterproof matches and so on.
The ones which existed were just too big to contemplate becoming ever present. And the punch cards made it all so awkward. Yeah, futuristic books in the '50s did not feature computers all that much.
Got through the rest of the program. First three Alphaville tunes were OK. The last one, Lassie Come Home, i really *liked*. Maybe because it sounds a bit Pink Floyd-ish?
Your story about the models, learning how to be around them and give them space while still perceiving them fully, reminded me of something i experienced as well, to a leaser degree. Did over 36 years of tutoring in math and stats at UC Berkeley, a lot of it on a drop in basis, with many of the students of course being women (i think over half the student body is female). And it was a skill i had to learn. They have to feel comfortable for tutoring to be effective. And lots of them were really attractive. Some i only saw once or twice, others i kept seeing through the semester. And similarly with my fellow tutors, the women ones. More than a few in fact seemed to make an effort to get me interested. Very vivid memories.
As usual, thanks for a great program, Eric. I have made it to the two hours mark.
I have to disagree with some of what you said in the first segment, while agreeing with much of it. Yes, the digital disembodiment is playing a huge role in messing up the consciousness, both the society's as well as that of individuals. But it's a chicken/egg matter. This is playing in the context of social structural factors.
Humans over the last 50 years have been rendered increasingly unable to think outside boxes because what they're being fed via the "education" system and the mass media which reinforce it amounts to ever more constricted boxes.
And this is deliberate, designed as a counterinsurgency in reaction to the cultural insurgency of the :"Sixties" which made the very idea of collage students being politically active acceptable in any way. Andre Gregory talked about this with Wallace Shawn in "My Dinner With Andre," 1984." New York as a self-managed prison and insane asylum portending the future.
This kind of social environment has made it more possible to implement the digital conditions to their fullest ramifications. We're losing the very notion of what it means to be a thinking human participating in society. We're becoming incapable of doing anything except receiving instructions from experts and making sure everyone we know goes along with them. And this reinforces the ongoing clampdown.
Incredible story of what happened at SUNY Buffalo, 100 cops from 7 departments used to violently subdue 15 demonstrators. Same place where events were happening on campus at the time of the crackdown, same place where much later protests had been allowed recently. Like at New Paltz, like at Purchase, it's all about the TOPIC.
This ties into the third segment, what Jane McAlevey and the whole crew of you did re successfully pushing for SUNY divestment from South Africa. I listened to her interview on Democracy Now yesterday, have comments right below.
But i was struck but how much had changed. With modern surveillance technology, sneaking chains and locks into a campus building just doesn't fly. Indeed, over the last 40 years, the entire idea of involvement in anything bigger than your career ambitions has been attacked into oblivion. "Idiot" used to mean "a private person" in ancient Greece, someone uninvolved in the affairs of the polis, the community. Now, "idiot" is used to describe anyone who IS involved in the affairs of the community, in any but the most sanitized and conformist of ways.
From my Substack post of today.
[McAlevey] went on to become a union organizer, working especially with the UAW. She was interviewed recently by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, and revealed that she had terminal cancer and was in the hospice stage of her life. VERY sad. What a spirited person, great heart. It is with total respect that i still say i have fundamental problems with her notion that capitalism can be overcome via the system with some direct action pressure. And the UAW has made a series of choices over the years which have aligned it with the power structure on many basic matters, including the entire "Pandemic"/"COVID-19"/"SARS-Cov-2” disinformation narrative which has enable;mega-fraud, mass murder and global tyranny.
We've been told since the 1960s -- usually with great relief -- that computers would do our thinking for us. Science fiction writers warned us about this, while the engineers proceeded, and many people found it thrilling they would be relieved of the burden of thought and feeling. And all the while, the ground was shifting in that direction. The idea that there could be some omniscient, omnipresent entity became our concept for god, and now it gives you pizza (if you have enough in your account). Turing, their inventor, believed computers would be our companions. Being who he was, he was profoundly isolated from the human world. Figure and ground is not chicken and egg. The figure beings with what you can see. The ground beings with what you cannot see until you stretch your vision and the rest of perception.
I have in my bookcase the 1968 NY Daily News World Almanac (came out in Dec '67), with an intro by Isaac Asimov (!) noting that this marked 100 years of the Almanac, and predicting the next 100 years. Key to the prediction is the takeover by computers of every facet of decision making, and celebrating this as an advancement for "rational decision-making."
Do you mean "The figure begins with ..." and "The ground begins with " Or "The figure being what.."....and "The ground being..." ? Either way, i think i get it. One is your immediate perception vs what you perceive once you stretch out. I'll restate: There has been a deliberate effort to limit what people perceive and, even more, limit what they seek to perceive, i.e. "Don't bother, someone is looking on your behalf and will let you know if there's anything to be concerned about." Remember the NY Times about the folly of doing your own research? This has been getting drummed into the public consciousness since the early '70s, it's been deliberate. See :"The Cancer Stage of Capitalism" by John McMurtrey and "Rich Media, Poor Democracy" by Robert McChesney, both of which came out in 1999. It's the cultural counterrevolution. This has not been from the ground up.
By 67 it was obvious. I have the first Nat Geo after WWII ended, something like October 1945, and they make 10 predictions for the future -- none of which meekly mention computers. Not a word about processing, data, nothing -- they are talking about fast trains and waterproof matches and so on.
The ones which existed were just too big to contemplate becoming ever present. And the punch cards made it all so awkward. Yeah, futuristic books in the '50s did not feature computers all that much.
so this raises an interesting question - when is the computer introduced to sci fi?
2001 establishes a benchmark. What was before that? Dune is not so computer intensive either - that's 65, correct?
I think The Forbidden Planet, 1956. Dune is '65, indeed not computer intensive.
Got through the rest of the program. First three Alphaville tunes were OK. The last one, Lassie Come Home, i really *liked*. Maybe because it sounds a bit Pink Floyd-ish?
Your story about the models, learning how to be around them and give them space while still perceiving them fully, reminded me of something i experienced as well, to a leaser degree. Did over 36 years of tutoring in math and stats at UC Berkeley, a lot of it on a drop in basis, with many of the students of course being women (i think over half the student body is female). And it was a skill i had to learn. They have to feel comfortable for tutoring to be effective. And lots of them were really attractive. Some i only saw once or twice, others i kept seeing through the semester. And similarly with my fellow tutors, the women ones. More than a few in fact seemed to make an effort to get me interested. Very vivid memories.