Barbarians, Bread and Circuses

“One must write, even when one realizes the printed word can no longer improve anything.”
- (Joseph) Roth

A quote from The Purge of the Deep State and the Road to Dictatorship by Chris Hedges

Some days (most days), I circle the existential drain of why I and I suppose many, many others choose to write - choose to do anything really - when it feels like one's words, one’s life feels as if it only adds more to the chaos than not. Lost in the madness and opinions of everyone else’s contributions to the powers that be algorithms, we are all ironically "fighting” while all the same time contributing to processes like data harvesting, thus leaving quite the taste of hopelessness in one’s mouth in the illusory face of these digital "barbarians.” This, as Joseph Roth (see above) explored with themes of rising fascism which provided an angle to understand the coming conflict he would not see (he did not live to see World War 2, dying in Paris in 1939), is what I seem to have connected to and which in ways I see mostly in the media, resembles, as far as I know Mr. Roth’s writing, is similar.

He once wrote:

“What use are my words,” Roth asked, “against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voice of this world of Babel, muddied anyhow, via the drums of Nuremberg?”

In no way am I trying to put myself or this time the USA is in at the moment on the same level as what Mr. Roth and millions like him had to go through. There is no comparison. That would be ludicrous and offensive.

I’m more trying to understand how someone like Mr. Roth, in the face of everything that was coming towards him, still found the strength and the will and the hope and the love for humanity to write at a time with so much death hurtling at him. Through what I know of him, I realized that writing and striving to live and be free of such barbarous systems, that defiance, is simply the only thing we have when everything is slowly being taken away. Chris Hedges wrote in a recent newsletter, “…if we do not resist, we succumb morally and physically to the darkness. We become complicit in a radical evil. This, we must never allow.” That kind of strength is what is most eternal and, to me, most admirable.

It’s hard to argue with Mr. Hedges but it’s also hard to admit that I, and many others, have allowed this digitally manipulative black pill to strip multiple generations of their lives merely for the sheer benefit and profit of a select few. And today, much like yesterday, we’re seeing the repercussions of it all come to fruition…from billionaires like Musk are calling those that receive federal assistance parasites to billionaires like Larry Ellison insisting AI surveillance systems will ensure every citizens best behavior.

Yes, one must write, one must find whatever and whoever they can to fight against the incessant, relentless cloud of oppression because, as Mr. Hedges closed his post, if we do not, “We become complicit in a radical evil.”

In This Newsletter We’ll Cover…

Brain-Computer Weapons & Crypto-Activism

The Art (and Importance) of Precision

A Downtown Reading

Brain-Computer Weapons & Crypto-Activism

I used to work in the world of Bitcoin and crypto for a relatively famous YouTuber CryptosRUs and let me tell you…I experienced some shit in terms of some of the stories I had to cover. Let’s not get into all that now because honestly I should write a book about that entire experience but what that time (torture) gave me was really a door into mad stories like this Hu Lezhi. Mr. Lezhi, a Chinese programmer, literally burned almost $2 million dollars in the Ethereum crypto in protest against Kuande Investment, AKA WizardQuant, accusing them - brace yourself - deploying “brain-computer weapons” against employees. This immediately made me think this poor man, this poor soul, was mentally struggling with something…which then brought me to the act itself would likely change nothing…where then I thought…who the fuck isn’t struggling with something? Protest, any form of protest, should be respected, observed, and analyzed which made my judgmental, semi-jaded response towards Mr. Lezhi that much more problematic for myself. The whole point of these power systems, the servile, exploitative dynamics of the relationship with our country in relation to the past, the present, and the future, is to keep us from protesting at all.

Mr. Lezhi, after setting $1.65 million in ETH ablaze, went even further, distributing “1,950 ETH ($5.35 million) to various wallets. A hefty 711.52 ETH ($1.97 million) went to a WikiLeaks-linked address, championing transparency and whistleblowing. Another 700 ETH ($1.94 million) was sent to a wallet supporting Ukraine-related causes, while an additional 1,238 ETH ($3.4 million) was scattered among other unspecified addresses.”

Now whether Kuande Investment was in fact using “brain-computer weapons” against their employees or not has yet to be seen but the fact that we’re having this conversation at all is an albeit tiny but clear shift in energy that would never have existed unless it was for Hu Lezhi.

The Art (and Importance) of Precision

If I was in high school (shit, even college) and you told my younger self that later in life, at almost 37 years old, I would be interested and writing about (trying to write about) very very general physics, I would have laughed in your face. Though I wonder if I would have shrugged instead and said, Sure, I’m a curious guy. I like to know how things work…I like to try things. Which is true and which is why I found it fascinating reading about when energy is focused, its power density—defined as the amount of power per unit volume—increases, transforming its diffuse potential into a precise, concentrated impact. A lot of what I read involved lasers but then I wanted to connect this idea to human action…simple-like because there are so many distractions to keep one on track that even looking how to do something can lead me personally down a million different avenues (like I’m doing right now.) Anyways, this resulted in seeing the above as directed attention and practice and thus everything to do with neural plasticity. Stay with me now because finally, the physics of focus brought me to a great video from the late great actor Alan Rickman where he tried to express to a tit of an interviewer the essential nature of listening as it pertains to acting (but of course life as well.) Rickman said, “You only speak as a human being in life and therefore if you're trying to reproduce life on stage…is that you you only speak because you wish to respond to something you've heard.” When listening, really listening, with all one’s ability of focus, training, craft, etc. Mr. Rickman believes, as well as I do, that "what you have to say will become automatic and then it will be free and alive."

This, I think, naturally leads to empathy, a not entirely lost but sometimes hard to find capacity nowadays that feels at times rare because of, I think, a lack of listening-centered moments we don’t have as much in our lives. This “concentrated impact” of training in this exercise of listening, according to Rickman, then becomes an “engine” in of itself, perchance making you more alive to your fellow actors, your fellow human, to be both “accurate” and “bold.”

A Downtown Reading

I’ve never really been one for reading my own stuff out in the world. I don’t know why really…it just…never seemed to fit how I wanted to do with writing. What did Hemingway say at his Nobel Prize speech? Ah yes…"Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.” Hem went onto say, “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”

Something like that.

Anyways, the art/performative nature of it has always never clicked with me and though I appreciate organizations like The Moth which are filled with insanely talented writers and speakers…effective in ways I think offer a more communal angle to writing than what solitary reading just can’t provide…just not for me until, last Saturday at a reading at the Writers Studio.

An old teacher, Gail Ford, asked me to come and read which I probably hadn’t done since my Master’s. The room was filled with students of the studio, all talking with each other. I just sat in my chair and stared out the window. I wasn’t preparing but more trying to be present in a setting that was never really my thing. Fortunately for me, after I read my flash fiction piece I wasn’t booed off the podium. In fact, I even got a laugh but overall, given the pieces tense - second person - the thing might have felt a bit imposing. It felt good to remind myself I could still do it though; it felt like having a conversation with an old friend and reminded me that there is always another angle in the art of writing, in the gift of story telling that if worked on and perfected, can possibly reach even more people.

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