<nettime> The Past, and the Future Past Digest [3x]

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

[digested @ nettime]


Table of Contents:

   Childhood home of David Bohm                                                    
     Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>                                              

   [imitationpoetics] Literary Narcissism and the Manufacture of Scandal (fwd)     
     Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>                                              

   Our Future                                                                      
     Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>                                              



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Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 21:30:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Childhood home of David Bohm




Childhood home of David Bohm


Childhood home of David Bohm, Wilkes-Barre, PA (my hometown as well).
David lived above the furniture store in the photograph. A next-door
neighbor told us that the store had been resold in the early 50s to
someone currently living in Mountaintop. I don't know if the current
owner is related.

We were also told that the building next to the furniture store was a
combination house and mission; the former built in 1847, and the mission
at the beginning of the 20th century. The front porch has been enclosed
because the neighborhood has become dangerous, and the stained-glass
windows in the surrounding houses have been stolen; his are now behind an
outer wall.

The furniture store is at 410 Hazel St.

Bohm is one of the originators of the theory of hidden variables in
quantum mechanics; he had a large effect on Bell, among others. His work
on the implicate order continues to influence, and the work he was engaged
on before he died, prespace, is still at the forefront of QM research. See
http://www.philosphere.com/article29.html?&MMN_position=31:2

http://www.asondheim.org/DBhome.jpg


_




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Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 21:38:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: [imitationpoetics] Literary Narcissism and the Manufacture of Scandal (fwd)





Thought this would be of great interest here - Alan (sent w/permission)


- ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 14:11:55 -0500
From: Gabriel Gudding <gmguddi@ilstu.edu>
Reply-To: ImitaPo Memebers <imitationpoetics@listserv.unc.edu>
To: ImitaPo Memebers <imitationpoetics@listserv.unc.edu>
Subject: [imitationpoetics] Literary Narcissism and the Manufacture of Scandal

Imitation Poetics
ImitationPoetics@listserv.unc.edu
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[regarding the manufacture of literary scandals for the purposes of
self-aggrandizement]
     * A Literary Narcissist's behavior will not only tolerate but encourage
attacks on himself so long as it can translate his own self-fascination
into more news of himself.
     * Just as the Narcissist will use argument, catastrophe, disputation to
attract attention, certain people will be willing to dispute the Narcissist
in order to participate in the economy of attention. Others will dispute
the Narcissist because they are so profoundly appalled by his/her behavior.
Either way, the economy of attention is fueled.
     * The Narcissist needs Catastrophe. The more internal crises of shame
the Narcissist endures and fails to heed, the more s/he will need to create
external Catastrophes. A chief and signal way a Narcissist might attract
attention is to start fights: Narcissists will gravitate toward satire and
caricature as a means of creating argument. The Narcissist will attempt to
construe strife with health: "These arguments need to happen," etc.
     * The Narcissist IS fascinating -- but not for the reasons the
Narcissist thinks. S/he is fascinating because the energy s/he will expend
in micromanaging the self image is so profoundly exceptional. People just
sort of stand there slack-jawed wondering if this person has a life. The
Narcissist however will mistranslate the fascination of others as admiration.
     * Poetry communities will tolerate narcissism so long as it is
translated into a Social Energy which others can use to strengthen and
promote their projects.
     * Narcissism and alcoholism. Alcoholism is a systematic way to push
down socially regulating emotions like shame, guilt, and embarrassment at
one's own self-aggrandizing behavior. The suppression of these emotions is
never successful, even in the most energetic of self-aggrandizers, and they
will periodically burst upward into brief displays of remorse and
convictions to change. These brief spouts of regulatory behavior are
sometimes shared publicly and sometimes privately among confidants. These
displays however can often easily be "re-used" by the Narcissist as a way
of showing his/her authenticity and emotional fealty to the community.
     * The Narcissist is aware of the economy of disgust surrounding his/her
behavior. S/he becomes more and more sensitive to this and consequently
begins to demand private declarations of loyalty from those people whom
s/he knows consider themselves friends -- even if they have said nothing
publicly against the Narcissist.
     * The Narcissist, aware of this disgust, will create a personal mythos
in which s/he will be justified and exonerated by the rewards of literary
"history." The stronger the disgust of others, the greater the energy used
to maintain the mythos of exoneration by history.
     * Narcissists are only interested in community so long as it pays
dividends to their energy: they will support it if it feeds them.
     * The narcissist may outright demand in private that you "pay" him
publicly with praise. Then he or she will publicly "repay" you with a
communal mention.
     * In their attempt to cause others to adopt their self-fascination,
Narcissists will become increasingly paranoiac, constantly searching the
environment and community for news of themselves, for fealty or disloyalty.
     * The Literary Narcissist begins purposefully to conflate criticism of
his social behavior into an indication of his/her literary worth. That is
to say, the Narcissist will try to show that the reason others despise or
are disgusted by him is in fact because he or she is a "Rebel," a true
Literary Revolutionist -- and that the statements of disgust others
publicly make at his behavior is merely an indication of (a) their
necessary denial of the work because they are threatened by it, or (b)
their jealousy of the work.
     * There comes a point -- and the point may come early -- where the
community thinks to itself "teapot" and the Narcissist still hears
"tempest." The truly insular narcissist (aka "the boor") will be met more
and more with shunning, ignoring and silence. This will wrest the
narcissist from his insularity -- such that he will begin another project
designed to create Genuine Interest instead of mere scandalous attention.
This project, like a new comet's head, will be followed by a long tail of
manufactured scandal so as to call attention to its presence in the
literary sky.

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------------------------------

Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 03:52:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Our Future



Our Future

In 1973 I taught "The Year 3000" at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Most of the predictions described for the year 2000 have already occurred.
Now for the modest future of thirty years hence:

All megafauna in the wild will be extinct. The population of the earth
will be close to its carrying capacity. Disease will run rampant due to
pollution. Global warming will bring about fast-forward environmental
effects, including rising seas, increased desertification, and extremely
violent hurricanes. The life-span of humans will begin a temporarily
exponential decrease. The rich will live in highly defended enclaves.
Fundamentalisms will be the order of the day, since belief alone commands.
Terrorism will be increasing exponentially, since future paradise is all
there is. Capitalism will be bankrupt as national currencies collapse and
world-wide depression sets in. The information explosion will continue on
localized data-networks and stuttering global communication systems. The
global communications infrastructure will have reached its carrying
capacity as well. For the first time, information will begin to corrode,
decay, as structures can no longer be protected against the world-wide
environmental crisis. The smaller generalist flora and fauna will begin to
dominate the earth. Great portions of the globe will be uninhabitable. The
larger aquatic species will have gone extinct, and the oceans will be
dominated by off-shore algal blooms. Most urban drinking water supplies
will be polluted and rationed. Suburbs will be abandoned as gasoline
becomes an almost inaccessible commodity. The planet will seethe with
continuous war, no longer fought among nation-states, but among private
militias, guerilla groups, and individual cowboys. Religions and
extremisms will be intertwined. There will be heavily-defended holdouts in
the North American mountains, and relatively isolated land masses such as
New Zealand. Fluid urban structures will be composed of well-armed gangs
dealing with the major currency of drugs and weaponry. At least a third of
all births will result in deformed infants. Ozone depletion will be almost
complete and skin cancers will be exponentially increasing. Most hospitals
world-wide will have closed their doors to all but the extremely wealthy.
Knowledge-structures will have broken down as specialization and increased
mathematical difficulties result in the problematizing of any theoretical
work at hand. Computers will have reached a plateau of speed, complexity,
and miniaturization. They will not have achieved consciousness. Robotics
and nanotechnologies will not be the order of the day - plagues will.
Sports franchises will be local and heavily subsidized. The air will be
almost unbreathable, and asthma / allergic reactions will be one of the
primary causes of death. Most deaths however are the result of violence.
Local police will perform rearguard holding actions at best. Highway
systems will have fallen into disrepair as economies collapse. Air travel
will be almost non-existent; space travel will have disappeared. The space
station will be a rusted hulk, if it has not already plummeted to earth.
Literacy will be on the decline. There will be a world-wide energy crisis.
Child abuse will have become child use and child discard; a high
percentage of children will be proffered for labor and sexual slavery, in
return for food and goods. Informal economies and the barter system will
characterize most local trade. Transnational trade will be at a minimum.
The genetic revolution will result in new and uncontrollable pandemics as
viruses and bacteria become increasingly resistant. Highly modifiable
immune deficiency diseases will appear on an exponentially-increasing
basis. The greatest percentage of murder victims, per capita per age
level, will be the elderly. Despair will be transformed into religious
salvation. More than twenty nuclear weapons, most of them small and
poorly-constructed, will have been exploded in various urban areas. Most
of the countries of the world, such as they are, will have weapons
programs which will absorb a large proportion of the gross national
product. Political economy will be ad hoc. Political ideologies will be
fragmentary and situational. Electrical grids will be hard-put to maintain
even the most minimal of services. The arts will have reached the limits
of extremity, with suicidal art movements in the fields of theater,
performance, ballet, and installation. The new media 'movement' will have
become a thing of the past. Art history will have disappeared as museums
fall victim to gang warfare and destruction. Most national heritage
monuments will have been at least partially destroyed. Most populations
will be drugged...



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