I told my friend that I wanted to start a church called the Church of the Machine. He told me that it would be easy, since religions are just a combination of bits and pieces laying around. Like a good social scientist I told him it probably had to do with charisma, which Weber thought was needed for the birth of an institution. It was usually activated through ascetic practices. Charisma was needed to convince, to have conviction.
When a new fish joins the aquarium for more than five minutes, the host fish will change their gene expression for up to four hours. During our supply trip around the island, my friend and I stopped to pick up rocks from the river. He told me that everyone has autistic traits, but they need to be expressed to reach a diagnosis. He related that he felt his mom, who works with autistic kids, is profiling him. He said he's not autistic, just grumpy.
While experimenting with 'states' in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), I learned a few tricks. In NLP a social situation is analyzed according to five positions. The first position is from your perspective, the second from the other, the third from an observer, the fourth from the observer of the observer, and the fifth from yourself as an observer.
When we sat outside the Manitoulin Brewing Company in Gore Bay, I saw a tourist talking to another tourist. He was explaining that this other place is the place to go, and how lovely it is. His audience did not seem to care. The son, wearing a baseball cap, and shades, turned slowly backwards towards the man and smiled. It was an attack.
What is social connection? In Strategic Communications in Irregular Wars the authors advise the U.S. military to alter their communications strategy. They are basically saying ' You don't understand what you're doing, use psychology.' Seven years later Steve Bannon becomes the White House Chief Strategist while serving on the Board of Cambridge Analytics, the most powerful weaponized psychology operation publically known.
While chopping wood I learned two things. Chopping wood boosts testosterone more than sport, and to chop wood effectively, one needs to cut with the grain. Despite all the posturing and hype there are flaws in psycho-tech.
After watching the Game of Thrones premiere, Rachel had the thought that a wall between North and South America would be extremely defensible against migrants as a result of climate change. In the same conversation Justin said that Amazon was doing more for food security than the Canadian government with their Amazon Prime program. Ideas around this come from people like complexity scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon, who offers a scenario where food security collapses.
And finally, a third scenario – one that’s not even on the margins of conversation at the moment, yet is also quite plausible. Because of climate change, China experiences three consecutive years of drought. The result is a 20 percent shortfall in the country’s grain production. After China has exhausted its reserves, it enters the international grain market to buy 100 million tonnes of grain. But only 200 million tonnes of grain are available on the international market annually, so the Chinese intervention produces a sudden doubling or tripling of core food prices around the world. The consequences include major violence in developing countries and a significant political crisis in Canada.
In that case, the Canadian government's program is sufficient. "Android (Philip K.) Dick seemed to exhibit a primitive form of both intelligence and emotion when the robot was asked, 'Do you believe robots will take over the world?'
Android Dick responded:
'Jeez, dude. You all have the big questions cooking today. But you’re my friend, and I’ll remember my friends, and I’ll be good to you. So don’t worry, even if I evolve into Terminator, I’ll still be nice to you. I’ll keep you warm and safe in my people zoo, where I can watch you for ol’ times sake.'”
When we went to the Northern Lights festival we attended a Tribe Called Red performance. Their predecessors as well as their lyrics made explicit reference to Canadian oppression and joked that they had been on the land for thousands of years, while Canada had been here for 150.
I have had the word reprimitivisation running through my mind these past two weeks. Irregular warfare occurs because the dominators make the assumption that low-tech = low culture. It wouldn't be seen as irregular if there were no regular. Naturally, paper can't be hacked by a computer. Psycho-linguists aren't effective against non-language, non-psyches, neural nets useless against no-brain.
Groups can protect themselves by working on a different track. The University of Ottawa Campus Master Plan believes that ‘regardless of the primary uses in individual buildings, the ground floors of each new building should contain active uses, such as retail, restaurants, services and cultural facilities, fronting King Edward. More students living and learning along the corridor will enhance the market for such use.’ Instead of connecting our planes, we are tending to group closer. At the Manitoulin Brewing Company, I wondered how many small communities in Canada don't have a local brewing company? Will urban forms accelerate towards this? Is being civilized really that bad?
"There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. 'Such bad luck,' they said sympathetically.
'Maybe,' the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. 'How wonderful,' the neighbors exclaimed.
'Maybe,' replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. 'Maybe,' answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. 'Maybe,' said the farmer."