Weekly Grounding #69
Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.
Many of my recent Groundings have been focused on politics, not least because of the upcoming United States election and rapid developments in foreign affairs. This week, I turn broadly toward cultural topics. Enjoy the respite, because next week’s Weekly Grounding will be a Special Edition on the election.
“Remastering Capitalism”
At
, deploys the metaphors of mixing, mastering, EQ, and effects in music production to think about capitalism: “Mixing and mastering are art-forms dedicated to bringing separate things into a whole, and this provides us with a new metaphor for thinking about how our economic system brings together different parts of our being. When listening to a song, we experience it as a whole, and we seldom think about the many alternative ways it could have been mixed. Similarly, each of us experiences ourselves as a whole as we navigate corporate capitalism, but we seldom think about the many alternative ways we could have turned out if we were living under a different system. The system we’re in will amplify certain values, beliefs or ‘natures’ within us, while filtering others out.”“Representing ‘commercial vibes’ in EQ format is an interesting metaphorical challenge, and I’m not sure I’ve yet fully worked out how to do it. Capitalism often promotes a seemingly contradictory mix of militaristic discipline in the workplace alongside undisciplined consumption in the marketplace, so as those values start to be overlaid over all our tracks, my intuition is that it boosts the aggressive mids of competition, and the tinny analytical treble of data-driven optimisation, all while cutting soulful bass….[A]ll of us will also attempt to alter this by adding in our own external effects units. For example, some might turn to religion, radical politics, underground grime music or meditation to provide some counterbalance to the dominant setup, while the dominant setup will try to re-route those very same impulses back through the capitalist mixing desk.”
“Habermas Machines”
At
, critiques Big Tech’s efforts to automate the consensus-building process through artificial intelligence: “[T]he ideology that lurks behind many AI projects…sees communication as inconvenient and interpersonal encounters as so much unpleasantness to be avoided. The fantasy is to eliminate the order of humans and replace it with an order of things and a pseudo-physics that can completely explain everything that happens with that order…Since deliberation and communication are irrelevant, ultimately consciousness is irrelevant as well — intentions are not to be ‘expressed’ but extracted from empirical measurements. And LLMs, which have no intentionality, can serve as the institutional language or format that operates without falling into intersubjectivity or projections of consciousness.”Horning continues: “[W]hat is important for tech companies is simply that everyone’s will is gathered — that a kind of unceasing surveillance can be rationalized and operationalized…The process of consolidating those wills can be alienated from those whose wills will be consolidated, imposed mechanically from outside, not as a matter of conscious thought and changing people’s minds but as a matter of regarding consciousness as epiphenomenal, downstream from whatever has been imposed on it, using ‘AI’ to ‘shape reality’ and produce the consciousness of those subject to it. In other words, tech companies can posit a world where all political discourse occurs between isolated individuals and LLMs, and the data produced could be used to facilitate social control while everyone gets to feel heard. The automated production and summarization and summation of political opinion doesn’t help people engage in collective action; it produces an illusion of collective action for people increasingly isolated by media technology.”
“How Anime Took Over the World”
Leo Lewis explores the global rise of anime for The Financial Times: “Unlike some other forms of entertainment, whose popularity expanded strongly during the pandemic but waned afterwards, anime consumption has continued growing past 2022. In 2023, the combined sales of Japan’s anime production companies surged almost 23 per cent from a year earlier to hit an all time record and, according to research group Teikoku Databank, are on course to break that again in 2024. Analysts at Jefferies cite industry projections that the global anime market will almost double from $31.2bn in 2023 to $60bn by 2030 because what was once a largely Japanese genre has comprehensively shifted into the mainstream culture of the US and Europe.”
He continues: “Only a few years ago, Japanese studios and distributors would wait for any given anime to notch a clear domestic success before pushing it out to the rest of the world. That no longer matters. The global fan base is now so large that most output can be considered worldwide content.”
The globalization of postwar Japanese culture is a significant phenomenon, and this article reminded me of Dave Chappelle’s commentary on the topic.
“Creating West Coast Buddhism”
Ethan Edwards explores the rise of “West Coast Buddhism” at
: “The gradual purging of superstitious elements and of distinctions between clergy and laypeople, as well as a turn toward personal practice, reflect a Buddhism changed to meet the expectations of Westerners. These reforms were not evenly distributed—monastic distinctions and discipline were actually reinforced in the Theravada world, and popular practices were rarely overturned for most laypeople in the Buddhist world itself—but the version of Buddhism presented to the West was one crafted for this very purpose.”He continues: “Within a generation, the waning religiosity of America opened further space for mindfulness to become something everyone should do. Buddhism as secular mindfulness meditation is no longer a counter-cultural commitment, but one of many options for individuals to spend their time on alongside exercise, drugs, yoga, and diets. While Western Buddhist temples would rarely request fees for classes, it is now standard for smartphone apps and meditation centers to charge subscriptions.”
Edwards concludes: “[T]he cost of the mindfulness revolution has been Buddhism’s lost monopoly on many of its core concepts. Very few of those using Buddhist practices will ever become Buddhists in a religious sense. California Buddhism is one of the most successful cultural syntheses of the last century; but as far as conversion goes, it seems that it is Buddhism that has embraced California rather than the other way around.”
“The Boom in Home Schooling”
The Financial Times reports on increasing rates of homeschooling in the post-pandemic United States and United Kingdom: “Partially driving the shift, according to some education experts, is the inability of traditional schools — whether state-funded or fee-paying — to support children struggling with their mental health, particularly after the pandemic, or those with special educational needs and disabilities.” Despite mental health being as a key factor, the primary reason parents choose to homeschool in England is philosophical:
The United Kingdom—a country with poor free speech and civil liberties protections—has sought to crack down on the recent upsurge in homeschooling through a “children’s wellbeing bill to include a register for local authorities to track children not in school.” However, “The situation in the US is different, where, owing to parent choice and religious views, home schooling has a long tradition. But recent data from the Institute of Education Sciences shows there has also been a jump in the number of US school-aged children who were home schooled from 3.7 per cent in 2018-19 to 5.2 per cent in 2022-23.” This jump can be observed across wide swathes of the country:
See Weekly Grounding #28 as well as the 2021 New Yorker article, “The Rise of Black Homeschooling” for more on the drivers of this uptick in homeschooling in the United States.
“The Walking Rebellion: Restoring the Mind at Three Miles an Hour”
and discuss walking as an act of rebellion at : “Walking is one of the simplest and most universal actions imaginable for human beings, and one of the ultimate acts of unmachining. Walking redirects our muddled thoughts outward toward the scenery we are passing. It helps us to connect with each other in shared conversation and rhythmic pace. It echoes history and tradition through a most simple movement that has remained ‘essentially unimproved since the dawn of time.’ Importantly, the act of walking not only restores our minds, but helps to build up internal resilience and resistance against algorithmic mental slavery.”Gaskovski and Peco weave in anecdotes from their readers on the topic of walking and conclude that “Walking is calming, head-clearing, and social and even spiritual when we do it together. If walking were a food, it would be a celebrated superfood packed with nutrients that feed our mind, body, relationships, and contact with nature—and it would cost nothing. The beauty of walking is that it does so many things at once, in a single, simple act. Walking creates a wholeness in us in a way that few other activities can. And it can’t be monetized. We all walk a bit differently. Some people walk with canes, some ‘walk’ with wheelchairs or ambulate with prosthetic limbs. Whatever way you walk, we’re going to suggest that walking long distances regularly, preferably in nature, might be one of the easiest yet most powerful antidotes to the Machine.”
What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.
Thanks for sharing The Walking Rebellion Vincent!