The Breaking Time

Fighting for the ashes: Individuals tending towards savagery

Damn. That took way too long, readers, and you have my apologies. I've been embroiled in freelance and day job projects, and the Breaking Time has been neglected in the process. So let's start our return properly, with this piece from Damien Williams on the latest manifestation of the urge to smash everything.

The aftermath of an Aug. 8, 2011 attack that wounded two professors at Monterey Tec. Individuals Tending Towards Savagery claimed responsibility. Their statement, if you can bear to read it, is translated here.

I've spent the last few months trying to lay the groundwork for a better world. That's a bit pompous. What I've really been doing is sitting around writing about the philosophical problems of cybernetics and cyborging, and relating them to various television shows, because I firmly believe that people can be made to see more than the potential terror of technology if they can see it in entertainment and then made to think about it.

So the real world comes along to remind me what I'm actually up against, out here: The Group known as "Individuals Tending Toward Savagery" (and isn't that just a fantastically uplifting, human-centric name?) has claimed responsibility for the 2011 shooting death of Dr Ernesto Méndez, a leader in the field of biotechnology, and they've promised more of the same, and worse, for any nano- or biotech experts who continue to do work in the field.

All of this death and terror to try to prevent the fabled Grey Goo Scenario which has been inimical to nanotechnology since it became known to the public imagination. Now, the nature of these "anarchists" seems to more be one of posturing and half-tactics, rather than what many would claim a "credible threat"-- their claims of responsibility are spotty, while their threats are many and varied-- but that doesn't mean they aren't stepping up their game.

And for what? To scare people into a Luddite fear of technological advancement? To act as a reactionary, loom-smashing gestapo- boogeyman? What's gained by this? What in these tactics and aims makes this world a better place?

I'm reminded of Warren Ellis' Global Frequency, and the story "Detonation." In it, a terrorist group (caveat: terrorists are not necessarily anarchists, nor vice versa) called the Red Right Hand seeks to devolve the world into a state of constant war, because the leader believes that it is only when we're at war that we reach our full potential. Or some utter bollocks like that.

You see, that line of thinking makes a valid argument. That is, if its premises were true, then its conclusion would necessarily follow. But what people always forget about the difference between validity and soundness is that validity doesn't make the premises true. "All aliens are secretly Jewish people and every Jewish person has a personal golem with them at all times. This is why I demand to see the Area 51 Records of the two golems recovered in the New Mexico desert in 1947." That is, technically, a perfectly valid argument. And also something I just made up, right now.

My point is this: what is it about smashing looms that makes people think we'll be better off? What is it about pure destruction that people tend to prefer to the work of creating and destroying, at the same time? Is it just that change is scary? Because, let me tell you, we've known that for about 10,000 years, so it's not exactly a startling revelation.

I only ask because it seems like the far better option would be to try to learn and understand as much about technology as possible, and then take all that loom-smashy energy and put it toward grassroots education of the wider culture. Make the real dangers and real benefits known to the whole world, and teach people how to not just blindly react to new tech.

Because this is a blind reaction. This is just fear on more fear on more fear. I don't see the world being better after this, I see it being more terrified. What's the point of that?

First they came for the libraries

By Damien Williams

Photo by Gregory Maxwell

News came yesterday that radical Islamists have burned the ancient library of Timbuktu.

When I was twelve years old, one of the most important resources for my family was our local library: RL Christian Public Library, on H Street in Washington, DC. Though the area has changed, quite a bit, as any DC Metro-area resident can tell you, it's certainly not the best part of town. Nineteen years ago it was even rougher around the edges.

As funding for city libraries was cut, the operating hours of R.L. Christian were some of the first things on the chopping block. My sisters and I, along with other children from our neighbourhood, wrote essays and went before the DC City Council and explained to them —clearly but forcefully — what this library represented to the neighbourhood.

RL Christian Public Library had free after-school programs for children whose parents worked late. Study resources for those who would need them. A place to be off the street, later in the evening, in a part of town then still coping with regular gang violence. We, the children most affected by this, not our parents, made this case. And they shortened the hours anyway. Eventually RL Christian Public Library closed its doors.

People who know about but don’t fully understand history may ask, "Why do conquerors and fanatics always go for the Libraries?" Our most famous example has always been the Library of Alexandria, but it is by no means the sole instance. And if you take a look at that list, you can see something of a distinction: sometimes invaders burn libraries and loot them, and sometimes they just burn them. Why is that?

It's because a library, more than any other thing humans have ever made, is the physical promise of a wider, more inclusive world.

Someday this will all be yours

by Damien Williams, a follow-up to Life in the so-called space age

The Last Judgment, Heironymous Bosch

Come close and I'll tell you a secret.

The Breaking Time is really just the continual state of the post-Lapsarian condition. Everything we are and everything we do is a result of the Fall of Man, and that Fall makes itself evident in everything we ourselves create. All decay, all rot, all moral failures and lawlessness, all attempts by mad to trespass into God's domain with works like artificial intelligence, artificial life, and genetic manipulation are just the side-effects of humanity's experience and expression of evil; today is God's Judgment.

This is what I would tell you if I were a fundamentalist Christian-- that we are all sinful in some basic fashion (because of some basic action), and that nature has infected everything we do. But I'm not a fundamentalist Christian, so let's try something else.

The Breaking Time is just the precursor to the coming of the Messiah, and the fulfilling of YHVH's ultimate covenant with Man. We must strive through, as best we can but also spur on progress toward the time when this Messiah will make itself known. As such, we tolerate lawlessness, immorality, and decay, as we know that it will bring us closer to the time of Messianic Fruition.

 No? Okay, how about this:

That which we call "evil" is really just the effect of the workings of evolutionary biological processes, selfishness, procreative need, tribalism, and the insular nature of the preferred size of human social groups. The only thing that exists which can rightly be called "evil" are those forces of ignorance which lead us away from inquiry and scientific understanding, and those forces must, indeed, be stamped out and shown as false, broken, harmful, and dangerous, at all costs. Only then will the true nature of the universe be able to be known, free of antiquated moralising and repression.

What about this: The return of Maitreya has meant that there will be a world-wide awakening of consciousness, and His work must be helped along by those willing to make the world over in fire, and who are willing to do whatever it takes to survive these end times.

If you don't see your particular flavor of armageddon above I could go on, if you'd like.

Life in the so-called space age

by Damien Williams

A shot from Felix Baumgartner's epic jump.

The government sees space as a possible warzone.

At about 39 minutes into the Oct. 22 debate, the president says that we need to be looking toward cyber-security and space as the military concerns of the future. Now, the budget of NASA has been partially under the remit of the Air Force since its inception and the borders between the two groups (three if you count the Jet Propulsion Laboratories) are very, very porous. NASA shuttle capabilities have been used for defense satellite placement, and defense scientists lent a hand to civilian projects and research (e.g. NEAT).

Now, ever since the Reagan administration — when some clever idiot decided to reference a series of then-popular movies — the public has known that military interests have had a very clear presence in space and satellite creation. This all started even further back than then, actually, as the entire reason humans went to space in the first place was the Cold War Era pissing contest which found its pinnacle in Mutually Assured Destruction.

It was this MADness that spread out and infected everyone born or raised under its auspices, and so we get a space race and Star Wars. So it isn't really news that "Future US Military Concerns Will Have To Look At Space," or whatever it was the President said. What's surprising is that we have the first President in nearly 24 years who's gone about saying as much, whose specifically stated military agenda have included space.

But is it really that surprising, when we think about it?

All Times Break

I was extremely happy when Damien Williams agreed to become a contributor here and submitted this piece for our relaunch. In his own wonderful style, it pulls together classic lore, poetry, mysticism, and pop culture for a fascinating meditation on this blog's core theme.

They tell you never to start a story with a quote, so I won't. I'll start with two. Here we go:

“It is said that what is called 'the spirit of an age' is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” - Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, 1716

“. . .The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand. . .” — "The Second Coming," William Butler Yeats, 1920

And then there is, of course, the ever-popular I-Ching Hexagram 23 (~1,000 BCE), aptly titled Breaking Apart:

This pictures a time when inferior people are pushing forward and are about to crowd out the few remaining strong and superior men. Under these circumstances, which are due to the time, it is not favorable for the superior man to undertake anything.

The right behavior in such adverse times is to be deduced from the images and their attributes. The lower trigrams stands for the earth, whose attributes are docility and devotion. The upper trigram stands for the mountain, whose attribute is stillness. This suggests that one should submit to the bad time and remain quiet. For it is a question not of man’s doing but of time conditions, which, according to the laws of heaven, show an alternation of increase and decrease, fullness and emptiness. It is impossible to counteract these conditions of the time. Hence it is not cowardice but wisdom to submit and avoid action.

 We have always lived in the breaking times. We have always felt that every period of major upheaval is the end of the world, the final days, the utter Apocalypse, come at last. And we're right. Every major shift of perspective ends the world in which we lived, and brings to bear a completely new perspective. In fact, most often that perspective is necessarily new, because the only ones who survive the shift (or collapse, as some would have it) are those who can adapt to the radically altered contexts in which they find themselves.

As ever, we must adapt, or we will perish, and this isn't news.