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"Catatonics babbling and drooling in a mental institution..."

  
  

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illmatic
13:35 / 09.08.04
With the sad realisation that I’m doing exactly what he despises, I’d like to draw people’s attention to this new Hakim Bey interview, especially his comments about the net. I’ve always really liked Bey as a thinker – I admire his clarity and his consistency, as well as the sense of possibility and playfulness he brings into his writing. Funnily enough for someone who’s much lauded as a prophet of online life (I’m always running across the idea of website as TAZ – temporary autonomous zone – I’ve heard applied to this place amongst others, which makes me puke my ring) he’s taken a very anti-web, Luddite stance – doesn’t own a computer, doesn’t want one.

His critique seems to me to have two key points – the first is that the structure of the internet allows us to engage in a lot of symbolic communication but this cuts against, and provides a poor substitute for, any tangible material benefits, and doesn’t open up any real alternative possibilities for the way we live:

I think that a radical life is not something that depends on Internet connections or websites or demos or even on politics, like having Green mayors. This may sound dull to people who think that having a really hot website is a revolutionary act. Or that getting a million people to come out and wave symbolic signs at a symbolic march is a political act. If it doesn’t involve alternative economic institution building, it’s not. As an anarchist, I’ve had this critique for years, and experience has only deepened it …..The Internet revealed itself as the perfect mirror image of global capital. It has no borders? Neither does global capital. Governments can’t control it? Neither can they control global capital. Nor do they want to....

The idea was that alternative media would allow us the space in which to organize other things. Even in the ’80s I said I’m waiting for my turkey and my turnips. I want some material benefits from the Internet. I want to see somebody set up a barter network where I could trade poetry for turnips. Or not even poetry—lawn cutting, whatever. I want to see the Internet used to spread the Ithaca dollar system around America so that every community could start using alternative labor dollars. It is not happening. And so I wonder, why isn’t it happening? And finally the Luddite philosophy becomes clear. We create the machines and therefore we think we control them, but then the machines create us, so we can create new machines, which then can create us. It’s a feedback situation between humanity and technology.

So what I’d like to ask firstly, is have people encountered any evidence that the internet allows us to build the kind of new structures that Bey is talking about? Have people encountered situations where online encounters have delivered the tangible material benefits to their lives, from an alternative framework? Do people feel this is a possibility or even something that we should aspire towards? Does our use of technology lead us simply to a situation where machines proliferate or will it ever be redirected towards material, our lived conditons? Thoughts or reactions? A few big questions there...

Related and interwoven with this – Bey’s other primary objection to the net – and indeed to mediation in general - seems to stem to a related ellipse of the body and the physical world. In his writing and prose, he seems to strive to get across a real sense of the joy of life and the body, the play of the senses, scents and sounds. He has written very forcefully elsewhere about immediacy – the urgency and power of face to face contact, and prioritises these enfleshed relations over the demands of the spectacle or capital, an inversion of the whole spectacular relationship - where what you perceive on a screen is always more important than your own life.

You’re slumped in front of a screen, in the same physical situation as a TV watcher, you’ve just added a typewriter. And you’re "interactive." What does that mean? It does not mean community. It’s catatonic schizophrenia. So blah blah blah, communicate communicate, data data data. It doesn’t mean anything more than catatonics babbling and drooling in a mental institution.

I find it funny that this side of his writing it not picked up on, as it’s something I’m in almost complete agreement with. I guess this side of his writing gets ignored as this would challenge our attachment to technologies and some of the fictions we weave around them...

So secondly, I’d like to ask if people do see a damaging side to our net/media addictions in these terms? Are they a simply gnostic substitute for lived experience? If not, why not?
 
 
Ganesh
13:47 / 09.08.04
Well, firstoff, I'd have to point out that individuals with catatonic schizophrenia tend not to babble. Drool occasionally, I'll give him, but not babble.
 
 
*
14:09 / 09.08.04
Yeah, that's what I was about to say. They also don't type very fast.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
14:41 / 09.08.04
Having got the obvious objections to the language out of the way (and I think everyone would agree with them)...

I need a little more time to think about some of this. I'm not sure hwo completely I agree with his Luddism - I think technology does have positive aspects, e.g. in medical applications, and I certainly wouldn't advocate a Leaptopian scenario. I'm not sure where I stand on the internet. I think that his characterisation of its effects would be more true and more compelling if it was true that people who use the internet for purposes of communication NEVER crossed that over into off-line life. But it is the case, as many people here can testify, that the internet can make it easier to meet people off-line, and can introduce people to 'real-life' social groups, and so on. And I don't think there's a definite cut-off point, either, between on-line and off-line...

Having said that, I do think the internet can be compulsive, and in my personal experience it is very easy to sit in front of the computer all day, clicking and clicking, and end up with nothing but a headache and a hollow feeling. That can't be seen as a positive in any wya. Perhaps what the internet does is to reinforce some tendencies in some people, i.e. the tendency to shy away from going out and trying to meet new people, because it is a hard thing to do. So, just as it can be a facilitator for people who want to meet people, it can be a facilitator for people who don't really want to meet people or feel they are unable to do so. Perhaps.
 
 
charrellz
15:26 / 09.08.04
I think his ideas about community are not too far-fetched. We have places like ebay - not exactly what he was talking about, but going in the right direction.
I wonder if money earned from online gaming would count, i.e. I have a friend who used to sell houses on Ultima Online through ebay for pretty good money. Now another friend pays his half of the rent selling land and running a club in Second Life.

As far as the schizophrenia part (first off, the type he describes is referred to as disorganized or hebephrenic schizoprenia - in case anyone wondered) I'm partly inclined to agree with them. I suppose I could say I'm part of a community here, but I don't really feel any strong attachment to anyone. Sure there are some people I think are funny or rude or smart or whatever, but I don't feel like we're all one big happy family. I connect with the people here as much as I do with characters in a movie (a good movie). Then again, there aren't really any groups I'm part of where the members are truly close. Perhaps today's society just isn't big on that sort of thing (maybe because it is easier to get a substitute for it online?) or maybe I'm talking out of my ass.
 
 
Cat Chant
16:59 / 09.08.04
Well, as a Utopian slash writer, I'd point out that the internet has greatly facilitated the creation and distribution of erotica/porn by and for women outwith the dominant economic institutions, which isn't exactly building an alternative economic institution, but does provide a framework for the informal barter of skills (editing/beta-reading), goods (finished stories, artwork, occasional artefacts) and services (porn! Porn is a service to all!). It's not challenging the World Bank, but I'd submit that porn is every bit as material a good thing as Bey's turkey and turnips.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
22:38 / 09.08.04
It's a bit hard to picture a situation whereby trading turnips for poetry over the internet would ever really catch on - if anyone felt there was much of an audience for that kind of service they'd be providing it already, I'd have thought.

I'm also slightly concerned as to what Bey means when he talks about " symbolic " demonstrations. While I can see his point, his alternative, I'm guessing, would be something on the lines of a full-scale riot, which as Western society stands at the moment simply doesn't seem likely to result in much more than tabloid outrage, a number of jail sentences and that's about it. Historically speaking, peaceful mass demonstrations, symbolic or otherwise, ( and I'm not all that clear on the difference to be honest, ) have simply on balance been more successful, because they're that much harder to dismiss. I'd argue for example that the Stop The War movement, while having obviously not achieved it's goal in the short term, will mean Mr Tony thinks very hard the next time he's tempted to try and throw his weight around, which is something at least.
 
 
Loomis
08:03 / 10.08.04
He’s judging the internet by the wrong criteria imo:

I want some material benefits from the Internet. I want to see somebody set up a barter network where I could trade poetry for turnips.

That’s not what the internet is for. The net is for the communication of ideas; it is about information. How on earth would you trade poetry for turnips over the internet? How are you going to transport your turnips across the globe to your poet? And more importantly, how are you going to do it while keeping outside of the economy which you are supposedly trying to escape? That’s the problem with the ebay analogy. To sell something on ebay you have to pay ebay, and you also need to pay the post office to send your item (I guess you could barter with a local truck driver of something, but still). These payments surely would defeat the purpose of barter.

Barter works most effectively within small distances, ideally within a single community or set of communities, whereas the achievement of the internet is that it allows communication over distances. To expect these two things to be compatible is unrealistic. However, what the internet achieves spectacularly well (far in advance of what can be achieved in person) is to spread information. You can’t barter very well on it but you can, 1) learn about barter, how it’s done, who’s doing it, the history of alternative economies, etc. and 2) find people with whom you can barter, then go off and do the bartering in real life.

Without the internet, millions of people would not have access to the ideas of alternative economies or barter or any of these notions, and that is why the net is important.

As for the second point, well obviously online communication is not the same as face-to-face, and I doubt anyone is suggesting that it is. What it is, though, is a new way of looking at and learning about ourselves, separating notions of communication from presence, allowing us to refract our personality into separate parts, if we wish, and to play with notions of identity. There have been critics of the use of writing, plays, printing presses, televisions and all manner of ways in which humanity has toyed with mediation and getting away from our everyday selves, but would the advantage of doing away with all these things outweigh the disadvantage of learning less about ourselves? I think it’s a fundamental human desire to play with and distort current ideas in order to extend our knowledge of what makes us tick, and the internet is one way in which we do this.

Bey is being simplistic if he thinks that anyone is proposing the net as a substitute for physicality. He seems to think the we’ve all been duped and we’re somehow believing that the internet is the be-all and end-all of human existence and that it can accomplish material and physical things, which he then condemns it for failing to achieve. If he viewed it simply as a device for communication, then he might see the value in it and be able to use it more effectively to help him achieve his material goals. Sure, it can be an addiction and can damage your ability to function in real life, but that danger exists for anyone who spends too much time doing the same thing, whether it’s reading, writing, climbing mountains or growing turnips.
 
 
LykeX
08:09 / 10.08.04
...a full-scale riot, which as Western society stands at the moment simply doesn't seem likely to result in much more than tabloid outrage, a number of jail sentences and that's about it.
That depends on how many people are rioting.

I'd argue for example that the Stop The War movement, while having obviously not achieved it's goal in the short term, will mean Mr Tony thinks very hard the next time he's tempted to try and throw his weight around, which is something at least.
I'd argue the opposite. All it has done is prove that even if a hhuge number of people think that something is a bad idea, a politician can still force it through and weasel his way out of being accountable for it. Tony Blair is still the PM, right? And even if he wasn't, some other guy would take over who would be the same or worse.
Excuse my pessimism.
Regarding Bey, I'll hold any comments 'till I've actually read the interview.
 
 
Loomis
08:10 / 10.08.04
Just wanted to add that I disagree with this statement:

The idea was that alternative media would allow us the space in which to organize other things.

Who says the internet is an alternative medium? The good guys and the bad guys are both using it, so I don't see how it's going to be used by anarchists to overthrow the global corporations or anything of the sort. It's simply a very efficient communication device for anyone to use as they will. Bey seems to want to criticize the net for not providing an alternative to governments, banks and Wallmart, but that's not a valid criticism imo.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:39 / 10.08.04
Grrrrr. Have never read anything by/about him before and don't particularly want to now, got halfway through and got this pearl of wisdom:

Bleyer: But what about the growing protest movement of the past five years, which really does seem significant?

Wilson: You mean people who are building puppets and going around the world being radical tourists?

Bleyer: The perhaps one million people coming to the streets of New York to protest the RNC in August, for example.

Wilson: Well, make it two million. It can be like the biggest anti-war marches ever held, they were forgotten five minutes later. All they’re doing is assuaging their conscience a little. At best, it’s symbolic discourse and it never goes beyond that. Especially in North America. It’s not going to save the world to dump Bush and these people are deluded.

Tosspot. That's just zen for 'can't be bothered'.

I don't see anything in this that is any more than someone whinging because it's not just the cool exciting kids who use the Internet, but the big smelly uncool corporations too.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:42 / 10.08.04
And how can someone that isn't on the internet, has never been on the internet and never wants to be on the internet give any credible opinion on the quality of debate on the internet? He might as well say the Internet is a bad thing because it allows giant scaley monsters to come into your room at night and eat all your home-knit yoghurt.
 
 
illmatic
10:25 / 10.08.04
Thanks all for your comments.

Loomis:

Who says the internet is an alternative medium?

To be fair to Bey, one thing to remember is that he is by and large reacting to some of the more utopian claims that were being made for the internet a decade or more ago – his statements were originally basically a critique of others so perhaps they lack a bit of consistency – it isn’t a manifesto, it’s a reaction. I see his basic thrust of his argument as bringing things back to physicality when a lot of people were making bold claims re. the internet and disappearing off up their cyberbums. I agree with your points ie the impracticality of what he may (or may not) be proposing but I am intrigued by the his claim that something is only a revolutionary act if it’s engaged with setting up alternative economic institutions – I find this idea fascinating, whether or not the internet facilitates it, though I’ve got to do a bit more thinking to flesh out for myself what this might mean. Any comments that shed light on this more than welcome. I’ll ry and come back to it later. I think this is the point that most really interests me in the whole interview.

I find myself agreeing with his point re. technological determinism – basically that that machine use shapes us and predisposes us to more machine use, rather than ever creating a situation where we switch ‘em off.

I disagree with you strongly on the whole fictionsuits thing (in fact, I find the conceit of referring to internet logon names as fictionsuits because St Morrison said so a bit wanky to be honest). I can only think of one or two posters that I’m aware of who’ve even attempted to experiment with this idea, rather than throw it around as a buzzword. Can’t say what the results were. I think playing with identity lacks nine tenths of it’s potential if it’s not acted out in the real world. I realise I'm doing you a bit of a dis-service but I wanted to moan about things that get on my wick with Barbelith.

More later! My brain is churning now which is a good result of the internet....
 
 
Cat Chant
10:49 / 10.08.04
playing with identity lacks nine tenths of its potential if it’s not acted out in the real world.

The thing is that you can't play with a text-only identity in 'the real world', which is not text-only. Or at least, since you could be a pen-pal or a member of an APA* (if you think that snail mail and hard copies are 'real world' in a way that the internet isn't, which might be a hard position to defend, come to think of it), the Internet actually does make you relate to people in different ways. I met my girlfriend and a number of RL friends on the Internet, and the arc of our relationships has been profoundly affected by having related in text-only forms for the first year/s of knowing each other. It may not be revolutionary, it certainly isn't setting up alternative forms of economic institution (and, like you, I find that formulation fascinating and really challenging), but it's just not true to say that net relationships and identity are the same as relationships/identity in other contexts and spaces.

*Amateur Press Association. Fan tradition from the sixties/seventies. Basically a very slow version of a bulletin board/Livejournal community, all done with typewriters and snail mail.
 
 
Loomis
11:15 / 10.08.04
I can only think of one or two posters that I’m aware of who’ve even attempted to experiment with this idea

I wasn't thinking of within Barbelith, but rather more in terms of Barbelith being one facet. The more you hang out in a certain like-minded environment, the more your thoughts are hardened into that character, whether it's politically-oriented like Barbelith or on a religious forum or one centered around gaming, vegetarianism or whatever. Just as in real life, the personality you present in these situations tends to be unconsciously (and consciously) tailored to the expectations you have of your interlocutors. The main difference in conducting these interactions over the net is that it's easier to keep that personality distinct because you have more control over how you present yourself than you do in real life. People's expectations of you are different because they only have a handful of possibly quite specifically themed utterances from which to judge you.

So, not quite identity experiments in a purposeful way but simply a specifically limited form of interaction that encourages new sets of behaviours which teach us about ourselves and enable us to separate particular strands of how we present our identites and how they are received.
 
 
illmatic
13:35 / 10.08.04
Just found this online at Hermetic.com's Bey archive:

For a start, it would help if we could speak about nets rather than The Net. Only the most extropian true believers in the Net still dream of it as the final solution. More realistic thinkers have rejected cyber-soteriology, but accept the Net as a viable tool (or weapon). They would agree that other nets must be set up and maintained simultaneously with "the" Net---otherwise it becomes just another medium of alienation, more engrossing than TV, maybe, but thereby even more total in entrancement.

The other nets of course include---first and foremost---patterns of conviviality and of communicativeness.

I'll try and respond later/tomorrow to your points, Deva/Loomis.
 
 
Nobody's girl
14:23 / 10.08.04
Oh dear. I have very much enjoyed Bey's work, but I gotta say I did find it arrogant of him to discard the utility of the internet without ever experiencing it. I think few people would disagree that interactions on the net are no match for Real Life experience. To be honest (and it really does cause me pain me to say this) Bey sounded like yet another burnt out, disgruntled hippy.

Here's what I've "got" from the internet:

1 Soul Mate

1 peer support group which helped me through an extremely difficult time in my life (not Barbelith)

200 films

1,300 songs

I'm sure there's much more besides but these are the most prominent in my memory.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
15:35 / 10.08.04
It's interesting that he isn't aware enough of the Internet to address piracy on the net, though I suppose he might just lump that in as supporting capitalism.
 
 
unheimlich manoeuvre
22:46 / 10.08.04
[threadrot]
i'm rather underwhelmed by hakim bey (aka peter l. wilson). he claimed he was anti-copyright, so trying to sue the luther blissett(s) for their *fake* bey book was a bit beyond the pale. he's also done nothing to counter the emergence of the cult of personality that he so abhored.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:58 / 11.08.04
Right, dig, dig, dig my earth children.

If it doesn’t involve alternative economic institution building, it’s not [a revolutionary act]. As an anarchist, I’ve had this critique for years, and experience has only deepened it

This is interesting, a self-labelled anarchist who desires alternative economic institutions. It seems to me that we have a critique not only of internet use but of anarchy on the 'net here. Hakim Bey is talking about building something entirely different, I think that if we ignore that point and focus on the specifics of his words than we're missing the purpose of this article to an extent. It's clear that he desires an actual system that works and his intentions are in that case very good. Unfortunately he fails to give any explanation of how he thinks this could come about.

The idea was that alternative media would allow us the space in which to organize other things. Even in the ’80s I said I’m waiting for my turkey and my turnips. I want some material benefits from the Internet. I want to see somebody set up a barter network where I could trade poetry for turnips

I think that the idea of a trade system set up through alternative media is... well, capitalism at work. It's also significant that Bey, who owns no computer, feels that he can criticise a system that he's not involved in. What does he think Warez is? The answer: he doesn't know. Essentially Warez folks might trade technology but if he's looking for the system than he's got something that could trade turnips and poems. But no one wants them and instead of wondering why no one wants to trade them he criticises the Internet. Perhaps the truth is that people do not want an unregulated trading system for things that actually matter. Films and CD drives aren't that important and everyone knows it so they trade back and forth and risk it but poems and turnips are important. That's why some of us want the state to exist though perhaps in a different way.

Hakim Bey wants to do things slowly and invest a lot in to every experience, which is nice if you're having good experiences.

He wants sacrifice but I'm sorry, my idea of a better world doesn't include mucking out the sty and the stables and moreover I rather suspect that I despise turnips. I won't sacrifice urban existence and I believe in the state as a body that should control us with laws. It should simply work differently and with some happy underlying realisation that we created money. In fact I think the notion of money is ridiculous but this thread isn't about the simply absurd notions that underly our society. Put simply: information is not the criminal here and the Internet is not a demon. He's wrong because he is not talking about thinking, he's ignoring what he should be saying- that societally we have a problem with people individually. He says: It would have to involve a kind of fanaticism that would involve real sacrifice and the artists are unfortunately not on the right side of the battle but he genuinely believes that the way to go about this revolution is to give up looking at a computer screen? Bullshit.

On a slightly less strangled note- it's just not true to say that net relationships and identity are the same as relationships/identity in other contexts and spaces

Yes but do they mean more and would you have got as much out of some of those relationships if you hadn't met face to face? Would they have been the same if your relationships had blossomed through a letter-writing process? Slower, less instantaneous but textual.
 
 
Cat Chant
09:03 / 11.08.04
Yes but do they mean more and would you have got as much out of some of those relationships if you hadn't met face to face?

I don't understand what you mean. You and I have only met face to face once, quite briefly, and we probably have a very different idea of each other than we would if we knew each other in real life. 'Anna de Logardiere' probably means "more" to me than the guy in the office next door to me on campus, who I only know in real life and have never exchanged emails with, but less than some of my friends both e- and RL. Also, there are people here who drive me up the wall on the board and are lovely IRL; there are people I know who I have absolutely parallel relationships with - more intimate, deeper conversations on email, rather stilted, peculiar, and more miscommunicative face-to-face relationships. In general, I get something different out of my relationships on barbelith and other net spaces, because, for one thing, they're not all friendships: I can't quantitatively measure "how much" I get out of them compared to other forms of interaction. They're... different.

Would they have been the same if your relationships had blossomed through a letter-writing process? Slower, less instantaneous but textual.

I can say with certainty, no, absolutely not. I'm fairly analytical so I've thought about it a lot, particularly in the case of my girlfriend (who I knew through email for two years before we met face to face at a con, and three years before we got off together). The specific temporality of email - whether you're writing quick little conversational mails every day or every hour, or crafting one long mail a month, changes the nature of the interaction; being able to control when a mail arrives depending on what you know about the other person's daily routine or if something important is happening - being on a shared list (interacting in public, but still textually; having net-only acquaintances in common, which is much rarer in relationships conducted by snail mail), using the internet to order and/or read each other's work... all those technological conditions determine and enable new forms of interaction.

Not to mention very basic stuff like if, for example, you're growing up queer or trans in Snail's Breath, Nebraska, it's easier to find people like you by typing "queer" or "trans" (or, pace Bey, "anarchist") into a search engine than by starting an LGBT group in your high school.
 
 
illmatic
11:37 / 11.08.04
(/rot)

Inchoate: Bey's harder done anything to encourage a cult of personality though, has he? I mean not having any webspace and all etc. He's hardly Madonna is he?


Re: Music piracy. I suspect that Bey would ask us to look at the relations that internet based music consumption embodies and see piracy as a subset of this. I think he’d say that it still reinforces the separation/alienation of producers and consumers, and there’s very little room for reciprocal feedback and exchange. Even if we get it free or not (I got it for free! Kind of the equivalent of a trolley dash at Tower Records, no?) it’s still a commodity, with minimal space occurring for mutual exchange or creativity. Pretty much the same as conventional music production and consumption actually, the difference being the intangibility of the medium and it’s ready availability lets us accumulate more than we will ever use. I do not take this as a statement that I should rush out into the garden and hurl all my CDs on a fire.Firstly, I’d take it as a counter to some of the more revolutionary claims made for the medium and secondly, I’m glad there is someone like Bey out there who’s making these broad criticisms of models of production and consumption. Even if does sound like I’ll end up in Leaptopia playing the penny whistle.

This is where I think we get back to Bey’s point re. technological determinism - that our relations with machines tend to create more of these mechanised relationships rather than allow the possibility of something different emerging – we increase the speed of our consumption, or our “choice”. Which doesn’t actually change or challenge the conditions of our lives at all - the conditons of capitalism – he’s looking or hoping for a space of real difference in the totality of how we live and consume rather than yet more speedier and gratifying symbolic exchanges. That’s how I read him in anyway.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:12 / 11.08.04
Which doesn’t actually change or challenge the conditions of our lives at all - the conditons of capitalism – he’s looking or hoping for a space of real difference in the totality of how we live and consume rather than yet more speedier and gratifying symbolic exchanges.

I rather suspect though that his article is hinting at more than that. I think that when Bey uses the term alternative economic institutions he's bringing in something extra. I toyed with the notion of speed of consumption for a while in my last post to this thread but in the end I rejected it because I think he's actually discussing an alternative to the system of capitalism in quite a clumsy way. Perhaps the idea is that in slowing people down and taking away some of the commodities that allow them to live quickly they will start to think about society a little but I very much doubt it. I think he's simply idealising the time before technology because he's so stumped on the entire issue of how to acheive these new economic institutions.

We all want something different. Well not all of us but I certainly do. The problem is that being a Luddite doesn't help. At the end of the day when you're looking at textiles you have to ask yourself- was William Morris with his small workshops or Stepanova with her notions of mass production more revolutionary, not only in their practice but in their ideas? I still think that the Internet can be used, if he's going to attack something that makes people sit and drool I wish he'd choose cannabis: at least you can step in front of a computer screen.
 
 
Cat Chant
13:26 / 11.08.04
(on 'net music piracy)

there’s very little room for reciprocal feedback and exchange. Even if we get it free or not (I got it for free! Kind of the equivalent of a trolley dash at Tower Records, no?) it’s still a commodity, with minimal space occurring for mutual exchange or creativity.

And we're back to fanfiction again, where internet communities are built around reciprocal feedback, mutual exchange, creativity, and shared ownership of ideas...
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:27 / 11.08.04
There was an old thread on Bey and the concept of 'immediatism' which I'm pretty sure I started, but neither Google nor the internal search is giving me joy. Anyway, just wanted to say re: music piracy, that as far as I'm aware Bey isn't a big fan of recorded music formats at all - me listening to a CD of Illmatic's Greatest Penny Whistle Club Bangers is one level of mediation and thus one remove away from the ideal, which is me being in the same room as Illmatic, watching him play the penny whistle near enough to touch. Actually scratch that, for Bey the ideal is probably me joining in by accompanying Illmatic's whistling with my beatboxing - as I recall being part of an audience is one level of mediation, whereas collaboration = immediacy.

That's the theory, anyway, IIRC. I would go along with the idea that in general we benefit from taking on board this line of thinking as a balance - by 'we' I guess I mean the kind of people who read Hakim Bey, ie geeks. I'd like to think Bey must know that a lot of people who've read his work are netgeeks, and is intentionally trying to piss some people off - he is one of those people who love that. And I do think many people in his target audience would benefit from being a little bit more participatory and less voyeuristic, from doing things instead of just talking about them, from junking the mind/body split and being less alienated from the flesh - myself included.

The problem is, it's very difficult to say all that without sounding like an arrogant asshole. It's all very "you should be out there DOING SOMETHING!" and it's hard not to answer "like you? Dude, you're a writer I heard about through the Internet". But maybe that's just defensiveness...

Still, at least Bey is open about the fact that he is a Luddite and proud - he knows what this part of his ideology is called and he makes no apologies for it. That's more self-aware than a lot of people who say similar things. I would urge people who disagree with him on this not to be completely put off - at his best, he's capable of beautiful, stirring writing, often more like poetry than prose.
 
 
Skeleton Camera
15:52 / 11.08.04
fictionsuits: While, admittedly, I've read through the Invisibles nary once and quickly at that, I didn't get the impression that St. Morrison was suggesting fictionsuits as text-based alternate identities. Rather the reverse, using as an example Mr. Six. I can speak from very little example, however, and I don't know the logistical or psychological results of maintaining multiple fictionsuits. But that's assuming they all "rotate," as it were, on a frequent basis. Instead you could set a few up to serve different purposes in your life.

Bey et al: it does seem, in my experience, that the Internet has "shrunk" in terms of creativity and non-economic expression. There does not seem to be nearly as much that is free, idiosyncratic, or "devotional" as there used to be, but I'm hoping I'm wrong and limited here...

Luddism is not the answer any more than anarchism is the answer. Technology is useful and, at this stage of development, unavoidable. The question is how DOMINANT that technology is as compared to the rest of the life-spectrum. That's where a conscious and balanced rejection
of technology can serve a purpose.
 
 
Jack_Rackem
20:18 / 11.08.04
Luddism is pretty much impossible an answer to current situations. We've socially evolved to a point our language and routines are impossible to separate from technology without a impossible leap in lifestyles that is really only done on an individual level. As for the internet as a community, it has always been an insular excercise.

Sorry if my response is a little awkward as I'm not used to debating these things.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:56 / 31.08.04
My major problem with Hakim Bey—and I have many—is that, however beautifully he writes, he’s really not a particularly deep or systemic thinker in re: the consequences of unlimited freedom. His troubling advocacy of incest and pederasty points towards a larger failure to understand that his God-given rights end where my God-given rights begin. His is not a political philosophy—it’s hedonism, filtered through a narcissism bordering on solipsism.

And it’s starkly unegalitarian—buying into the Nietzsche – DeSade notion that absolute freedom is the province only of those supermen (like Bey, of course) with the guts to seize it, and that it’s a meat too strong for the sheep-like masses. As a design for changing the world, it’s utter shit, but you can see why it appeals to alienated teenagers.

His “anarchism” is deeply reactionary—as anti-modern as any radical Islamist’s theocratic medievalism. Bey is not just a Luddite, but an Adamite—there’s a palpable yearning for a return to a mythic, less-mediated past; what is “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” but nostalgia for a pre-Fallen world?

It’s an impression only bolstered by the tone of this interview, with the cranky-old-man rantings about These Kids Today With Their Internet And Their Loud Music. The prophet scorned, furious because his paradigm didn’t pan out, instead of being open to the possibility that, y’know, maybe he backed the wrong horse. Way to guarantee your own irrelevance.

(Oh, and let me add here a furious sidenote about the continued slow death of copy-editing. There’s no surer way for a writer to make hirself look stupid than to employ a highfalutin phrase incorrectly. Viz. “Peter Lamborn Wilson, née Hakim Bey.” Note to the Author: née does not mean the same thing as “a.k.a.”—it literally means “born”: the proper form is Assemed Name, née Birth Name. Also, it is a gendered adjective, so the final e should be dropped when speaking of a male subject. E.g.: Marilyn Monroe, née Norma Jean Baker; Sting, né Gordon Matthew Sumner. Christ, do newspapers no longer use style manuals?)

So, in conclusion—I would gladly exchange turnips for Bey/Wilson’s poetry, if I could but hurl my turnips with the necessary force and accuracy.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
09:04 / 06.09.04
Sorry for being flippant in ye Holy Hedde Shoppe, but can I be the first to suggest that the online bartering system he so desires be henceforth known as eBey?

chortle.
 
 
Cat Chant
10:14 / 06.09.04
troubling advocacy of incest and pederasty

Where?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:56 / 06.09.04
Well on Jack Fear's blog that phrase is a link that sends you to Bey's Amour Fou. I suppose these would be the revelant bits:

"[Amout Fou's] only concern for the Family lies in the possibility of incest ("Grow your own!" "Every human a Pharoah!")--O most sincere of readers, my semblance, my brother/sister!--& in the masturbation of a child it finds concealed (like a japanese-paper-flower-pill) the image of the crumbling of the State.

...

"AF would like to see every bastard ("lovechild") come to term & birthed--AF thrives on anti-entropic devices--AF loves to be molested by children--AF is better than prayer, better than sinsemilla--AF takes its own palmtrees & moon wherever it goes. AF admires tropicalismo, sabotage, break- dancing, Layla & Majnun, the smells of gunpowder & sperm.

AF is always illegal, whether it's disguised as a marriage or a boyscout troop--always drunk, whether on the wine of its own secretions or the smoke of its own polymorphous virtues. It is not the derangement of the senses but rather their apotheosis--not the result of freedom but rather its precondition. Lux et voluptas.

Whether that actually does translate as an advocacy of incest and pederasty is, I think, up for debate, although not out of the question.

I'm not sure Jack's critique of Bey is entirely accurate - saying he buys into DeSade's idea that "absolute freedom is the province only of those supermen... with the guts to seize it" seems to sit ill with the fact that it's Bey himself who says in that very piece that DeSade wanted "freedom" only for grown-up whitemen to eviscerate women & children (a criticism that I've always found memorable). But I guess a general discussion of Hakim Bey doesn't belong in this thread...
 
 
Jack Fear
12:24 / 06.09.04
...whereas Bey is interested in "freedom" for clued-in, illuminated riot-heroes to terrorize and belittle the sleepwalking indoctrinated masses. Matters of degree, I would argue: both impulses are rooted in an adolescent sense of superiority, and as such I would still argue that Bey is a fine one to criticize the blackness of DeSade's kettle.

In the expanded version (posted on my blog) of my above comments, I have added the quantifier "tongue-in-cheek, but still troubling" in re: the alleged advocacy of pederasty +/or incest. Not backpedalling, but clarification.

In any case, let me be clear that more than any specifics of his thinking it is Bey's recent doctrinaire leanings, evidenced most clearly in this new interview, that I find most distasteful--and disappointing. When you read T.A.Z. for the first time, did you ever imagine its author ready to proclaim your r/evolution a failure simply because it isn't the revolution that he imagined? So much for autonomy.
 
 
illmatic
12:39 / 06.09.04
The Hakim Bey/padeophilia thing is troubling … IIRC, his novel Crowstone was seized by UK Customs because of paedophiliac imagery – never read it, so I can’t comment further. However, there’s definitely erotic/paedophile imagery elsewhere in his writing if somewhat subliminated…. See the “Wild Children” piece further down that link for instance. I’m pretty sure he’s sexually attracted to adolescent boys. But has completely kept the discussion of “transgenerational sex” out of his writing as far as I’m aware (not as obvious a choice at this might sound – when I first encountered his stuff, a few anarchist magazines were having furious discussion on this subject under this moniker). My take on this is that one doesn't have to be in accord with, or approve of, every aspect of his desires simply because I find his writing insightful.

I disagree with Jack on some other points but I'll come back to that later - pressed for time today (hope I'm not sounding like the one man Hakim Bey appreciation society).
 
 
_Boboss
14:04 / 06.09.04
always thought there might be something swiftian inside bey's best-boy buggery box: perhaps not, alan ginsberg wrote on behalf of nambla after all, but i've only noticed a little bit more 'ooh, young man' in bey than in burroughs. but as art, and as 'not-a-paedophile', putting the swiftian effect in place oneself is always a perfectly adaptable anti-queasiness strategy, i think.

i thought bey's main constituency were party-animals, not rioters. there's an idea he relies on a lot that hedonism is self-reinforcing, that folk don't want to party amid corpses, that i'm not sure i share. there's something noticeable on ecstasy, a drug which has i think helped clarify in my mind much of what bey was talking about in TAZ and elsewhere, that it is very easy while inside a bubble of euphoria to just filter out what's not likely to keep the good vibes flowing: 'woo, we're having a great time, ooh that person's eyes just rolled back, she's collapsed and twitching on the floor, i hope the stewards arrive in a minute, what a tune'. nevertheless, one of bey's favourite utopias is of families and friends, sharing a meal, swapping homemeade gifts, in a house. a bit backward, easy to diss for all sorts of reasons sure, but sadeian? no.

it's basically all about capital for bey, and its alienating methods of reproduction. he sees the internet as something owned by microsoft or other corporate concerns so wants nothing to do with it. plus he's like a well old man - most seventysomethings just don't give a fuck about the net, and that's fine. (most don't go on about it in as silly a way as mister wilson, but it's not difficult to scrape away his rhetoric and realise what he's saying in the above interview is 'it's not for me really, in fact my ignorance of the medium will show itself any second')

main thing is, and this is entirely where it stops for me, he really does write very nicely indeed, and along the way: has done more than any other writer i've read to codify socialism into something worthy for its poetic considerations alone; has written like a beast about islam, making a compelling case for how/why it is more tolerant of 'spiritual and other diversity' (attishoo) than the dominant ecclesiastic structures of the west.
 
 
illmatic
10:29 / 07.09.04
Well firstly, yay, for Jake Fear, Flyboy and Gambit etc for raising the tone of discussion beyond “he doesn’t like the internet! BOOOOO!” responses earlier up the thread. Thanks for bothering to actually read the interview. Cheers.

Jack: Maybe it’s just a difference in two people’s readings, but I really do not see this in Bey: “ … Bey is interested in "freedom" for clued-in, illuminated riot-heroes to terrorize and belittle the sleepwalking indoctrinated masses”. I don’t know where you get that from – where is this terrorising and belittlement? Where is this hatred? I’ve read a lot of his work, and I don’t recall any of the sneering contempt for people that one can find so easily elsewhere. As Flyboy says, he’s written stridently and strongly against the nihilism and negativity as a pose, he was doing so back in the late 80s - see here

In his work on immediatism in particular, I see a kind of joy in “everyday life” – the small acts of conviviality and sociability that make life worth living. I would concede that frequently his audience could be taken as a bunch of wacky post modern raving discordian pranksters, and perhaps his prose style lends himself to this, but y’know, there’s more to his ideas than that. It’s interesting actually, that although a lot of people picked up on the idea of the TAZ, borrowing the term to refer to raves or websites etc. his work on immedatism hasn’t garnered the same kind of attention. Perhaps real, face to face interaction isn’t exciting enough anymore.

You said above he isn’t a consistent thinker with regard to the consequences of absolute freedom. I would completely agree – and I’d add this subject is a tension throughout anarchist thought. But he is most definitely an ideological consistent thinker in the rest of work. The major strands being first a strategy of “disappearance” (the TAZ) in response to the logic of the Cold War, shifting to a more directly oppositional stance toward the "New World Order"/global capital following the collapse of the Soviet Union (see this interview). The ideas of presence and opposition to mediation runs through all this, combined with a strand of Blakean mysticism (on that note, his books on Sufism are simply stunning, and much needed in today’s increasingly Islamaphobic climate). Like him or no, I sincerely think he’s a more complex and interesting writer than you’re giving him credit for, Jack.

What I found fascinating about the interview that kicked off this thread was I could see a new take on the same basic ideology being expressed – possibly people who haven’t read as much of his stuff as I have will miss that, I dunno. And always with Bey, I found some new and stimulating points within that. I don't want to retierate these points all over again, because as I said, I'm sick of sounding like the Bey Fan Club representative. I see it as more than him being an old curmudgeon (tho' perhaps there's a bit of that).
 
  

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