I've been in California for 23 years now. It IS sick, and maybe it IS haunted. I may echo my exiting friends from time to time by diagnosing the sickness, but then I realize that the entire planet is sick. Humanity is sick. And it's not a bug, it's a feature.
I could throw down a laundry list of bad politicians, tech-guru/Cthulu bros with outsized influence, the fact that too many people live here...and I'd be right. But then I remember something:
I lived in a mid-sized Michigan city previous to here, and had to deal with racism, rednecky ignorance, and unemployment. So what I guess I'm saying is the land of objectivism has become the land of opportunity. It takes a little alchemical transmutation to give it a positive spin. Like I just did now!
I wish you well of it, sincerely, because even Harris in this book would concede that his piling up of the injustice and misery of Califormian/US history is for rhetorical effect and serves to give weight to his anticapitalist argument.
He would surely agree that there are opportunities there (where both you and he are) and that the sickness we see is not the whole story.
But is everywhere in the world as sick as that? Really is that the case? I can't speak for Michigan, but I live in Barcelona, where there are not tent cities full of the outcast and where even poor (working) people can get decent healthcare. Nowhere is exempt from problems, and I also know young people who've taken their own lives here, but I would argue that the basic conditions are not so cruel here.
The reason is, for want of a better word, redistribution of wealth and assets. Not the US/California way, the other way. The reasons for that we can get into in time, but the effects are seen in the mortal bottom line: Life expectancy increasing here, but decreasing in the richest country on earth.
No not directly, as it centres its narrative on Northern California. It only touches on Hollywood when there are commonalities, such as Ronald Reagan as Hollywood star and Governor of California and later President, or the massive use of cocaine in both the film and tech indsutries leading to a similar acquisitive mindset. Maybe the most interesting thing is in commenting on the kind of ghost scenario I suggested with Poltergeist:
"The cursed painting looted in the Holocaust, the construction project that disturbs an Indian burial ground, the pollution that awakens a swamp monster: These are social crimes from which some suffer and others profit. Hauntings are a reversal: The profiteers are made to suffer. At its best, superstition reminds us not to take advantage of others, even if nobody will ever see us doing it. The violations are embedded, written in the world. Something knows. But the revenge targeting is rarely quick or exact, and in our haunting narratives, when a curse comes alive, it’s often those nearest to the loot who end up paying. It’s the inheritors, the unsuspecting couple who buys an old house, or the violator’s descendants, the children, those who were meant to cleanse the ill-gotten fortune with their innocence and carry it into the future, their naiveté an element of the crime."
How I didn't see this before Murphy, very well written. It's quite sickening but the current engine of History are semiconductors, mainly in Taiwan, they are important cause they sell, they make the world, the "things as they are" go round and round. The Tower of BabeLLM.
Thanks for your comment, I appreciate that. You probably didn't see this because these essays aren't published as newsletters, I feel they wouldn't be welcome to people who sign up for fiction.
My Spanish-speaking brother, would it be gratuitous to point out that the name of the city in question here can translate roughly to something about 'raising the bar'? I'm in an Alfred Jarry mood this morning.
That's most Pataphysical of you. Other associations might be a stick inserted somewhere very high up, or a "palo" being a very boring and arduous task: "¡Qué palo!" "Y lo que es más, ¡un palo muy alto!
I've been in California for 23 years now. It IS sick, and maybe it IS haunted. I may echo my exiting friends from time to time by diagnosing the sickness, but then I realize that the entire planet is sick. Humanity is sick. And it's not a bug, it's a feature.
I could throw down a laundry list of bad politicians, tech-guru/Cthulu bros with outsized influence, the fact that too many people live here...and I'd be right. But then I remember something:
I lived in a mid-sized Michigan city previous to here, and had to deal with racism, rednecky ignorance, and unemployment. So what I guess I'm saying is the land of objectivism has become the land of opportunity. It takes a little alchemical transmutation to give it a positive spin. Like I just did now!
I wish you well of it, sincerely, because even Harris in this book would concede that his piling up of the injustice and misery of Califormian/US history is for rhetorical effect and serves to give weight to his anticapitalist argument.
He would surely agree that there are opportunities there (where both you and he are) and that the sickness we see is not the whole story.
But is everywhere in the world as sick as that? Really is that the case? I can't speak for Michigan, but I live in Barcelona, where there are not tent cities full of the outcast and where even poor (working) people can get decent healthcare. Nowhere is exempt from problems, and I also know young people who've taken their own lives here, but I would argue that the basic conditions are not so cruel here.
The reason is, for want of a better word, redistribution of wealth and assets. Not the US/California way, the other way. The reasons for that we can get into in time, but the effects are seen in the mortal bottom line: Life expectancy increasing here, but decreasing in the richest country on earth.
Does Harris address Hollywood at any point in the narrative? Because that's a California-based exploitative business if there ever was one.
No not directly, as it centres its narrative on Northern California. It only touches on Hollywood when there are commonalities, such as Ronald Reagan as Hollywood star and Governor of California and later President, or the massive use of cocaine in both the film and tech indsutries leading to a similar acquisitive mindset. Maybe the most interesting thing is in commenting on the kind of ghost scenario I suggested with Poltergeist:
"The cursed painting looted in the Holocaust, the construction project that disturbs an Indian burial ground, the pollution that awakens a swamp monster: These are social crimes from which some suffer and others profit. Hauntings are a reversal: The profiteers are made to suffer. At its best, superstition reminds us not to take advantage of others, even if nobody will ever see us doing it. The violations are embedded, written in the world. Something knows. But the revenge targeting is rarely quick or exact, and in our haunting narratives, when a curse comes alive, it’s often those nearest to the loot who end up paying. It’s the inheritors, the unsuspecting couple who buys an old house, or the violator’s descendants, the children, those who were meant to cleanse the ill-gotten fortune with their innocence and carry it into the future, their naiveté an element of the crime."
How I didn't see this before Murphy, very well written. It's quite sickening but the current engine of History are semiconductors, mainly in Taiwan, they are important cause they sell, they make the world, the "things as they are" go round and round. The Tower of BabeLLM.
I'm hoping for this to end soon.
I appreciate other comments here too.
Thanks for your comment, I appreciate that. You probably didn't see this because these essays aren't published as newsletters, I feel they wouldn't be welcome to people who sign up for fiction.
So it's a kind of "hidden extra" on my page.
I hope to do more soon.
My Spanish-speaking brother, would it be gratuitous to point out that the name of the city in question here can translate roughly to something about 'raising the bar'? I'm in an Alfred Jarry mood this morning.
That's most Pataphysical of you. Other associations might be a stick inserted somewhere very high up, or a "palo" being a very boring and arduous task: "¡Qué palo!" "Y lo que es más, ¡un palo muy alto!