Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1001010736110.416@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Radical Disconnectivity
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 07:36:23 -0500 (EST)
Radical Disconnectivity I imagine a _radical disconnectivity_ characterizing the fundamental tenor of the cosmos; if one grants event horizons their proper epistemological status, this is where one ends up, literally. (Bell's theorem, EPR, has their limits.) In which case, A and B have _no_ relation whatsoever, no communicative (or other) potential whatsoever. A simple symmetric operation, within which a chain might exist - for example, if A@B symbolizes this, then one might possibly have A@B but A-@C & C-@B: but this is mythology. Precisely because this is mythology, the disconnection is _radical_ and irreducible. We have become increasingly deluded by models based on Indra's Net, or internets: skein- or membrane-models where every node conceivably reflects every other, and where every node is conceivably accessible from every other. Further, this models implies an organicity, an influence-machine or holism, a unification of effect, if not affect - something of comfort. As thought experiment, one can imagine a radical disassociation with oneself, such that one is relegated to regions far beyond the panoptical, or optical for that _matter._ Here one is safe with one's regrets and errors; here, catatonia is the natural order of things. I say that the catatonic is the _natural_ order of things; I say that stillness and isolation are the basic elements of life - not Gaia and integration, but something unnamed characterized by _differentiation._ This is the natural state of humankind, the natural state of organism, which masquerades as network, not defect. Left to its own devices, human- ity continues with the radical disconnection of its home planet, a taking- apart beginning with children and watches, ending with slaughter and corroded memory. (This if the world is 'all that is the case,' its latch is broken, and what was within has been always already desecrated and stolen.) (I will leave you with this, as if I were to leave myself.) I will leave you with this, as if I were to leave myself.