On the Nature Of Certainty

In this very uncertain world, there are an awful of people who are certain of things. This is that, or that is this, or this is diametrically opposed to that. Despite all we know, we really know very little. How to put our pants on maybe. Friend of mine once related a tale to me: seems he was an artillery man in Nam, and he was sleeping one night when his base came under attack--he allowed that he was fully dressed and on his way to his post ten seconds after the first shell hit, never asked him if he tied his boots, passed on now, shoddy work of the VA carried him away--yeh, but in times of stress I guess we know how to put on our pants.

We are entering a brave new world; how may we certain that this theory is any better than the one it debunks? How long will it be before the parameters change; the stars shift?

No, it doesn't matter what theory, we have theories for everything--the computers leave us with a range of probabilities and we just rearrange the facts to fit the current condition, or at least as many of the facts as we can fit into an incomplete and fragmentary picture.--watching the detectives, they often say, "it's all we got to go on--sanitized for public viewing they never smoke anymore--another subtle hint for acceptable behavior, another subject--

One recalls reading the Foundation trilogy--Hari Selden's invention of Psychohistory, and the second Foundation's refinement of the data over a millennium--the project's purpose, of course, was to predict the the future history of the Galactic Empire through the movement of a vast number of people. Even so, the data was incomplete, errors could occur...

Our confrontation today, well, at least mine--is with Economics, Politics & Art, specifically poetry; and I for one, know so little about them that it would be best if I just crawled back in the cave and pulled the bearskin over my head. I should note here, that it would have been my step-dad that killed that bear, if I were confronted by such a fearsome beast, I fear the outcome would be somewhat different.

Through the good graces of our various magic boxes we are indeed bombarded each day with certainties,--yet those same certainties have led us to the brink of Armageddon rather than the steps to the gates of Eden. Something has gone awry. It would seem the experts know more than they are telling us, or they know very little at all.

"No, that's not what I meant at all, I was not sure of things, and really, it just seemed to be that be that way, at the time."

When I was a boy, over in Dogtown, I'd go up to old Earl's and listen to the old men sitting around the Burnside, spitting, telling lies and cussing the politicians. They'd all been union men, democrats and John L. Lewis was a god--one of Grandpa's favorite stories was the time he'd met John L. up in Brownton when the union was first getting going, "shook his hand," he'd always say. They was certain of God, though they weren't very good Christians, certain of the union, punching the chicken on the ballot, and damned certain every politician that had ever been born was going to pick your pocket. Back then, having only one tv channel, and having Uncle Pete as both news anchor and kiddie show host wasn't quite enough to affect the way you behaved; so I hung out with them old guys and probably learned a lot of things I shouldn't have. I suppose, through everything because of that, I have a few certainties of my own deep down inside, one's you might say as I keep for my own.


"There's nothing better that 250 mics of good acid to kick start the cosmic coonhunt for Enlightenment. It takes juice. After all sonny boy, you don't knock down stars with a bee bee gun."
-- Mad Dog Howard, Hippie Doper/Philosopher
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/

Yeh, all that was later on, something about it--where you came to a rockhard place that you knew you were going to and the Great Game was laid bare. Kinda pointless here, to try and illuminate the motel rooms, the neon, the flimsy walls and the animals--but it was what it was at the time: The whole damn world as a charnel house; everything bleeding & breeding and dying--ancient visions now, and prophesies that saw way down deep at the seams of things. I looked at the Nature of things and who we are, and was amazed at the veneer which we use to cover it up. That is another certainty which came along; I suppose if I could translate it, it might be helpful, but I reckon that particular certainty can't be taught or bought or stole.

It was round about that time, I decided I was going to be a poet--Dave's fault really, he wrote about the wheel of life in a little poem, and I was astounded, got lost in a fever from which I have never escaped, and have been lost in the uncertainty of certainty ever since. Damndest thing about it is, you have to learn all this stuff, (damn near everything) just so you can write about that which you cannot know; and that's the easy part. Damn silly thing to want to be in the first place--quite vogue these days; the net is crawling with "poets". There are some commitments you can't escape, yet all the wanting in the world won't make you what you want to be; that may or may not come along after you are gone, and by then I don't suppose it will matter much, now will it. Turns out, I was never much good at making a living anyways so it was just as well I wrote things down. Point is--I was certain that is what I wanted to be, since nothing else made any sense; everything I learned from that point on had no practical purpose, it was simply grist for the mill, stuff to be sifted through for the next poem.

Whatever other certainties I acquired, I applied to that. Studied philosophy from Thales to Sartre, dumped most because the next one proved the last one wrong, History from the Nile Valley to the second world war, literature from Homer to Ginsburg. Came away from that with a few things--Birth death rebirth, the absurd, and the dialectic--which seemed reasonable to me. I rejected the formal, preferring instead to see in each finished poem a form. To me the formal structures lacked weight, they determined, not allowed. (many consider a mastery of the forms as liberating, but that is not my view.)At any rate, I determined that I would find my own way through the maze; and that is not so easy as it sounds; everything you read sends you to the next one you will read and certainty about anything retreats ever further away.--Nowadays, and I suppose it was always true, though I cannot be certain of this--most folks will have you do something in one particular fashion; because it is their way, and therefore it is the correct way. Put the square a sixteenth of an inch longer than it should be, and maybe it will come out right, whatever it is, it's a feel for the the thing that matters and that's something you can't be certain of no matter how sure you are that you got it right.

Armageddon

Everywhere there is the call to Action; yet the great mass does not move. It seems frozen in place. Waiting. The crisis, if upon us, seems hollow, distant. When will it come we say, looking at the darkening sky. though we know it to be so, and feel it in our bones we will not believe that it is so; do The Nobles not play at dice before their crackling fire? The wheels appear to turn. Here and there an odd man reads the paper unconcerned by its deceits, the scores are true, and who has murdered whom, the name of the stars might change but they are still luminous, the pipers play a happy tune.

Some might see the shadow of a Man, he has his own name, but he has gone by many in the past, when the fires descend, when there is ruin, more often then not, some say, he leaves death in his wake.--No-one listens to dreamers, do they? Not in this day and age when we have surpassed all that our fathers ever dreamed of...

Prophets are a dime a dozen, poets even cheaper, it's too easy to string together words, to make dire thoughts. I have lived in a cold clime, and the warmer weather suits me just fine, I have no need to worry about old men in fine suits who walk under sunny skies discussing the weather...as yet I do not see the smoke from distant fires, but the merchants are wringing their hands and moping about.--

How is it they have become bedfellows with the politicians? Surely this was not always so? Something is amiss in the cosmos. The world moves too slowly, bodies are ground to a fine powder and sold as fertilizer, grease for the wheels, they say, mumbling of their poverty; yet all is well as they will have saved us once again, some say, by selling the beggared children into slavery for the glory of our bright tomorrows. We will be well and prosper--though the dreamers, and prophets and the poets would not have it so; tinkering with our madness as if all we know is just an illusion, or a bit of paper emblazoned with cartoon saints stabbing themselves.

Still! there is that need, deep down, that something wants to be done, and still the great Machine groans on raping the stripped earth. We die quietly in its path hugging our hoarded wealth; though always in the end we are left with nothing more than our bloated skin.

The consolidation of Disparate Positions

Here is another voice crying in the wilderness.

The Republican Party is on the verge of Collapse--but it needs a push.

The Democratic party no longer has an ideological center--it needs a spur--

--and you guys in the baby parties are all running around without a snowball's chance in hell of ever getting anywhere in the pursuit of the office of "The Big Cheese", (currently occupied by Mr. Paulson by virtue of the senatus consultum currently being passed by congress), and consequently none of your supposedly innovative ideas will ever see the light of day.

Yeh well-you dimwits, this is supposed to be a Democracy, wherein compromise and coalition are weapons the people should be able to use as a bulwark against elitism. Holy corporation, Batman, we're fucked again.

Why's that? Well, everybody wants to be the big cheese.--and the only two (besides Mr. Paulson, may his reign be long and prosperous) who have a chance for that; are big on platitudes but mired in cookie cutter personalities who all want a piece of the action. Which sucks pond water as far as the future of the republic is concerned. I don't really see that changing, we've gotten too big for our britches (we've got Aircraft Carriers, for Gods Sake)--and we have to be first in everything, all the time. Even if serious consideration were given to my proposal, (which I haven't given yet, were adopted: fat chance) there you'd be wanting to be Secretary of this or that, huffing and puffing about, forgetting where you came from and all that, as if you might actually be better than someone else--which has gotten us into all this trouble in the first place.

America, dudes.

Now me, down here at the bottom of the heap; just waiting for the electric to get turned off, or the sheriff to finally catch up to me for my various indiscretions in the matter of survival has a different point of view. I got no property, I don't have no stinking job where some witless yahoo is telling me what to do, my lover is married to some other dude, and for a career path I have chosen to write poetry which by way of remuneration earns nothing but ridicule in this the best of all possible worlds.

Not to worry, I get by--just don't ask me no questions. The fact that your world is falling down about your ears worries me not at all. I gotta kitten on my lap, and my lover plans to slip away today, despite the stock market's imminent fall. "Been down so long it looks like up to me," he said warbling an old song--

Ah! But you guys you ain't so lucky. You gotta a long ways to fall when the wells run dry. The Free Money dropping out of the sky won't fall so far. And like as not you're going to get buried in the crop dust. 9/11 and the holy wars take a seat on the back burner, the gas is turned off anyway, how do you get the point across?

Simple, really. Have yourselves a cabal, I suppose you'll have to invite yourself, just to make sure nothing goes wrong, no-one in my generation ever wanted to miss a party anyways--a consortium: agree not to disagree so vehemently for a while--toss your names in a hat, then do it again for a number two. What have you got to lose?

America, dudes?--Aircraft Carriers rusting at the pier.

shortly after the birth of a New American Party, a man said this:

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this."


I would submit to you that democracy is a constant battle, your decision rests not on your petty ideas of Left vs Right, or in the constancy of your ambitions--rather, it is the very survival of the republic that is at stake. Whine all you want about your goddamn principles and the fact that you are right and they are wrong, put your name in the hat. It is altogether possible that within a small span of years, indeed it may already be impossible, that such a coalition will not be viable--you will be deemed "illegal" and a threat to the Empire. Recall the death of Cicero, at the hands of a nervous Octavian--the punishment of patriots is often cruel.

notes from the communist manifesto

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.


The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.


The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.


The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.


The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

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from Wiki on the dialectic:

In classical philosophy, dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is controversy: the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments respectively advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). The outcome of the exercise might not simply be the refutation of one of the relevant points of view, but a synthesis or combination of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue.[1][2] The presupposition of a dialectical dialogue is that the participants share at least some meanings and principles of valid inference, even if they do not agree.


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The bourgeois seeks no synthesis of the Dialectic. It it is interested only in preservation & profit. By maintaining the struggle between freedom & equality, rather than participating in negotiations to resolve the conflict, it divides the proletariat in a permant struggle which serves only its primary interests. The perceived gains of the proletariat are illusion, products of the progression of materialism. Life itself, that of symbol & worth are abdicated in favor of an empty comfort.