Facebook’s Adorno Changed My Life by Georg Boch

New review up at the Anthropology Review Database:

http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=4322

Review of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? from deconstructingcomics.com

Written and drawn by Brian Fies.

Abrams Comic Arts, 2009.

Growing up in Kansas we took several school field trips to the Kansas Cosmosphere, a science museum devoted to space exploration. The exhibits devoted to liquid rockets, Robert Goddard, the Space Race and the lunar landing were extremely fascinating. Brian Fies shares some of that fascination with space exploration (and the attendant futurism) and applying his talents of science writing toward those subjects created the graphic novel Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow?

This book begins with a young boy and his father as they are spectators to the scientific advancements that progressed from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, where the first glimpses of the future are laid out by the awe striking exhibits to a very young main character. The book is divided into decades after this and the events of progress in space exploration (as well as its effects on terrestrial technology) are described through the end of World War II in 1945, Cold War fears of mutually assured destruction in 1955, changing social norms in 1965 and disillusionment with the orbital based space program in 1975 (after the high water mark of the manned lunar landings).  (Read whole review…)

Rock Prophecies by John Chester

New review posted on the Anthropology Resource Database:  http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=3909

Chaos Magick and George Hay

This is a trailer from the documentary The Eldritch Influence, a film about H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulu Mythos.  It features Neil Gaiman remarking about George Hay’s strange theory that the Elder Gods only need be believed in and they become real in a sense, at least real enough to invite us to worship them…

Now why is this important?  For one to understand chaos magick one must recognize that it is not simply a naive belief in something that one thinks is real, but a mental process where one accepts something to be imaginary but behaves as if it is real in certain situations.

Some theorists have explained this as a process of paradigm shifting, an interesting model for this process of moving in and out of belief systems.  The main idea is that the ceremonial magician, or whatever person is trying to achieve some goal through the manipulation of the supernatural creates a mentally divergent reality (which in a sense is relative anyway) and replaces it with a notion that may be from another belief system than that which the person normally operates under or one that the user knows to be false but they behave as if it is real for the duration of the working.

The problem with chaos magick is that in terms of a universal it can only be descriptive when applied to a general modernist Western mindset.  In a certain sense the chaos magician (always spelling issues on this as people try to disambiguate the term) must, by definition be an atheist or at least an agnostic, despite what they identify themselves as.  The chaos magician must have some idea that the supernatural formulation that they are attempting to negotiate with/manipulate is in fact imaginary.  The ceremonial magician who prays to Jesus is operating under Christianity.  The same person invoking Voodoo Loa is not a chaos magician.  But the invocation of one of Lovecraft’s Elder Gods is attributed to chaos magic.  Why?

Part of that division might be a case against the totalizing effect of cultural relativism, though subtle in its influence.  While we are often left with the live and let live of cultural relativism, we are left with the problem of dealing with uncorrected facts accepted as truth regardless of what evidence might be available.  A reality might take hold so strongly that no amount of evidence can be evoked that will provide a change of thought.  Big foot must exist because of this reason or that reason.  Or conversely, the scientific community has not had access to a physical specimen so it does not exist.  I tend to take the side of science and materialism in most matters, having little belief in the truth or efficacy of most Fortean topics.

I am also a student of cultural anthropology, and though I may have graduated the thinking seems to never be done.  I find myself recognizing that belief is real and has an effect on the mind of the believer regardless of many material conditions.  I am not an advocate of material determinism, but do admit that material influence is both expected and notable.  In anthropology there are numerous examples of how people move between different belief systems as goals are presented.  It is the also part of the Christian religion, where it is a monotheism with a trinity and (especially if you are Catholic) a whole subset of specialized angels for certain issues.  That does not mean that they regard their belief as polytheism, the rub about cultural relativism is that you can’t go pointing out such things in conversations with those who are believers in that religion, though we have no problems in applying such dismissive explanations to the cargo cults of Melanesia, where the ideas are constructed and referred to as superstitions without using that dirty term.  Other belief systems, particularly what we term indigenous in nature are often constructed as unreal relationships with the divine.  This is often due to our love affair with material technology as a sign of civilization, especially industrialization.

This can cut both ways.  Richard Dawkins, in his love of atheism, has invoked the term athorism to describe how people don’t believe in Thor anymore.  The problem is that neo-pagans who apply Norse mythology or Odinists do believe in Thor.  The problem with the purely atheist notions of belief is that they often come from a place where material evidence is taken as the starting point of the argument and the burden of proof is applied to the believer.  Epistemological uncertainty is not applied to the supernatural, there is always a covert and material explanation to a belief system that exists because it facilitates some cultural adaptation that is functional.  Many, if not most, anthropologists follow this reasoning.  I have to admit, there is something to it.  The problem is that in the modern and global world with a multiplicity of religions, ethnicities, identities and experiences the functioning mind must adapt to a mass of confusion.  Coupled with an epistemological uncertainty derived from a relativistic point of view you end up with conditions where an isolated person might develop ritual and religious practices that are derived from a knowingly imaginary subject and where they perform activities as if they are true.

I wrote a research paper, unpublished, titled It’s Pronounced kə-THOO-loo: Chaos Magick and the Cthulu Mythos. In it I tried to present an explanation of chaos magick, as it is practiced through the Cthulu Mythos, as a form of cognitive dissonance.  The paper wasn’t very good and the construction of cognitive dissonance is a bit culture bounded.  An example is the idea that people have only one religion, which in the study of anthropology is a pretty naive idea.  Missionaries are not interested in debating theology with the natives, so the authority over the belief system that the missionary presents is fed back to the missionary or any government entity they might represent while a variety of folk religions and synergy take place in real life.

To quote comic author and chaos magician Alan Moore:

The idea that Art should, only ever be a mirror to reality has always seemed ass-backwards to me, given that Art is always and everywhere well-groomed and impeccably turned out, whereas Reality wears a pair of two-year-old Adidas trainers and a Toy Story T-shirt. As far as I’m concerned, it’s rather the job of reality to try and reflect Art. The purpose of Art is not to mirror reality, but to shape it by the imprints and aspirations that it leaves in the human mind. Anyway, enough about Art and Reality.

The above quote was published in the back of Dave Sim’s Cerberus comic, as well as in the 50th birthday present to Alan Moore titled Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman. The two have a discussion of the writing process of Moore’s From Hell.  Alan Moore is probably the best known chaos magician, the second being comic book author Grant Morrison.  Why comic book authors?  Probably the mix of pre-existing mysticism and their own work readapting previously told myths into new forms.  Morrison is most likely influenced by Moore, and maybe even in his mysticism as well as his writing, but both seem to have different ideas about how chaos magic influences their work.  Moore uses chaos magic in his work as inspiration and as content, following a meta path of utmost formalism.  Morrison makes the work itself part of the chaos magic and the characters (maybe more in his conception than that of his audience) are made real through the writing process and come to impact on the creator and maybe the consumer as well.  The fact that they have become chaos magicians is mostly known through the notoriety they have in the small but inbred field of comics.

Neil Gaiman, the man who paraphrases the George Hay quote in the youtube trailer, is also a comic book writer.  He is not a chaos magician – near as I can tell – though his parents are high ups in British Scientology.  The point of that story is that it is a democratic power that enables belief systems with legitimacy.  That might be a democratic view of the universe, but it is also a representation of how ideas form out of the individual and become collective.  Lovecraft did not claim to be a prophet, in fact he was an atheist.  But the structure he hinted at was rich enough to be accepted as a possibility when people began to look at the hyper-relativism that came from living in the 20th century and maybe appropriated the Cthulu Mythos as a better and more representative version of cosmology than standard Christianity.  That belief might also have been something of a transgressive element, an acceptance of a reality that runs counter to the one presented by Christianity and in some senses insulting to Christianity.  Satanism, as a belief system, often functions to the adherent as a form of willful transgression of Christianity and indeed relies on Christianity as a foil for its purposes.  The attraction to the Cthulu Mythos might be something from all of those, but the movement from a matter of abnormal psychology to a subcultural belief structure practiced by a small group of people cannot be denied.  But whereas Alan Moore’s Glycon is still a very personal totem (and is likely to remain, if for no other reason that Alan Moore is not seen to be like other humans) the Cthulu Mythos has grown to become something different from its creator(s).

I think George Hay was hitting on a very important point.  Reality, as we are wont to describe it, is democratic.  Enough people have to believe.  Chaos Magick has found a home in Cthulu, since it is probably the most recognizable of possible substitutions for Western deities that we know of.  The metaphysics and psychology of the ritual magic process might be the same for accepted religions and those of the chaos magicians (sexual elements not withstanding) but it is that manipulation of the content that is really fascinating.

Subgenius Devival…In China?

As a challenge to religious freedom in China the first Subgenius devival is scheduled to occur.  Will it?  Will they end up re-educated?  Will the State survive?  I don’t know, but if they can pull it off then it will be amazing.

For directions to the Shanghai event see:

http://www.subgenius.com/newdevivals.html

I would love to go but cannot.  I would love to hear from anyone who does go about how the reaction is by the State police.

White Zombie vs Starbucks…

Have you ever noticed the similairities of the logos of White Zombie and Starbucks?

Transmetropolitan Soup For The Soul #10

The Thing Loves You…

Found on Ebay.

Flight 666: Sam Dunn’s Iron Maiden Documentary In Theaters Soon…

Coming to the big screen on April 21st, 2009.  Not coming to my area, but hopefully it will be out on DVD soon.

Happy Holidays…

Merry Christmas…