communication lost
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Communucation makes the Human. Or so i think.
(Not that it matters what i think, or whether I think at all, if i pay my bills. Well, one day i'll present My Bill, i just need to find whom. Somewhen, earlier, or later, will be found. see "Eric" by Terry Pratchet about the Absolute Ultimate Bill.)
So, on the the question at hand. Without communication, any ape will put us in his small pocket. In any aspect.
(oops. Actualy, i'm talking about communing, as more complex type of communication - there is difference. If i blink an eye, and you blink an eye in return - this is communication, but only if we Both understand the Meaning of the information communicated - then it is sort a of communing.)
Some people has got it, about the communication, before far ago.
One part of them have invented meanings to help the communication. Tales, legends, songs - easier (associative) remembering and transmitting of the information, in space and time. Books, papers, telecommunication - expanding the range of transmition in time and space. Computers - faster, routine processing (ah, the Uncertainty Principle comes to "help" here - faster, yes, but not more exact. But it all comes from the constantly (decreasing) amount of work involved...)
As for the communing, the Human, as Kind, has invented means to help it too. Work-bee, family, school, friends, serios and nonserios conversations...
Well, Other part of people has got it even better. And invented means to obstruct the communication.
From breaking the equipment and murdering the source, to producing Noise - in all possible aspects. Including totally false themes and totally false communication.
(It's like in the bathroom, when you cannot stop the hot water from dripping on your back, it is better to let enough cold water go, so at least it does not burn your skin. Well, you are to catch cold, but who cares about such longter, problems if the current shortterm one is avoided?)
Propagande and demagogy - ah, what a heavy words? Then then point me something in the "reality" around, which hasn't yet become Propagande or demagogy. If you suceed - bless you. In some societies there are still such Real "anachronisms". Oh, how i envy them! (but you'd better look tho-o-oroughly, that it's not some imitation. Humans are damn good in immitations.)
And they've found the crack with the commuting as well. Religious hatred, "Iron curtains", stone smiles of the type "Hello-how-are-you-how-can-i-help-you", and royal etiquiette "hello / how are you? -- fine thanks and how are you -- terribly well. good day today" and you don't at all listen to what the other says - as it's not supposed to say something Different. etc.etc. Some languages (why English springs to mind) even made sure there's no personal attitude to people. You are You. No singular, personal one. Nothing personal, you understand, just job. Boom, next one.
Somewhen someone said that money are also way of communication. Yes, it is so. Extremely abstract one, but - communication. Giving Money from one hand into other, is Transmitting Information. At least that the buyer approves (in certain sense) the seller's good, if you want. And another thousand ways of interpretation, most of them economical, some social, some technological (pebbles or woods or irons (coins) or papers (banknotes) or plastics (cards) or simply numbers in banc accounts - here you go, technological porgress. From the stone, till the information age.
Verry well then. But as any abstract class in the object oriented programming (which is expected to good enough mirror of reality), one SHOULD NOT make random interpretation of simple to more complex, specialized (meaning - Real) classes.
So, i go into the kiosk to buy a newspaper. And by the way talk with the woman behind the desk for this or that, 1 minute. Nothing much, but still communing. The act of buying itself (moving of some cents from one side to othe side of desk) is simply lost. And why would i talk with her? Just like that, coz' she might tell me with 5 sentences what is in the newspaper, coz' she had already read it. Pure ProFit, for both me and her. I save half an hour filtering of the (textual-language) shit and reading of the lines (so i can read between the lines later), she tells someone some of opinions of her. And i even could buy (and she cound sell) some or another pastry, or pen, or whatever.
Yeah, but nah. We are informational-technological society! No time for similar "lyrical distractions". Get crazy! Don't think! No time! Now! Immediately! Here's me running to the newspaper vending machine, put the coins in, push the button, here you go, newspaper in 5 seconds. Super! i Saved!
Heh, and what i saved? (i've already looked to have the Exact Coins, which already spent time and nerves, and from now on for whole hour i'll transform the letterings into words, words into sentences, sentences into ideas, ideas into reasons ... No pastry, i'll have to go on a sandvich, i think i have coins for it as well (did i? lemme check my pockets...), or here's the card, where the hell was my pen... This idiot! What the fuck he wants, i'm driving in my lane! ah, it has been his lane)
Hey but no need to listen to the bablery of the shop-keeper! Well, it's simple, tell her that you are rushing and have no time for words, and that's it. She's a human too, will understand.
Machine vending of cigarettes. Allright. Of chewing gums - allright. Of condoms. ah, allright. Of bottles with more or less sticky liquids - oh, allright. Of croissans. Cakes, pastries, sandviches. Allright. Of money (the so called ATM - this would the be most stupid invention of programming, if for 30 years all programming books start and end with that). All right.
Aren't the allrights a bit too many?
Cars? Beautiful! Everybody is only one travel afar, and Everybody is traveling. EVERYONE.
What about the internet? yes, of course. Everybody is only one packet of bytes far. Does this sound good to you? Oh, Yes, yes. But, Note it, EVERYBODY!
Nah, cannot be used everywhere, not a correct logic, this one - Generalizing/Abstractizing till the end. The elephants eat bananas, i eat bananas too, hence i am an elefant. Communing is type of communication, buy-sell is sort of communication, moving of money is communication, hence moving of money is communing, and the communing is (just) moving of money .
No way, dear.
Once upon the time i lived on the 14th floor. And in the lift i met who-not. (100 flats by 3-4 people each, plus their guests - comes to quite alot of people). AND I HATED to greet all of them. I greeted only certain people, which i somehow thought as My circle of people. The rest were simply going mad. Big fun. They couldn't take that someone, worse - a kid, could break "The Etiquette", and make its own choice, even more if they could not do that anymore, coz they had it as habbit.
One could say, the "HELL IS THE OTHER PEOPLE" was jsut the motto of my life - regardless that i learned about this frase long, long time later (it is so right in most cases, and so wrong in the others). And i didn't smile to noone, excluding My Friends. Yeah, i did have friends. Teritorial pissings, if you want. Because the Smile is something valuable, you cannot give it away just like that to anyone - how would they know the difference, if you are grining all the time? Those who grin nonstop are usualy sent into greenish rooms with thick soft walls.
Then, one day, i went to live into another country, more or less being an English Product (not that it matters anymore. Now it's almost all the same everywhere). Heh but there EVERYBODY was saying hello-how-are-you and was smiling (and didn't expect answer at all). After it, when he sees that you're not watching him, he switches off the smile, like you do not exist at all. Just another brick in the wall. Brrrrr, i simply froze from those smiles. Even at 40 degress outside (and 18 inside)
What communiing are you talking about! It was destroyed in birth. Etiquette, Protocol, everywhere. No way, you say, cannot be, sure they are normal at home. Aha. How you imaginate that, 8 hours crazy, 16 hours normal? Everybody has a forking personality syndrome? And the eyes said different. "Oh, yet another customer/hour/day..."
So there i started to think about it, anyway, which IS and which IS NOT communication, more precisely, communing. If X is smiling to you, this is communication, he likes you in certain way. if Everybody is smiling to you, this is not communication. This is white noise. Either some bird has dropped on your face, and all the people are immersely nasty not to tell you, or they are all not very much sane. Or you are not sane. Yes, that's it, you are different. The different ones, we shoot them with stones. (the anecdote for the crazymen, which pretended to be pears. Hang, hang on the tree, then say "I Ripened!" and fell down. The doctor who was pretending to be one of them to be able to track them, didn't want to fall from so high, and said he hasn't ripened yet. "Oh, we shoot those who didn't ripe with stones" and started firing at him".)
Respectively, deprived from normal communing, any kernel of something similar to communing is being expanded to enourmous size and perceived almost with orgasm. "Really? Fantastic! Terrific!"
Like the blind man, all the other senses develope some more to compensate for the missing one.
When i think 'bout it, once in my town, in my lost country, there were lots of such people, who looked like they sleep with the Interesting all days. Posing as far as you want. And conversation like the above one were there. And it was only showing that they did not have anything of what the others had, and tried to get some immitiation on the moment. But whom to know at that time. We envied them so much...
Gimme adrenaline!
Sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. Of course, none of these things in Real.
Gimme adrenaline! Blood and sperm, Bread and Entertainment. yes but not, not this way anymore. Okay they. The other (dangerless) source of adrenaline is ... Fear.
Let you now tell me how many of the recent flood of movies, articles, books etc. information carrier (media) is something else.
But, you'll say, the world's (imperializm/ fundamentalizm/ badizm/ goodizm/ thisizm and thatizm) and generally, stupidity, is sending this to us!
Nah. It does not come because of something more, or of somebody. It comes because of ABSENCE.
ABSENCE of COMMUNING.
So, fuck, what? Rebel? Get lost.
Hipies went in the past, now we are Modern. They wanted the sex and the rock and roll, now why are you complaining, that each movie (and anything else) are only surface primeval experience?
Wait, they wanted Some small part of this. They wanted diversity. All rebels somehow want diversity. Even those who shoot down their schoolmates. Remember the pricinple of the Noise and the dropping hot water in the start. From total absence (and equality), and there is total presence (and equiality). And where's the difference then?
What to do? Well, think of it. Think about it all the time. Put this hough in a background process, give it priority of 1%, and let it stay. Probbaly somewhere, somewhen something could be done. For you, for your children, or for the Others. Yeah, those who are the Hell. Talk with them, laugh with them, cry with them.
Commune.
Cum'on, fuck off.
SvD
oct'2k