[A katydid on the rail of our porch.]

The last few months have been exceptionally chaotic, even by the standards of this already-chaotic year. I don’t recall the last time I had extended periods of so little time to myself. I don’t remember the last time my brain was so full of static.

I don’t like it.

However, with my partner out of town for a few days I found myself with some solitude and free time. I celebrated by watching Hannah Arendt, which I recommend to everyone. I have read some of Arendt‘s work, though not in at least a couple of decades. The Origins of Totalitarianism sits in my nonfiction bookcase, and I am pretty sure I have Eichmann in Jerusalem around here somewhere.

The political landscape here in the USA, particularly in the days following the death of the popular anti-intellectual influencer out in Utah, is becoming dangerous. Studying up on the banality of evil seems a good thing to do when the 47 administration seems to be following the exact same playbook used in Germany in the late 1930s.

Arendt points out that the many cogs in the machinery of evil may not be themselves malevolent, but the fact that they allow themselves to become cogs, to subsume their humanity in the larger whole of the destructive force, is an important point to recognize. This does not absolve the cogs of the responsibility of their actions, but it explains how easy it is to become a cog in the first place.

I recently read The Unaccountability Machine, which explores the ways that systems (corporations, governments, etc.) can make it impossible for the participants in those systems to act against the rules of the system. We can learn some things about authoritarian and totalitarian governments from the study of cybernetics.

Reading

I finished Notes on the Assemblage, and am now casting about for the next thing. Probably Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Writing

Still in a slump.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Aliens, Apocalypse
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Solarpunk

Listening

The Eurythmics, “Missionary Man” from their 1986 album Revenge.

Interesting Links

• “Imperial tyranny, Korean humiliation” (Park Hyun, Hankyoreh)
• “Arthur Sze is the new U.S. Poet Laureate.” (James Folta, LitHub)
• “The Spectacle Made Flesh” (Yasha Levine, Nefarious Russians)
• “Doomscrolling the Influencer Apocalypse” (Nat Wilson Turner, Naked Capitalism)