JamesLindenschmidt.com

I just saw that my article has been published in vol. 9 of The Commoner. From the introduction to the issue:

The first contribution by James W. Lindenshmidt is a detailed analysis of the dynamic of revolution and counter-revolution of cyberspace. Borrowing from the theoretical frameworks of Midnight Notes and of this journal, he explains the nitty-gritty of the creation of virtual commons and the open and subtle strategies promoted by capital to enclose and commodify this space. In this way, it is possible to identify how capital creates scarcity in a post-scarcity virtual space. These enclosures of the virtual commons are not enforced by shotguns or by depleted-uranium missiles. The virtual enclosures are perfectly enforceable, because the rules of enforcement are being architected into the code of the Internet itself. Cyberspace is malleable, and it is increasingly being cast into a space with an infrastructure of built-in, centralized control.

This publication has been brewing for a while. I’m glad to see it’s seeing the light of day. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the articles.

Believe it or not, it’s true. Even they can see the wisdom of abandoning Internet Explorer.

I know several people that are switching to Mozilla Firefox. It’s easy to do, switch and most likely you won’t regret it.

My life has been insanely busy as of late. Among this busy-ness has been a tremendous amount of creative output, just beginning, for my music and the album recording. Somewhat paradoxically, a big part of this output has entailed a lot of input, namely technical manuals learning how to use the recording gear.

As a result, apart from some light blogging on this site, my writing has come to a standstill. I haven’t had time or energy or inspiration to write lately. But today, for the first time in a long time, I felt the call to begin writing again.

I may not act upon this call, at least not right away. I have no idea what I’d write about. Perhaps it’s time for a larger writing project again. I’m not sure I have the stomach for more political rants and analysis on the dangers of the current intellectual property culture. Perhaps something more metaphysical would be to my taste. But every time I conceive of such a project (a good friend and I have sort of danced around the idea of collaborating on such a project for a long time now), it occurs to me that I can’t see why anyone would want to read what I have to say on such subjects. Pretty ironic, that I can go effortlessly into rant mode when it comes to Intellectual Property, or Linux, or the Bushites. As if anyone really wants to hear about this…

Another part of me knows that writing, though I enjoy it (to an extent) and I feel I have some skill, requires enough time and attention that it presently can be no more than a hobby for me. My attention is commanded by other things, things that I am not willing to sacrifice for writing. I’ve waited too long to record my own music. Now that the process is finally, after so many years, underway, it needs as much attention as I can give it.

Regardless, though, I heard the call of the scribe today. Perhaps I need to listen closer, and decipher the whisperings floating through the mists, and distinguish them from the rhythmic white noise lapping at the shore all around me. The whispering, the articulate sighs that pass over lips like a spent lover drifting off to sleep, what do they say?

This is just amazing. I can imagine the recall letters:

Hi, we’ve decided to cut your pay and your benefits as a veteran. But now we’re recalling you back into active service to go and put your ass on the line for our selfish interests in Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, you’ll be protecting all the oil industry contractors from Halliburton, who are all making more than 10 times what you’ll be making. Have a nice day, and may God continue to bless the United Empire of America.

Unbelievable. The fact that we have the largest military in the world, and that we’re shorthanded, speaks volumes.

I’m reading the recent Al Gore speech called “Democracy Itself is in Grave Danger.” It’s a great speech, succinctly and clearly outlining the danger posed to America by the Bushites acquiring too high a concentration of power. One of the key passages:

The Bush administration’s objective of establishing U.S. domination over any potential adversary led to the hubristic, tragic miscalculation of the Iraq war, a painful adventure marked by one disaster after another based on one mistaken assumption after another. But the people who paid the price have been the U.S. soldiers trapped over there and the Iraqis in prison. The top-heavy focus on dominance as a goal for the U.S. role in the world is exactly paralleled in their aspiration for the role of the president to be completely dominant in the constitutional system. Our founders understood even better than Lord Acton the inner meaning of his aphorism that power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely. The goal of dominance necessitates a focus on power. Ironically, all of their didactic messages about how democracies don’t invade other nations fell on their own deaf ears. The pursuit of dominance in foreign and strategic policy led the Bush administration to ignore the United Nations, do serious damage to our most important alliances in the world, violate international law and risk the hatred of the rest of the world. The seductive exercise of unilateral power has led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that would have been the worst nightmare of our framers.

This principle of establishing domination over any potential adversary is key to understanding the actions of the US government over the past decade. Midnight Notes has written extensively about this issue. I was, frankly, surprised to see Gore mentioning this.

But it occurs to me that if Gore’s election to the presidency had been permitted to stand, he would never be saying such things. In other words, the office of president inherently seems to prevent its occupants from speaking their truth, espcially political truth. Anyone with half a brain, including Gore, can see the danger of Bush’s actions. And now that he’s not a governmental official, he’s in a position to express these truths.

While ultimately I’m glad Gore is speaking of these things, things that are glaringly obvious to many of us, it is sad that political office seems to entail obfuscation of the truth.

I’ve been having the most amazing ongoing conversation with a very close friend about the connection between personal/existential authenticity, and emotional vulnerability. First, let me explain what I’m talking about.

Authenticity refers to the notion of being true to yourself, to your feelings, and your desires to be a whole person. Authenticity is not only something to be cultivated in a person, but it is also something that is elusive. It’s an ideal, something that one can strive for, but never perfectly achieve.

Emotional vulnerability is the way in which one can experience negative emotional fallout from unpleasant confrontations. It is especially important for those who show a high degree of empathy; an empath will inherently be much more vulnerable to the emotional energy of others.

So my friend and I are both empaths. We talk about how to deal with it a lot. It occured to me that as we strive for authenticity, we become less vulnerable to negative emotional fallout. This idea is basically an extension of the Socratic notion that “nothing can harm a good person.” A corollary to this idea is that it is better to be authentic, and to speak one’s truth, and deal with the emotional fallout of authenticity than to be inauthentic and deal with the energy blockages that result. Interesting thesis. I’m not 100% sure I believe it, but so far it seems correct to me.

I feel like I have much, much more to say about this, but right now I’m at work. I’ve been interrupted (assuming actually doing my job can be considered interruption… heh) literally a dozen times as I’ve tried to type this, so I’ll save more for later. Interesting thoughts to chew on, nonetheless…

If you pay attention to this site, you’ll notice that I tweaked the HTML layout a bit. Actually, more accurately, I tweaked the style sheet. I changed the font of the text of each entry from garamond to a free font called ‘Bitstream Vera Sans’, with Verdana as a backup. It’s the same font that everything else on the page was. I also decreased the size of the fonts a bit.

Please leave comments under this entry if you have an opinion about the new look.

Just a brief note to say that I’m very encouraged by the direction of public sentiment against the Bush cabal in Washington. Virtually no one I know is for Bush anymore. The prime legacy of the Bush administration, I believe, is that they have brought corruption, greed, and cronyism into the foreground. In other words, a lot of the stuff they pull has been going on for a long time. But with the Bushites, they do it openly for all to see. No wonder the world hates what the American government stands for…

The amount of cognitive dissonance that a Bush supporter has to have — the sheer number of utter contradictions that Bush supporters have to hold in their mind — means that anytime you question one of them, you can actually smell the smoke. Sometimes you can even see the sparks.

I can’t see how Bush can “win” an “election” in November. This does not mean, of course, that he won’t be president again. It will be interesting to watch.

It’s been an insanely busy few weeks. I’ve actually had a complaint from one of my faithful readers (!) about the lack of activity on my blog. I imagine the other one will be complaining shortly… ;-)

Last weekend, I went 3 hours up the coast for a small, intimate retreat with some very close friends. It was a bit stressful due to some of the dynamics at work, but all in all a nice weekend.

I climbed my first mountain ever, Acadia Mountain on Mt. Desert Island just off the coast of Ellsworth, Maine. Though it’s a small mountain, it was very cool to go for a nice climb. My legs are, frankly, still recovering, though their weariness has been exacerbated by lots of walking and biking since I got back. It was a very surreal experience; the day we chose to go hiking was cloudy and misty. What could have been a fantastic view of Soames Sound, the inlet that nearly divides the island in two, was a glimpse into the gray abyss of nothingness. It was quite an existential moment actually; it forced us in a sort of mystical way to focus on the immediacy of the mountain itself. The hike itself was short, but somewhat strenuous. It wasn’t just follow-the-uphill-path; there was definitely some climbing involved. It started to rain as we came down, so the rocks were a bit slippery. But we all survived, and went into Bar Harbor afterwards for lunch. My daughter, who would turn 7 2 days after the hike, did very well. She beat me by 28 years, in the age-at-which-we-climb-our-first-mountain category.

Things Quitchy continue to progress. I’m getting better at programming drums, and with Matt’s help, I’m learning to put the drum fills and flourishes in the right spaces around the songs, accenting the vocal lines. I’m quite pleased with how well this is turning out. Forward momentum.

I also met a “virtual” friend for the first time last week. We have a lot in common, we’re both musicians, we’re both setting up sonar-based studios, and we both share a love for prog rock, and an appreciation for our mutual friend and cosmic adventurer Buzz Bakewell.

I’ve also been reconnecting with my wife in a wonderful way. We’re doing good work together, while still managing to find time to play. Our relationship is growing in interesting and magical ways. We’re also getting closer to other people in our community, which continues to amaze and excite me. Yes, I can say with some amount of certainty, my life rocks.

Because I took last weekend off from work, I’ve been working more this week to make up the hours. So my schedule has been insanely busy. It’s funny that in order to carve space in my reality for a vacation, I have to make the time around the vacation very busy. Ah well. So it goes.

According to this story on CNN, Colin Powell is “not a happy camper” about the fact that someone lied about the levels of terrorist activity. Originally, they claimed that terrorism was on the decline, which would imply that the ludicrous “war on terror” is somehow being effective.

The fact is, however, that “figures from a corrected report ‘will be up sharply,'” according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Does anyone else see this as further evidence that this ridiculous “war on terror” is only exacerbating the situation? This is not difficult, folks. I wrote about this in November, 2001. I am far from an expert, but this just seems obvious to me.