alittlelessdemocracy

[alittlelessdemocracy]

STEVEN HUSBY

untitled, 2025, acrylic on unprimed canvas, 48 inches diameter

[alittlelessdemocracy]

Magic and Technical Efficacy

Excerpt from The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology by Alfred Gell:

Let us take the relatively uncontentious kind of technical activity involved in gardening-uncontentious in that everybody would admit this is technical activity, an admission they might not make if we were talking about the processes involved in setting up a marriage. Three things stand out when one considers the technical activity of gardening: firstly, that it involves knowledge and skill, secondly, that it involves work, and thirdly, that it is attended by an uncertain outcome, and moreover depends on ill-understood processes of nature. Conventional wisdom would suggest that what makes gardening count as a technical activity is the aspect of gardening which is demanding of knowledge, skill, and work, and that the aspect of gardening which causes it to be attended with magical rites, in pre-scientific societies, is the third one, that is its uncertain outcome and ill-understood scientific basis. But I do not think things are as simple as that. The idea of magic as an accompaniment to uncertainty does not mean that it is opposed to knowledge, i.e. that where there is knowledge there is no uncertainty, and hence no magic. On the contrary, what is uncertain is not the world but the knowledge we have about it. One way or another, the garden is going to turn out as it turns out; our problem is that we don't yet know how that will be. All we have are certain more-or-less hedged beliefs about a spectrum of possible outcomes, the more desirable of which we will try to bring about by following procedures in which we have a certain degree of belief, but which could equally well be wrong, or inappropriate in the circumstances. The problem of uncertainty is, therefore, not opposed to the notion of knowledge and the pursuit of rational technical solutions to technical problems, but is inherently a part of it. If we consider that the magical attitude is a by-product of uncertainty, we are thereby committed also to the proposition that the magical attitude is a by-product of the rational pursuit of technical objectives using technical means.

[alittlelessdemocracy]

STEVEN HUSBY

untitled, 2025, acrylic on unprimed canvas, 48 inches diameter

[alittlelessdemocracy]

STEVEN HUSBY

untitled, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches

[alittlelessdemocracy]

The Nam-Shub of Enki

Excerpt from Samuel Noah Kramer and John R. Maier's Myths of Enki, the Crafty God (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) quoted by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash

Once upon a time, there was no snake, there was no scorpion,

There was no hyena, there was no lion,

There was no wild dog, no wolf,

There was no fear, no terror,

Man had no rival.

In those days, the land Shubur-Hamazi, Harmony-tongued Sumer, the great land of the me of princeship, Uri, the land having all that is appropriate, The land Martu, resting in security, The whole universe, the people well cared for, To Enlil in one tongue gave speech.

Then the lord defiant, the prince defiant, the king defiant, Enki, the lord of abundance, whose commands are trustworthy, The lord of wisdom, who scans the land, The leader of the gods, The lord of Eridu, endowed with wisdom, Changed the speech in their mouths, put contention into it, Into the speech of man that had been one.

[alittlelessdemocracy]

To Write a Shopping List...

Excerpt from Derrida/Searle: Deconstruction and Ordinary Language, by Raoul Moati, translated by Timothy Attanucci and Maureen Chun, Columbia University Press, 2014

This possibility, however, affects every mark from the inside such that a mark emitted even in the presence of the speaker remains subject to this possibility of being detached from him. The possibility of absence cannot be removed - except in an abstract definition of writing that restricts absence to a contingent accident - if only because the possibility of absence in writing maintains its position within it as a persistent menace whose persistence is revealed as constitutive of the scriptural experience in general. 

One cannot write without seeing this possibility of the demobilization of the sign as a kind of test (hence those phenomenon such as the compulsion to seal, to sign, to affix the seal of one’s presence that Derrida describes). Impossible to eliminate, this possibility affects every presence and provokes unconsciously and in advance its own dissolution because the trace is characterized precisely by its indifference, in its capacity for citational iteration, to the speaker’s presence. 

Because the menace of separation is constant in writing, writing is revealed above all to produce disconnection and etiolation in presence: presence cannot be totally homogenous, that is, completely protected from the risk of its own dissipation, if the possibility of writing as iteration remains irreducibly tied to it. Speech acts are equally subject to this possibility because parasitic and nonserious cases still remain inevitably possible in the economy of a theory of the speech act, and thus mark in advance the impossibility of stabilizing the logic of intention and meaning. Thus the same goes for “the shopping list for myself” that Searle evokes, for Derrida continues: “At the very moment ‘I’ make a shopping list, I know (I use ‘knowing’ here as a convenient term to designate the relations that I necessarily entertain with the object being constructed) that it will only be a list if it implies my absence, if it already detaches itself from me in order to function beyond my ‘present’ act and if it is utilizable at another time, in the absence of my-being-present-now.”

The central thesis of Derrida’s entire enterprise is situated right here: presence is never a continuous phenomenon. To think that intentional presence could maintain itself as such, identical to itself, in signs destined to spread out across time and space is thus to reason by hypostasis. As a consequence, this dissemination of written traces annihilates the metaphysical fantasy of the voice’s universal extension and the ontology of truth that is its corollary.

The reactivation of presence implies from the start an irremediable loss, a known default of presence that justifies the birth of the written sign destined to play the role of substitute, of guard for a presence that is in danger and hence for this very reason always already lost. 

The written sign always intervenes against the background of this menace at the moment when philosophy becomes conscious of the precarious position of presence and the impossibility of maintaining it. One commonly caricatures Derrida’s position by claiming he argues that presence does not exist. On the contrary, Derrida is a thinker of presence; he is even the thinker of presence, that is, the only thinker to have sided with the temporary fragility of presence.

To write a shopping list is to recognize, despite oneself, the impossibility of maintaining self-presence: the “I” that writes the list and the “I” that receives it are of course two moments of the same “I,” yet the presence of the one writing is not reducible to the presence of the other “reactivating” a defunct presence. The space that intervenes between these two moments marks the fundamental heterogeneity of presents that are destined to succeed one another in a discontinuous fashion and thus to ruin the continuous presence of the present.

[alittlelessdemocracy]

STEVEN HUSBY

Nam-Shub, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 34 x 32 inches

[alittlelessdemocracy]

Sacred Attention

Simone Weil, excerpted from Gravity and Grace, and The First and Last Notebooks, as quoted by Maria Popova at The Marginalian:

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will. The will only controls a few movements of a few muscles, and these movements are associated with the idea of the change of position of nearby objects. I can will to put my hand flat on the table. If inner purity, inspiration or truth of thought were necessarily associated with attitudes of this kind, they might be the object of will. As this is not the case, we can only beg for them… Or should we cease to desire them? What could be worse? Inner supplication is the only reasonable way, for it avoids stiffening muscles which have nothing to do with the matter. What could be more stupid than to tighten up our muscles and set our jaws about virtue, or poetry, or the solution of a problem. Attention is something quite different. Pride is a tightening up of this kind. There is a lack of grace (we can give the word its double meaning here) in the proud man. It is the result of a mistake. Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.

[alittlelessdemocracy]

Not so much an elitist as not an anti-elitist. Not so much a Christian as not an anti-Christian. Game, but not completely. Friend to all, but only so far. There’s a point beyond which friendliness is not so friendly. Where inclusion is compulsory, exclusion is universal. Step up - make yourself available, but that includes backing off a little bit. It’s not always easy. You want to be authentic, but there’s a trap there too. You have to find a balance. Or don’t really – the cost is the same. Like the man said – whoever is not against us is for us. That would be me – rooting for the eschaton, from underneath the bleachers. That being said – the ones who say it the other way - whoever is not with us is against us – those are the one you’ve got to watch out for. Get thee behind me as they say. No point arguing with them - not directly at least. They’re not against us exactly, but they’re not really for us either. They think they’re for everyone, but that’s nothing. More like “non-existent” to be more precise. That’s the trap – identifying with that. Identifying too completely with anything or anyone doesn’t leave room to grow. If it’s not growing, it’s dying, but in the end, it really is all the same - can’t have one without the other. But you can say it the other way too. That’s how it works here. Elitism is a protection racket. You got something good going – why jinx it? But that’s also how you jinx it – by protecting it too well. But if you don’t protect it at all, you’ll be lost in no time. You’ve got to make room for everything else, but if you make too much room, there’s no room left. If you don’t identify at all, you’re still hooked in. You do anything too well, and pretty soon you’ve got a mess on your hands. You’ve got to take time to make time, and you’ve got to make time to make anything worth making. Just ask the man who said that other thing – the thing about solidarity or whatever. Either one actually. They both know something. 

[alittlelessdemocracy]

In an ideal society, guilt and shame are in alignment – the values of society are in alignment with the good, so when you do bad, you feel bad – both because you’ve done wrong, and because you’ve been witnessed doing it. In a debased society, everybody is guilty, but no one feels guilty - everyone ought to be ashamed, but no one is; or no one is guilty, but everybody feels guilty, and no one ought to be ashamed, but everybody is. The former is the world of the exploiters, the latter that of the exploited. The worst possible world is the inversion of the ideal. In this case, guilt and shame are also in alignment - everyone is an exploiter, and everyone is exploited: a panopticon whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere, and whose radius is a spear skewering the ambitions for good or for ill in every heart.

[alittlelessdemocracy]

STEVEN HUSBY

muscle memory, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 22 inches

[alittlelessdemocracy]

The Assignment

If the assignment is too rigid, the student does not feel seen, and does not invest in the outcome. If the assignment is too vague, the student does not feel supported, and is afraid to invest in the outcome. The assignment gives the teacher something meaningful to talk to the student about, and gives the student something meaningful to talk to the teacher about. The content of the assignment is less important than the way the task motivates the student to listen to what the teacher has to say and try to understand it, and the way it motivates the teacher to overcome their own reluctance to risk speaking to the student. If the task is too easy, the student completes it without the teacher (if they complete it at all.) If the task is too difficult the student relies on the teacher too much, and abdicate their part in the outcome. For the assignment to be purposeful the task must feel purposeful. For the task to feel purposeful both the teacher and the student need to feel witnessed and taken seriously, but only up to a point. If either takes the other or the task too seriously – there is no growth. If either relates to the other or the task too lightly, there is no risk. Without investment, there is no learning for either the teacher or the student. Both must risk disappointing the other and themselves in order for teaching or learning to occur.

[alittlelessdemocracy]

Excerpt from Robert Farris Thompson: An Aesthetic of the Cool, African Arts, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Autumn, 1973)

The blending of muscular force and respectability leads to the appreciation of the fit human body in the cool, a right earned, however, by demonstration of character and right living. I once complimented the elders of Tinto-Mbu in the Banyang portion of the United Republic of Cameroon on the fine appearance of their chief. Whereupon they immediately corrected me: "We say people are not judged by physical beauty but by the quality of their heart and soul; the survival of our chief is a matter of his character, not his looks." However, no matter how ordinary his face, it is important for the chief to dress as beautifully as possible in order to attest his fineness of position in appropriate visual impact. He must consequently prove that he knows and controls the forces of beauty as much as the forces of polity and social pressure. Beauty, the full embodiment of manly power, or the power of women, in feminine contexts, is mandatory where it is necessary to clarify social relations. It would not make sense, in African terms of the aesthetic of the cool, to strike balances between opposing factions without aesthetic elaboration.

Coolness therefore imparts order not through ascetic subtraction of body from mind, or brightness of cloth from seriousness of endeavor, but, quite the contrary, by means of ecstatic unions of sensuous pleasure and moral responsibility.

We are in a sense describing ordinary lives raised to the level of idealized chieftaincy. The harmony of the marriage or the lineage ideally reflects the expected first magnitude harmony imparted by the properly functioning ruler to the province or nation at large. Men and women have the responsibility to meet the special challenge of their lives with the reserve and beauty of mind characteristic of the finest chiefs or kings. More than the benefit of the doubt is extended to mankind in his natural state by this philosophy. Man starts not from a premise of original sin but from the divine spark of equilibrium in the soul which enters the flesh at birth from the world of the gods. To act in foolish anger or petty selfishness is to depart from this original gift of interiorized nobility and conscience. This means a person has quite literally lost his soul. He has "departed from himself"" and is in serious danger. The Gd of southern Ghana even say that a person out of harmony with his ideal self can only win back his soul by means of extraordinary aesthetic persuasion: wearing brilliant cloth, eating cool, sumptuous food, keeping important company.

[alittlelessdemocracy]

The Yalu

Paul Valéry, cica 1895:

You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.

[alittlelessdemocracy]

STEVEN HUSBY

untitled, 2022, acrylic on paper, 9.25 x 6.25 inches

[alittlelessdemocracy]

How It’s Going

Colin Horgan, excerpt from: This Is How It Happens: A study of men in Hitler’s Germany shows how people allow tyranny to spread

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise,” the philologist told Mayer. The Nazi dictatorship was “diverting,” he said, in that it kept people “so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated… by the machinations of the ‘national enemies’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.”

Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, whose books were burned and who fled to London and then South America as the war began, felt similarly. “National Socialism, with its unscrupulous methods of deception, took care not to show how radical its aims were until the world was inured to them,” Zweig wrote in his 1942 reflections, The World of Yesterday, shortly before his suicide. “So it tried at its technique cautiously — one dose at a time, with a short pause after administering it. One pill at a time, then a moment of waiting to see if it had been too strong, if the conscience of the world could swallow that particular pill.”

As Zweig knew already then, the world did swallow that pill for a time. As did many people in Germany — including those who recognized the implications of that gradual progression. Because, as the philologist described to Mayer, that broader pattern of constant societal change that totalitarianism imposed had a profound effect on individual agency. It resulted in a kind of personal inertia, even when one had an inkling of what was being set in motion. Things kept getting worse, but, the philologist explained, one struggled to react properly, or convince others that they should be worried, too. “In your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist,’” he explained. “And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it.”

That’s because — just as Zweig had described it — “each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse,” the philologist explained. “You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow.” But that moment never came. “That’s the difficulty,” the philologist told Mayer. “If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes millions would have been sufficiently shocked… But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you to not be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”

The constant motion of totalitarianism Arendt would examine years later — the steady movement toward tyranny — is measured as drips, not as a flood.

“When men who understand what is happening — the motion, that is, of history, not the reports of single acts or developments — when such men do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to,” the philologist told Mayer.

How many men, he then asked, understood this in America? “And when, as the motion of history accelerates and those who don’t understand are crazed by fear, as our people were, and made into a great ‘patriotic’ mob,” he continued, “will they understand then, when they did not before?”

[alittlelessdemocracy]

20 Lessons from the 20th Century

Historian Timothy Snyder, Author of Bloodlands, and Black Earth:

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are 20 lessons from across the fearful 20th century, adapted to the circumstances of today.

1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf.  Institutions don’t protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

3. Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.

4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don’t fall for it.

6. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don’t use the Internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.

7. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

8. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

9. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate foreign propaganda pushes.

10. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

12. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

13. Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.

14. Give regularly to good causes, if you can. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good.

15. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting.  Consider using alternative forms of the Internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble.   Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

16. Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend.  And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.

18. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.)

19. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.

20. Be a patriot. The incoming president is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.