I have a faint idea what it is like to be alive.

(quote: William Saroyan, video: Alan Moore's advice to young artists)

For a minute there I was a nihilist. I came to a philsophical conclusion that I shirked away from telling people because it sounds so bleak and inhumane. The crux is this: that we can never achieve social stability or equality or sustainable prosperity or peace or freedom if our population continues to grow. The thesis, generally, being that a confluence of phenomenon (including but not limited to the Tragedy of the Commons, False Consciousness, the quantitative/psychological constraints of human interaction [i.e. how many people your brain will allow you to know/trust/etc], and a sheer logistical impossibility) strongly suggest that a group as large as, for instance, the United States, could never accomplish utopia. That is, there is no model for governance with a system this large that provides for satisfaction to all of its participants.

First, the Tragedy of the Commons is an observation that self-interest will cause users of a shared resource to abuse their privilege to that resource. In Hardin's original essay he spoke of common grazing areas in a village, but the best way to understand this (I am a transportation engineer after all) is to think of how commercial vehicles (big trucks) operate on our highways. Large, multi-axle trucks do virtually all of the damage to the publicly-funded (i.e. 'common') road system. They do pay higher use fees (above and beyond driver's licenses, fuel tax, etc for passenger cars), and yet without close supervision it would be in commercial vehicle operators' best interest to run the heaviest loads they could at top speed. Human beings cheat to get ahead, they use resources disproportionally, they leave things worse than they found them.

Now, this problem is mitigated in small communities. The home, for example, has many common areas and goods. And they are generally respected because of the authority of the household (complete) and the familiarity between the members. And it could work in a neighborhood, perhaps, where everyone knows each other somewhat intimately and their lives are crushed into shape by their public identity. But expand the numbers of the community to some threshold and people stop giving a shit. This number likely has some connection to the group-sizes that we spent much of our mental development in. Australopithecus hung out in very small groups. A few families. Even allow for a thousand and it might work. But,we live in a country of 300million, in a world of 6billion plus. We are not wired to give a shit about any of these people. The fact that we do is actually sort of weird.

Logistical impossibility doesn't have a link because I haven't heard of anyone who has done a great deal of work on it. The idea is that even in a purely-executed Communist state there would be no way to equitably distribute resources. The same amount cannot be put in each cup, because the things used to fill them are not distributed equally. Arizona does not have the water to survive, but if they are to use the water of some place else how can that water-bearing land be thought to have the carrying capacity of both places? Especially when we humans grow so densely and rapaciously. And live for so long. But further than the efficiency of moving resources around, there is a certain chaos in the economy of ideas when the numbers get this high. anarchists can conspire, religions can procreate, language can vary . . .and in the end you get smaller political communities. These subcommunities distrust each other, formulate nonsensical rivalries. Shun those of the other tribe. Anyway . . .I have many more thoughts on this that I'm going to discuss further in an upcoming blog on Terminalism (this is a name I've given to a philosophy that amalgamates Marxism, Darwinism, aspects of Existentialism, and Absurdism)

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"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings"

(quote: Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian; video: trailer for Synecdoche, New York)


I'm looking forward to xmas in the mitten. Last night I sat in Boise's smokiest bar and read a poem by a friend of mine. He's a Detroiter too, or close enough to count in the MTZ. The image of a figure standing outside a Woodward bar, watching the fleeting past in oil-stained puddles. Nothing can be retrieved or even properly named. And there are absolutely times for nostalgia, as much as I've evaded it. I want to walk across that scarred parking lot behind Jacoby's and feel bitter winter wind. I want my car to spin across the flooded interstate, soaking my tribe in gasoline and overflow. I want to blow my New Year's kazoo from the roof of the Jewish Park Shelton. I want to walk between the arguing deaf in the sharp-edged morning. I want to breathe in the smoke of structure fires, etched against the emulsive sky like the whole city is in my dreams. I want to steal things in a place where property means nothing. I want to chop firewood in the shadow of anonymous wealth wasted. I want to feel nervous and excited and go rigid in the abdomen walking from my car to the place I buy beer. I want to talk to Kazakhs or Albanians through bullet-proof glass. I want heroin addicts to crash their bikes in my driveway. I want ceilings to leak and basements to reek. I want my bars so fucking dark I forget who I came with. I want to look forward to someone driving long distance this weekend to sleep on my floor with me. I want to sit on my porch all day, getting slow drunk listening to psychopaths and making plans to do it all again tomorrow. I want to see the SWAT tank rolling up Trumbull as I stagger stoned gorgeous to a classroom with no windows. I want to make burritos from canned goods with no labels. I want to philosophize until the sun comes up and I'm asleep in the chair alone. I want to come downstairs vibrating with something, and have 8 other opinions on it within minutes. I want to see OneBeLo rock the mic every goddamn weekend. All these things, as clear now as they were then. Whatever the case, in three weeks I'm home. Hopefully I can still keep up.

Saw the above film yesterday. Like every Charlie Kaufman piece, there seem to be waves of appreciation that come on as the time since viewing grows. He is directing for the first time, and I think in some ways his amateur lens shows; but from a story-standpoint it is very unlike anything I have ever really seen. True Theatre of the Absurd. Strangely, the film feels like a week long. And not due to pace, but as a result of the lifetime the film contains. It takes place over the course of at least 30 years (probably more, it's difficult to tell), and the main character (Cardin) seems to have lost his grip on time. This is The World According to Garp gone surreal, the main character being among the saddest figures I've seen in a film. The many love stories of the film are each unique and true and classically rendered. The infinite self-reflexivity of the film's ultimate project is the best argument for the post-modern aesthetic one could ask for. I already like this movie more after writing the above then I did before.


Today, in applying to the University of Minnesota, I had to write 3 additional personal statements. One on my "career plans", one on "diversity", a final one discussing my "self-motivation". The first was brief, simple. The second was mostly about Detroit. I am a white male from the suburbs, yet I think I've gotten my dose of diversity. I appreciated the opportunity to write the essay on self-motivation, I feel I have qualities and accomplishments that a resume can not depict In my two school careers I have consciously avoided most extra-curricular involvement. I have no interest in padding my resume with anything, or spending time that does not feed the revolution in my head. So I'm a member of no organizations, societies, associations. I sit around very few tables and discuss nothing. There will be no greek letters on my tombstone or yours.

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