davidjamesarmstrong

[davidjamesarmstrong]

Understand history,

Understand yourself.

[davidjamesarmstrong]

I’ve Made That Face Before

2-21-2018. I’m exhaling clean smoke when my mom calls me. My phone is always on Do Not Disturb but somehow it rings. I tell my friend and she lowers the music out of respect. I ask whats up only to be met with hyperventilating sobs and a broken voice that I had never heard. Minutes ago, she saw someone running from a house for his life sign in Logan Square—saw a young boy, not nearly fourteen, turn around towards his pursuer directly behind my mother’s vehicle. Waiting at the stop sign, she looked out the back window to see what the boy was doing. According to my mother’s trembling recollection, the boy looked tired and frightened. He reached out with his hand, as if he were blessing the gunman who greeted him. Five times was he greeted. The boy dropped and the gunman only dropped his hand. The murderer’s face was empty. Although my mother saw a killing, she didn’t see a murderer. What she saw was a boy, discombobulated and woebegone. For what he saw was a tiny piece of the universe, of truth. He saw his lifelong future and his shame in totality time-traveled and overloaded his ethos. His eyes cried dry tears. They somehow manifested in my mother’s. She saw her own child’s face when he broke an egg and realized it would never be undone. Only this egg was his brother.

The gunboy ran back from whence he came and my mother remained shook. She quickly dialed for the public emergency hotline and detailed what had happened. She had to talk to someone…for someone to listen—a thing we don’t do enough of anymore. She let it out and I carefully consoled and reminded her to settle her mind so that she will return home safely, where hot tea would soon await her. She told me later how the boy had a face that said, “What did I just do…”

I’ve made that face before.

[davidjamesarmstrong]

Hey friend, I wrote a haiku, it’s about staying true in corporate America and it’s called: Dirty Diaper People

We have no real foes

Besides normalized demons

And hearts for business.

[davidjamesarmstrong]

Defibrillating The Mind

14 May 2018

Humans are creatures of emotion. We need unity to healthily survive, but unity has been long ago reinterpreted as separatist factions, united against one another: a multiplicity of closed systems competing for power through influence and brute force. We have myriad systems, societies within societies, divided unification, which inevitably oppose each other because we recognize each as “other,” instead of as Self, which we are. Humans are a biological system within themselves, so we have fundamental commonality, living within larger cosmic systems: Universe—> Earth—> Environment—> Human, and then communities within those environments. But that is not to confuse our communities as separate from others: Humans and their communities within whatever environments they inhabit are how humans function as a single organism, just as Earth is a single organism but is divided into wildly diverse, seemingly separate ecosystems. We must live with nature, with ourselves.

Power is not dead; it’s been withheld. We’ve been made to believe it’s dead. Choice seems like fable now because we innocently succumb to irresponsible self-serving authorities whom we trust but remain invisible and detached. Power is deliberately hoarded by the few whom profit the most, overlords with gilded degrees of authority to manipulate our decisions according to their agendas though discourse and are reenforced by our own innate selfishness and primal paranoia (technology and civility have blinded us from our true animalistic nature. Which is why we recognize nature as other and thus trample it). Just like anything else in life, once we admit we are wrong (wrong to succumb to our own greed, our own insecurities and our own paranoia/distrust/hate), then we can move forward and work towards a solution. Ultimately, we enslave ourselves, but the power is and always has been right at our fingertips. Although idealistic, I propose a new system: a synthesized system made up from our current hegemonic system, capitalistic democracy, with an autopoietic system composed of moral leaders who use authoritative power to encourage inclusiveness, compassion and alternative learning through the lens of human and cosmic commonality.

Life for humans is paradoxical. Death is a part of life, but one cannot be alive if dead. We know this. With how much we know, we aren’t much different from our ancient ancestors. But so far, no one has been able to create Total Order without suppressing or eliminating others. Even our languages are flawed—they’re constantly morphing alongside the development of technology, words can be and mean anything. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a word is worth a thousand pictures. Human law and language are an attempt for order as well, but are fundamentally imaginary and therefore exploited by anyone creative enough to do so. Our systems are flawed unfair and corrupt. Like the paradox of life, we know this; but we cannot seem to do anything about it. That may explain why many people express themselves through art. Artists put a spotlight on social issues by transforming them into an incandescent image that represents how they feel in relation to their time period, knowledge, and state of being.

Numerous geniuses have proposed actual solutions for social issues through their art, but it was not enough to produce substantial results. Contemporary Joshua Cohen writes in (or for) the digital age, and through his fiction novel Book of Numbers, addresses issues such as consumerism, effects of mass media in a capitalist oligarchic pseudo-democracy, and defining the Self. The through line of his book is largely paradox; and he explicitly mentions a specific type of paradox: “During breaks my hut’s screen oscillated a koan. It was a clock, but with just a single hand, and the clock face had no divisions into minutes or hours. It had no divisions at all. Was it a timer? and if so what time did it tell?” (88). A koan is a paradoxical riddle in Zen Buddhism intended to prove the inadequacy of logic and reason with hopes of provoking enlightenment. Cohen’s work is like any other—it is reflective of the current worldly condition as a whole. However, Cohen is no genius. He uses current-day problems as an opportunity to flex his cynical wit as a supplement for solutions for those problems, ironically profiting by doing so. Clearly, artists aren’t doing as well as they could be in changing the world for the better—but it isn’t exactly their fault. They, like everyone else living on Earth, are a product of environment and sociological condition. There are larger, human-made forces at work that outweigh opposing influence. Perhaps artists don’t need to propose solutions through their art, maybe they need to implement their art into these larger systems.

But Cohen does make some good points. There are issues with consumerism, flawed discourse, and identity, that, unsolved and unrecognized do serve as the root causes for malicious, amoral manipulation and greedy leaders who perpetuate violence and paranoia as a way to control the world. It is so deeply webbed, however, that it is not exactly an evil avant-garde who pulls these strings: this ancient, mutated system is designed to indoctrinate as many people as possible, especially its own. The most effective way to control people is to set up a game where a select, all powerful few make the rules to fit their own desires, and then make others believe that they can do the same thing—everybody works for somebody, and we all feel as though oneself is the only authority that matters—eventually, entire populations suppress one another. Niklas Luhmann’s “Globalization or World Society? How to Conceive of Modern Society” very well explains how large systems operate, especially in relation to human beings and their relationship with technology, and how identity gets absorbed by it (capitalism, imperialism, colonization, ie methods of domination thus control).

Preliminarily, Luhmann quickly states how globalized the world is; a tourist from Egypt may eat Americanized Italian food while watching BBC in a kimono made in Mexico; the cultures of the world’s nations are irreversibly intertwined; yet most nations still uphold borders and do not recognize themselves as anyone else other than their own race and or ethnicity. Many people identify with their local communities, and are slowly beginning to re-identify themselves, their origins, based on a more recent history. While this is indeed a step towards world-unity in my opinion, a greater issue is still prevalent: humans are not recognizing themselves as a part of nature on a hegemonic scale. Instead, we are multiplying the already-knotted yarn ball of confusion and exclusion. I similarly argue that here lies the root of all evil—there is a problem with the relationship between social systems of the world and its human environment.

More complexity added to a system already doomed by its exclusion of nature only complicates the solution, and that is exactly what functional differentiation does. Luhmann:

“The industrial revolution and the coming to power of the new Bourgeoisie had replaced the old 'natural' order of social estates with a new structure of social classes, depending not upon origin but on career and therefore being visible as contingent. Solidarity was conceived as a kind of moral obligation or, at least, as a binding collective consciousness. But the background assumption remained stratification, now in the form of a class society producing wealth by division of labour and, thereby, multiplying vertical and horizontal differences. The concept of society included an injunctive component 'that the very name of society implies that it shall not be a mere race, but that its object is to provide for the common good of all.”

Failing to recognize oneself as a part of nature has led to a kaleidoscope of systems within systems et cetera, all of which recognizing nature and foreign cultures as ‘other,’ thereby seeking to destroy them. The only way for this globalized world to become a world society is to start treating all life, especially fellow humans, as Self.

Because of our fetal evolutionary state and primal reasons of survival, it was impossible for pre-civilized humans to think about a globalized planet, and unnecessary to imagine that planet united, its inhabitants recognizing themselves as a part of nature, living harmoniously. There were too many dangers. The most realistic mode of survival was solely reproduction and the elimination or exclusion of anything other than the familiar—these cultures later led to the formation of empires, corruption technology and war. There was a time when imperialism, colonialism, and industrialism were essential to some human survival and prosperity, and capitalism proved to be the most successful system to propel those agendas, but modern society does not need that anymore. Some cultures, geographically cut off from the expanding said cultures (an ancient human species interbred with the Neanderthal), and therefore did not need to worry about being exterminated by rival conquering humans, recognized themselves as a part of nature—including unseen realms such as the cosmos, mind, and death. We now live in a time that combines both modes of living, and in a globalized world, it is in our favor to work together rather than destroy one another.

Intriguingly, these were cultures (although endangered and quickly becoming extinct) that sustained for far longer than any empire, existing still today, and it’s because of complete chance—they recognized themselves as a part of nature, and one another as kin. They all had a duty to fulfill—it is human nature to create stories to explain things, to create purpose and duty—and their societies smoothly functioned as a result—and because they listened to nature instead of recognizing it as other and thereby trampling over it, didn’t need to rely on technology or overly complex languages or governments in order to survive. Due to environment, humans have evolved into biologically and culturally unique relatives—but that is not to say we are different. Each of us has something important to contribute; no one person has all of the answers, and no one person or faction ever will. We need to celebrate our minute differences instead of chastising them.

In fact as an argumentative aside, I would bet that these nature-based societies without modern technology (and language) were more intelligent and capable than those with highly sophisticated tech: indigenous persons memorized tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of things, including the entire detailed history of their people, the identification and application of medicinal plants/material, and ritual/stories. Technology gave us sliced bread at the cost of forgetting how to live on Earth. Heretofore, these conditions were a matter of natural selection and chance, but now in a globalized world it becomes a choice. “‘Origins’ are now considered self-made origins, e.g. works of art, positive laws, scientific theories or political decisions,” Luhmann wrote.

Hannes Bergthallar directly responds to Luhmann’s globalization essay, through the lens of an ecologist: “The coevolution of biological species is thus a process in which ‘everything is connected to everything else,’ as Barry Commoner’s famous ‘first law of ecology' has it (Commoner 1971: 16)—but by the same token, it is also a process which is beyond control,” (Beyond Ecological Crisis: Niklas Luhmann's Theory of Social Systems). Fundamentally, ecology answers the ontological question. Its opponent is modern society, the matryoshka doll of systems that reject nature as human-self. “The whole cannot be a part of the whole at the same time. Any attempt of this kind would merely create a difference in the system: the difference of that part which represents the totality of the system within the system vis-a-vis all the other parts,” (Luhmann 1989: 121). Here, it is clear that for an autopoietic system to exist, the system must become one, or (as it is virtually impossible to revert to our ancient, simpler selves before empires and technology) tear a hole in every splintered system to create a bridge of commonality, thereby synthesizing the legion of anti-natured systems into one system with ecology at its core. One problem: that would create a difference in the system, which Voltaire would then say required a supplement. Right now, the United States’ supplement is capitalism, but that political system generates profit while generating populist turmoil done by the elite, the few who benefit the most from capitalism and bend it to their will. However, serving the machine only makes you part of the machine—capitalism is of inhuman qualities, designed to exploit malleable human qualities of desire and emotion.

Unfortunately, larger societal forces dictate the behavior of functionally differentiated systems, and would never choose the ecological ontology over its own survival. Today, this is because of competitive, profit orientated ideologies who use mass media as a means of control, manipulating humans into doing and or believing whatever necessary in order to sustain the machine called capitalism. Individuals perceive themselves to be autonomous, which technically they are, but by living with the machine they become consumers, creating a self-illusion of autonomy—they serve the machine. What needs to be done would not be a replacement of capitalism, because revolutions are only more of the same and never sustain, but an adaptation according to the new globalized world and the people in it.

Humans can be extremely resilient to change or opposition, but at the same time, can be easily manipulated by forces that extensively understand human malleability to profit from them. If the human species is to become an autopoietic world society that recognizes itself as brethren and a part of nature in order to sustain proper nourishment and mutual prosperity, we must acknowledge the commonality of our nature—the origin of our malleability. How do corporations control us? talk us into buying whatever they want us to buy and see whatever they want us to see? Why do we happily elect obviously unqualified leaders and believe their blatant lies? Is there a fundamental difference between the President of the United States, Facebook, and God? Why is it that even if you don’t contribute to any atrocities done by your nation or kin, you're involuntarily included in their tsunami of consequence? To build to my main argument of a new system that will solve all problems of greed hate and destruction, I here argue that while the cause is of a larger system out of the control of a single individual, the cause is also within an individual, specifically with human discourse.

As Joseph McElroy and many others have agreed upon, whatever affects the “inside” must also affect the “outside”. That is the quality of an open system. All organisms and all things that make up organisms, material and raw energy included, function within a system. They function seemingly independently, but are a part of larger systems and their survival depends on willingly working with them, thus obscuring exactly what “independence” or “individuality” truly means. Waterfalls and rivers are two different, independently run systems that coexist to be part of a larger system, and so on. If Waterfalls somehow became cognizant, assumed too much of their individuality, losing touch with their true nature as being part of a greater whole of nature, then felt the need to destroy (due to primal instincts of survival imprinted onto its genetic code over many cycles of evolution), leave the river, or tried to control the river to harness its power, the waterfall would be foolishly or innocently killing itself and the river. Obviously this comparison requires imagination and patience, but the analogy’s message is evident. Systems that host life are normally open systems, and exchange energy and matter with its surroundings as a way to sustain and mutually flourish. Humans, Earth, and the multitude of systems that make up each are open systems. Some are called closed systems, which do not exchange energy with its surroundings. The supplements we call communism, capitalism, monarchy et cetera are closed systems.

Failing to recognize ourselves as a part of nature and adopting said supplements in our societies makes hegemonic human society as a whole a closed system. Failing to recognize our nature as an innately functioning open system, and instead behaving as a closed system, is self-destructive and will result in the demise of not only our species as we know it, but also everything that we have afflicted. Our problems, and solutions, are within us all, and hence with nature—we simply allow oligarchical forces to make us believe we have no other choice but to live as a closed system that will inevitably implode. In the words of Viktor Frankl, “I wish to stress that the true meaning if life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this ‘The Self-Transcendence of Human Existence.’”

The Machine, and those who serve it, will do anything in order to survive—it cannot survive in an open system. So in order to survive, it must keep the populations it affects under a veil of misinformation, making people believe that there are no alternatives, indoctrinating them into unsuspecting loyal drones to further the Machine’s agenda, all the while believing they are acting by their own agency. Arch Loyalists of the Machine are those who command the >.01% of the world’s wealth— thus possessing virtually infinite resources and influence (specifically in a capitalistic system but in any closed system)— use the misperceptive condition of human discourse as a means and attempt to control thought in order to preserve itself. By “misperspective,” that is to say that technology, hence language, is flawed; more so, our relationship with language and instinctual conformity combined with evolving technology is leading us towards an age that begs to be ecologically and technologically advanced. In the epoch of the cyborg, as Donna Haraway termed to describe humans in the digital age—the Organic being forever affected and intertwined with technology—we are the very tools that which shape us, just as Marshall McLuhan rightly wrote.

Haraway believes the cyborgs are doomed because of their technological counterparts: the human qualities: hyper-masculinity, greed, and fear; sharing the machine’s dehumanizing goals. This would account for the increase of anomie and poverty class, but it’s too late to go back now. Trying to devolve into a simpler state is futile, arguably even with genocide, because humans are already affected by the present. Optimistically, Haraway does believe there is a chance for the human species to achieve stability and end this vicious cycle (of human imperialism colonialism racism domination greed extreme nationalism sexism grudge and hyper-individualization et cetera), because “illegitimate children [humans/cyborgs] are often disloyal to their Fatherly origins.” We’re still human, we can still make a choice to change ourselves. But in order to do that we need to do something very radical: we need to start believing in magic.

To make sense of what I mean by believing in magic, quickly I need to highlight the flaw of discourse (in turn explaining how people use the flaws to control thought) because they go hand in hand. In Joseph McElroy’s “Forms of Censorship; Censorship As Form,” he talks about how removing information (text, image, etc) can either emphasize the truth by eliminating false information or it can emphasize the lie by removing the truth. Creative censorship is a way to combat manipulative censorship of the machine, by omitting content (language, symbols) to accentuate the idea it tries to communicate, adding to show less, and omitting to provoke thought outside of the text that will resinate in the reader. Because in an age where images are indistinguishable from the material they represent and lies are presented as truths, we need to figure out ways to get humans to make their own choices.

However, the choice to be made in order to achieve sustainability and prosperity may not be made by all, and so it requires encouragement. If those of immense influence—government, celebrities, academics—all used their influence to promote leadership, patience, respect, and commonality with one another and nature, more people would live their lives accordingly. The government needs to be morally responsible and authoritative in order to get everyone on board without becoming corrupted, which is why it would need to be composed of the most ambitious and empathetic scientists, leaders, philosophers, and citizens, to check its power and moral standing. This would mean that education would need to be free, funded by halving military budgets, prison systems are turned into rehabilitation centers, healthcare is free, jobs and pay are determined by nothing more than factors of ability, and business needs to be profited in the name of improvement and maximum human benefit, not solely profit. Resources are used efficiently and decisions keep the far future in mind instead of just the short term.

Humans need to be guided towards peace, and that isn’t anything new. Here is what humans have in common aside from biology: we desire a common social goal, we organize things, and we dream. Like organs and waterfalls, we are organisms within organisms etc—organisms and organs are, by definition, organized. There may be differences within them or with other things, but those differences do not change the larger fact of the matter: that they are all of the same elements, and are all designed to work together. A form of organization that humans do is narrativity. We experience life, which is largely random and multi-sensory, all at once, every moment. In order to make sense of the world, we fit in the taken information into compartments that make sense for us. Through narrativity and story telling, we are able to remember things, because they leave an emotional imprint on us, us being emotional creatures. But by doing so, our view of the world narrows, because in reality, these tribulations/ideas that we face are way more complex. By rejecting that magic exists, that there is anything that we cannot define or make known, we fool ourselves. Narrative without an embracement of the abstract and unknown creates realism, which is more of a false depiction of reality than something wildly abstract. Narrativity enforced by capitalism produces separatist values in citizens, and this is exactly the problem with communities.

Alexis de Tocqueville says something very important and similar about communities in the context of capitalism: townships function politically. Equality makes people feel as though they are the only relevant authority, and act only on behalf of themselves and circles ie equality promotes conformity while also promoting entrepreneurship and social anomie. Communities are good, but just like David Foster Wallace said about television [smart phones, etc], the medium isn’t the problem within itself, it is the system that utilizes it that makes it harmful. Communities in capitalism form tightly, and do not find commonality with outside communities, even if that community is a part of a larger “same,” or nation. Community has mutated, as Miranda Joseph argues, into something less human, more machine. Like how Luhmann explained systems within in systems etc exist now, this revelation of community in the postmodern age shows how disconnected and fragile this nation and all who operate in the same manner have become.

By simply recognizing the truth, that race does not exist, that every God is the same God, that no matter how much we think we know there will always be something mysterious and unexplainable, we all have something valuable to offer, and humans are a part of nature, combined with subliminal positive enforcement, we will not only prosper, but will regain our moral authority and be in a position to influence the rest of the world into doing the same. And here, in accepting that the nature of the universe is mysterious and unexplainable, is where we need to believe in magic—accepting the mystery, the paradox, just like death, and celebrating it. Indigenous peoples did not need to know the chemical or biological makeup of their tools or environment: they understood their purpose and that was enough—they were satisfied.

We can know the functions of things, but what we cannot seem to know is the purpose of it all. But we don’t need to know. Accepting death—inevitability and the unknown— as a part of life helps one enjoy life way more. We need to consciously think less, which is paradoxical, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible: thinking less becomes thinking more. This pairs fittingly with an inversed paradox presented by McKenzie Wark from his Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages out of the Twentieth Century, given by Mustapha Khayati: “The fetishism of facts masks the essential category, the mass of details obscures the totality.” People now can only determine the truth through falsification, but that’s dangerously unreliable and misleading because as Guy Debord states, “In a world that really has been turned on its head, the true is a moment of falsehood.” We need to be weary of human language because, like in McElroy’s Plus, we learn language, then reinterpret information/thought to create new words and ideas/meaning based off of the originally introduced word—nothing is defined, life is abstract. When we put too much faith into believing things can be exactly known, we become vulnerable, fragile, naive.

The machine is not conscious—it operates and evolves much how any virus would: it latches onto a living host, depletes all of its resources, seeks to spread itself, and adapts to the host’s adaption. The machine does not need to explain or define anything—it already knows it’s nature, questioning or even being capable of questioning it would only impede its abilities. Humans should learn from this. Our true nature operates in the same way: we do not need to know why things work, we just need to know that they do—so as conscious creatures, we need to consciously remind ourselves of that fact by working within the unchangeable parameters of our current state of being, making change through the very systems that inhibit us by merely acknowledging these knowns and integrating them into our lives on every scale, thereby creating a new synthesized system.

At the heart of it all: all humans must acknowledge that they are emotional, malleable, imaginative people of Earth—organisms needing to work together towards growth and prosperity against all odds, achieve selfless love and camaraderie for one another, all in order to begin the system’s process. The vehicle to do so would be a mutated form of the preexisting capitalism, combined with an authoritative government, elected every X amount of years as governed by states and local governments etc, who would uphold the moral authority of the United States of America by using the same capitalistic methods of control and influence via discourse thus mass media, but for unitive, loving purposes. It starts with people of influence, and despite what you’ve been taught—you’re quiet impressionable, so that includes every single human being on this planet—, and elected officials of government: our officials need to be learned, open-minded and responsible for the wellbeing of and for the people, and will be extensively tested to be so as done by per the most learned experienced reasonable citizens of the United States of America. The ones to lead this new system should be (responsible) scientists, (tempered) humanitarians, philosophers (of peace and optimism, but that is not to exclude pessimism), and Champion Citizens, simply ordinary citizens of incredible reason, skill, and vision.

Ultimately, the world may always be in some sort of controversy or chaos, human derived or not, so the destruction of humanity certainly shouldn’t be a suicide—using all of this information, it is clear we need to repurpose technology to create a positive, universally designed/accessible, inclusive system of mass media with the active genuine participation of all authoritative powers, including federally, locally, and big business. Everyone with any kind of influence and or power needs to promote kindness and the wellbeing of others, no matter what. We need to open stigmatized discussions and talk freely about our emotions. In that situation, the only “other” or “enemy” would be paranoia and discrimination, and everything else will be our ally.

[davidjamesarmstrong]

Alone in a Crowded Room

I look around. It’s 9:12 AM on a Tuesday (thought it was Wednesday). I look around: People walking quickly, the same direction, different destinations. All strangers, yet individuals. Unique while simultaneously and completely the same. A train flys by the opposite direction without a soul noticing and my hair flies back, or it would if I weren’t sitting within that moving train, observing the outside from the inside. David Foster Wallace would call me voyeuristic gawker but I’m just observant and anyway thinking that much makes my head hurt. Writing this down is enough overthinking as it is.

I’m really just listening to Radiohead and processing what’s going on around me...like a dangerous human does...and like the good human that I am I keep it all in my head and pretend I’m not thinking these things. Just like you. A thought: I wonder if anyone’s truly happy right now in this moment. People smile, then turn their heads, and I see their smile immediately revert to a cold stagnant mode. The new default for humans. Or maybe it always has been, or could have been. If I ask, I think they’d look confused, maybe a little defensive, and answer, “yeah, I’m happy.” A lie. But the lie really wouldn’t be intended for me. I wish I was an ink pen.

[davidjamesarmstrong]

Don't Burn Me

Edward O. Wilson: “The mind will always create morality, religion, and mythology, and empower them with emotional force. The mental processes of religious belief represent programmed predispositions incorporated into the neural apparatus of the brain by thousands of years of genetic evolution. As such they are powerful, ineradicable and at the center of human social existence.”

I cannot believe this needs to be said. How many times has it been said? After humans existing for…how long? How many Empires need to fall due to selfishness egocentricity and greed before we finally grow up?

I suppose Steven Mithen would argue that we are still evolving…and I would argue that the post modern Human can now evolve by merely thinking it into existence. Having a child is no more than a reincarnation: a genetic copy, your DNA, your code that has everything written down describing who you are, defining who you are, is organically passed into a new human who will grow into a combined version of you and your mate. Our minds are powerful...you can will yourself to be sick, or to heal. We can decide to say sorry, to help the less fortunate, or we can neglect, destroy, and every decision shapes you: we rewrite ourselves. I write this because I feel I need to, because today a “professor” of mine was telling our class how he thinks literature is useless, he is ironically an English professor of course, and that the only thing that matters are STEM fields because they make the most money and they improve the world. He argued that literature does not benefit humans or the world, that they only distract, and should be burned. I spoke up, but I can elaborate here:

Books are ideas. Every moment of every minute of every experience contains hundreds of thoughts—axons that explode into a momentary existence through our numbskulls. Like having the most spectacular impressionable dream, but then forgetting it—the experience leaving your memory as unnoticed as a heartbeat. These seemingly mundane, ridiculous thoughts have the power to persuade whole populations to do what you think is right. They have the potential to become real. Anything. Literally, anything…When someone decides to write down their ideas, they become invaluable for every human there is to come until the end of our existence.

Books provide hope. Often thoughts make perfect sense to us, but when verbally expressed, they may be revealed to be more abstract and disorderly than we had originally believed. The act of writing is no more than constructively articulating jumbled brilliant nonsense, into sense. Whether it be a radical idea such as the belief that the color of your skin does not define your character or intelligence, or a practical idea as such the idea of eliminating entire populations because they don’t worship the same Invisible Being as you.

Books embody liberty. Before language, ideas were expressed physically, via gesture or dance. Before writing, ideas were expressed orally, via song or story. These actions were memorized and passed down. Our Ancient Hard Drive was our own genetic code. Some people thought it best to erase others’ ideas. They did so by erasing the humans themselves. Murder. Genocide. War—its all nothing more than an attack of ideas—a Silencing.

Since the existence of written language, texts have been burned, banned, and confiscated for this reason. But get rid of all the books, and what remains? The Mind cannot be burned, only the brain. And once an Idea has been proclaimed, it exists in ALL Minds. So to attempt to eradicate whole peoples in an effort to extinguish an idea is the attempt at destroying yourself. That’s probably why warlords and dictators often have noble intentions, but end up being “the-bad-guy.” Oops. How embarrassing.

Books are neutral. Like guns, books don’t kill people. And it doesn’t matter if the contents of the book is true or false: any idea is a good idea. Any question is a good question. It is up to the person to decide what to do with what is given. Not everyone knows what you know, and even the ones that do, don’t know it exactly how you know it. Having ideas out for public consumption inspires others to think of something new that has never been thought before—or maybe it was thought before, but it just wasn’t realized. And the more ideas are collected and accumulated, the cooler the ideas will evolve. Sometimes the Thinking and Values around you are not what you need. What we need to progress is to try something new—something different. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. What we biologically require for happiness and innovation is diversity: A Fresh Perspective. Well, here you go—You May Be Realizing The Dream Of Someone Who Lived Five Thousand Years Ago. It Just Hasn’t Been Realized Yet.

Books are needed because ideas are needed. Life is a mystical inchoate that did not begin with us nor does it end. Too much do we proclaim we claim to understand the complex chaos that surrounds us.

Too little do we entertain the alternative: that perhaps, magic exists.

14 February 2018

[davidjamesarmstrong]

We Gave Up Our Liberty With A Smile. Big Brother Grew Up

This cell phone does not control me, though I may let it. The television does not control me, though I’m drawn like a fly to a bug lamp. My cock does not control me, though I feel I want it to. The economy does not control me, yet here I am paying the wages of indentured slaves in faraway lands. Paranoia does not control me, though I do feel fear. The environment does not control me, but really it does. The Government does not control me, Money controls it. My Mother Father Sister Neighbor Lover Enemy do not control me. Shit, I can barely control me.

Strip away everything that you think you are and you’ll find a happy child. Let the mystery of the world control you and enjoy the ride.

8 February 2018

[davidjamesarmstrong]

[davidjamesarmstrong]

[davidjamesarmstrong]

[davidjamesarmstrong]

Temple of Glass and Stone

I’m freezing my ass off waiting for the fuckin’ train. I’m looking dead ahead, at nothing really, listening to music I know is good but can’t enjoy because my mind is somewhere else. By chance or intuition I turn my head and see it snake around the bend to my far right. Bright soulless white lights draw near, piercing thin fog which I didn’t notice was in the air until it was contrasted with the electric train. Aren’t humans electric, too?

I notice an old friend from high school standing next to me, the train looming closer. I take out my headphones and begin to see how he’s been doing, what he’s doing. I’m actually interested but in hindsight, probably only because he was right there, a foot away. So, was I? The train pulls up and we enter together, chatting. Apparently he’s going to court because some guy who broke into his house is suing him for being bit by his dog. This happened six years ago. I’m running out of things to say and I feel like I’m bothering him. So I wish him the best and offer words of objective encouragement—he’s a very talented trumpeter. Thank God his stop comes up and he leaves.

As doors slide closed I fumble to untangle my headphones. People are all over, sitting, standing, reading, tweeting, all with entire lives past present and future. But here, physically together, we are drones. All is silent but a Man’s voice enunciating what the train will do next. Still fumbling, I mouth and mimic the Voice. But then I hear it now. I ignored it at first I realize now but it won’t stop, so I give my attention. Some animalistic part of me says ‘potential danger. Run,’ and the psychopath in me and us all says ‘I wonder’. No one knows I’m listening but that’s what everyone thinks. A man wails in pain. He’s slumped out in the secluded corner of the train car, his upper back sitting where his ass should be. His mind, not where it should. One boot is off, oversized corduroy pants ripped, hair wild, slightly balding, but young enough for it to be appropriate. Probably 30s.

10 minutes go by before I break down and take my headphones out. I can’t ignore this. But I also can’t do shit. So I stare and I reflect. People get off at the next stop, creating room for the gentleman next to me to relocate. I thank him and he says, wild eyed and overly kind “no, thank you. Thaank you! I jus moved over, you dealed wit me.” I smile largely because of his confidence in speaking and because I know he’s not wrong. Another man enters, traversing through the cars while the train madly chucked like mindless chomping jaws. When the train bobble, so did we. But not me or the man sitting near me. I know to resist it by leaning to the other direction. But the man does nothing but sit, bundled up under a million jackets that all look the same.

A women with a face that screams “You’re fucked up and I’m normal” gives him a bottle of water. Somehow I don’t see the gesture as charitable… A stern looking old woman in an expensive jacket walks away in disgust, and a cute lady of Asian decent attempts to talk to him to see what’s wrong. To see if perhaps something they say to him would alleviate his pain. How pathetically naive.

“Mommy…mommy…I want..my..mommy,” over and over he moans in a cry that is not his own. But no tears on his dirty scruffy face.

The man next to me whom I determined was homeless or at least so he seemed, although far more conscious and worldly aware than I knew, mumbles from underneath his multilayered shelter: “Dumbass…pussy. He done it to himself…dumbass fucker. Nobody’s listening to you…try doing time in the penitentiary..they’d run money through ya. Fuck ‘em.”

The crying man rocks in anguish, sanely drinks the water he was given, stands up and reaches for his hair, pulling at it and his face as if covered in napalm. “Mommy mommy,” he wheezes, coughing hysterically now. Over and over and over…

A man looks to me and I instinctually say, “Drugs. Probably withdrawal,” to which the man responds, “He’s crazy. A product of society. Nothin we can do,” to which I silently concur. But I realize. I honestly don’t know.

He gets off the same stop as I. Harlem. Somehow he knows… his ‘pain’ suddenly gone. He frantically rushes up the wrong side of the escalator—as if without a care in the world and every, but at the same time hyper-aware of his state and every consciousness in every brain shuffling in the urinal of a station. Vomit and piss decorates the blue platform, society as delusional as he—and almost looks like he’s having fun. Almost. I catch a glimpse of this while I walk to the further end to take the stairs. Less people and I like to get my steps in. He runs outside into the frigid painful cold with his jacket half on which I didn’t know he had and runs into the street, the same direction as I.

He runs to the island in the middle of the road and begins folding a black T-shirt which again, didn’t know he had. Have we done this to him ? Or he himself ? Did he even have a choice ? But he wore a smile.

6 February 2018

[davidjamesarmstrong]

Challenge yourself to watch this with devout focus. Every word is important. It may even save lives, not from death, but from unconsciousness.

[davidjamesarmstrong]

A Rich Baby Escapes to Cape Cod

It was a rather nippy Floridian summer night. Sherie flew in from her sanctified Tribeca condo to meet the elderly man her daughter Jessica called Husband-to-be. The three of them sat in proportioned silence—a word that could not be used to describe the couple’s difference in age. The chances of harmony between him and Sherie were unpropitious. They were too alike, too similar in age, which made the situation childishly ironic. Sherie was overly critical of Felix, while he overly defensive.

It wasn’t exactly their age, however, that was the root of the problem between them two, but their cemented views of the world—of themselves. But Sherie’s shrewdness was Right, her attitude reasonable. His responses, evasive, entitled. She’d ask why she wasn’t informed of the engagement and he’d condescendingly remind her of her daughters age. Then she’d remind him of his. He stood up distraught as the fried calamari was on its way over to join them. “I’m going home,” he said, turning his turtlenecked body away towards the entrance.

The two women were left with good company, however. A waiter in white arrives punctually, the savory golden-crisped hors d’oeuvre reverently set down on the scarlet tablecloth. Jessica digs in with eyes fluttered shut and Sherie observes, wearing a disappointing frown. But her eyes want to caress her. Mother has an appetite, but doesn’t joins in. She drinks her wine instead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sherie pulls up to Felix’s, whom of which Jessica has been living with unbeknownst to ones that matter most. She loyally escorts her in, to find the place dark and abandoned. A note on the cold Brazilian Blue countertop: Took jet to Cape Cod, Felix.

“‘Home’.”

5 February 2018

[davidjamesarmstrong]

A Nightly Walk Home

The night’s silence accentuated creaks of signs, street stop and bus alike. “One of These Nights” offered earthly orientation, it’s tune reveling phlegmatic harmonies. Walking in the center of the lopsided cement pathway homeward with a rhythmic drive, he drags a camel blue till damn near the filter. With one last regretful breath of poison gas, he throws the butt down the side of the black street with gyroscopic ease.

He moves like how Cool Hand Luke would if he had long wavy hair and an acid wash jean jacket with sheep fur lining that hugged oh so gently. The frigid wind blows the smoking filter halfway across the street leaving a residual trail of ember specs who shimmied groovily into oblivion.

His arm remains extended like a weightless stone, still fixed in omniscient direction. Red fingers lazily watched it roll into extinguish while his head cooly resumed forward. His arm holstered, the song played on. Eyes so tired. Woozy with woe. On and on and on. This moment was one.

5 February 2018

[davidjamesarmstrong]

itsOhhhkay

[davidjamesarmstrong]

masterpiece of the month. Like liquid day poured down my ears. I’m inspired just thinking about it