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Synthetic Data would be a great band name. I’m reading Anti-Oedipus for the first time at the recommendation of a friend (actually, a friend’s boyfriend but whatever). Also still pushing through A Theory of the Drone and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Listening to the new Wisp album and rewatching Jujutsu Kaisen. Fighting with randoms irl about the ethics of fantasy literature. Finding meaning in the mundane, and all that therapyspeak.
Feeling more disillusioned than possibly ever by the thought of a greater future for all, but still disgusted by doomism. Part of the argument about fantasy stemmed from my frustration with this man over his apathy and doomism. He’s a self-proclaimed “leftist man” who is constantly complaining about rural politics and clinging to pessimism as a shield for his pseudointellectualism. You can like things! Even in the end times, you can like things.
Back to the topic of surveillance though, Chamayou does an excellent job charting the rise of abstracted warfare and the role US state and corporate interests played. With the terror happening in Gaza at the empowerment of the Western state, paragraphs like: “What we are witnessing here is a redistribution of priorities: the yield from a policy designed to terrorize and eradicate now takes precedence over any consideration of its political effects on the population. So, what if the drones make the population turn away from us? Who cares? What do the “hearts and minds” of villagers in Waziristan or anywhere else matter? And in any case, unlike in the old colonial wars, the objective is no longer to conquer a territory but simply to eliminate from afar the ‘terrorist threat,” it feels just as relevant as ever.
The depersonalization of war paves the way for this abstraction of violence across spheres of everyday life. When I open up social media to a photo of a friend’s baby shower, followed by live streams from warzones where children lie massacred, the virtual space doesn’t then stop and allow for period of reflection. Instead, the story moves on to a targeted ad for idk, dog food or running shorts. We are removed from every act of violence committed on our behalf with our tax dollars and this could have only been made possible starting with the wide proliferation of air counterinsurgency.
I’m not saying anything shockingly new, but I think our complacency to this new norm, whether it be on social media, in the news, or cycling ads on a digital billboard, is a strategic tactic to encourage disengagement. We think it’s inescapable or inevitable, so why talk about it when ignoring it can be so much easier. I don’t know what talking about it will do, but the ignorance of it is beginning to wear. I’m still trying to unravel all this, if there is anything actually to be done, or if shitposting and self aware memes in a doom scroll is all we can do. I don’t say that critically or mockingly, I genuinely do not know. Cruel optimism everywhere I turn.
I’m still reading the Manbookers, which provide little respite in the serious matter they cover but they do offer the solace of fiction needed to keep me grounded at the very least. About halfway through Shuggie Bain right now, and the story of a young boy growing up in public housing in Glasgow during the economic collapse of the 1980s is dense, funny, and sad. I can’t believe this is his debut novel.
Only about a month of summer left before work returns. Thinking about that David Lynch quote from his weather reports. “It’s still summer, still time to fall in love before school starts.” The first week of August, and I’m hoping there’s still time.
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