Disclaimer: the below may sound particularly philosophical*. I detest philosophical manifestos. All I want to do here is document the impact that my time in Cape Town has had on me. This is not a manifesto; please don’t read it as such. Don’t believe a word of what I say below – get your own philosophy, make up your own mind. For that matter, live without a philosophy – they tend to deteriorate into manifestos.

I first visited Cape Town in January 2000 1 and by April 2000 I had moved down to start work in Wetton and to live in the city bowl. The last eight years have been a transformative time for me, though its roots lie in the last few months of my time in Pretoria. Cape Town has been the psychedelic years and while the tryptamines have long already worked themselves out of my system my brain has been permanently redirected – outward, to the above and below. I feel like the years in Cape Town have been what finally connected me to the reality of the world around me, to people and to the natural world as a physical phenomenon. And as I’m writing this post I feel overcome by an enormous sense of gratitude towards the city, its location at the foot of Table Mountain, its solitary beaches and forests. I firmly believe that the years 2000 to 2004 couldn’t have happened (as they did) anywhere else.

There have been many important things to me while living in Cape Town, friendships and car crashes, but I’ll pick out four which, in particular, made these years as full as they have been. But first, some music; I’ve written a separate mini-post on the electronic music that I discovered in the first four or so years of my time here.

Natural Reality

Cape Town is overcome by natural beauty; built around a mountain, beaching the Atlantic and Indian oceans, home to the most diverse biome on the planet. The more I travel the more I realise how few other cities in the world can claim anything like the natural surrounds that we have here. And even more important than just the pure beauty of the city surrounds is how accessible it is. While living in Vredehoek the slopes of Table Mountain were no more than a short (but steep) walk from my front door.

It was on those slopes with the mountain’s cubic cliffs behind me and the city and ocean down below that I found more and more evidence of the polar simplicity of nature’s random workings. In my experience nature has no glorious, glowing spirit which softly forms its seasons; instead I’ve experienced it as fundamentally simple, basic in the extreme. Its physical structures are formed through nothing more than mathematically repeating patterns. Water molecules know only collision and expansion from heat, but they crest and tumble into rippling waves and clouds. If a plant loses a limb it simply sprouts more similar limbs as its energy allows. Animals appear more complex and unified, but internally everything from the simplest respiration to the neural complexity of the human brain is nothing more than a continuation of the same primitive mechanism of connection upon connection. But nature has no perfect solutions, it survives by what is barely good enough. It’s growth is constantly heading only towards decay. But it does it on such an enormous scale that the result is whole in a way that is endlessly elegant and robust. It attains its form from the minute interactions of billions of individuals and a rolling tide of trillions of trivial events. The natural reality stacks simplicity upon simplicity to form its weather system, its inhabitants and the buried bones of its dead. And the harder I looked at the natural reality the more I saw of myself, how my senses function. In reaching out my hand to a tree there is the potential for a seamless transition from its tessellating bark, across the cells of my skin, along my veins and neurons, into the logic that floats above my wet brain and out into the software that it produces.

From this evidence I’ve come to be of the firm belief that we have nothing outside of our own senses and brain – no soul and no greater death. Why would reality produce something as detached as a soul when it can produce every miracle that humanity has ever observed from the endless collision of its minute parts? The air that waves patterns through the grasslands in front of me also strike my face and rustle my hair and passes by, sweeping away into the distance – there is nothing more that I could want to understand or to observe beyond that. One day I will exhale and the chemical electricity in my brain will run out – why should I want any magical soul to continue past that moment? Its seems anathema to the beauty of the physical reality.

Through Table Mountain’s slopes and Postberg’s atlantic breeze I have become permanently connected to the soil and the air and I want nothing more than to always feel the rolling wash of the matter that surround us.

God

As far as God and religion is concerned I am by no means a militant atheist-type. I believe that religion can have a very positive influence on people’s lives, providing comfort and a life based on integrity, humility and charity. I come from a religious background and even when I eventually rejected organised religion I remained faithful for many years; developing my own sense of a non-interventionist god and his2 natural order. But my personal experiences have continued to show me only one thing; that god does not exist. It’s not that I do not believe that god exists, it’s that I believe (firmly) that god does not exist. The harder I’ve looked at what my senses are capable of, the clearer it has become to me that the natural reality does not need god nor would it originate a god.
I’ll paraphrase John Lennon when he said that he no longer believed in Nixon or in God, he was no longer looking for a father figure; that he would always continue to make music. And despite not being enamored with John Lennon 3 I agree that once I shook the need for a father figure I was finally free from trying to mash the evident reality into a form in which some remote god was in control. There is no such thing and I’ve never felt better.

Individuality

Finally, all paths in the last eight years have led me in only one direction, towards individuality. The harder I’ve looked at reality, at the world I live in, at my ego and delusions, ambitions and irrational fears, I’ve always ended up in the same place – my own identity. But becoming aware of my identity – how it was formed and how it changes – has somehow been no more than a gentle reflection. I started cultivating memories. That’s all it was, I started taking note of how time passed, thinking chronologically and wanting to look back. As I’ve heard and read; happiness is the ability to feel all emotions, and maturity is the experience of sorrow.
I’m sure that I’ve always had a strong individualist streak and I went through periods where I felt the need to illustrate my individualism through wild haircuts and hand-scrawled t-shirts. But I’m overjoyed to say that I no longer need those props. And I feel like, more than just due to growing older, it has been these years that let me recognise my individuality – to claim it. I no longer need eyeliner – I’m forever changed. I’m older and calmer – more confident and accepting. I’ve finally become confirmed in who I am and what I believe. I continue to want to simplify how I describe what I see while developing my ability to perceive the massive, accelerating complexity of our world. And Cape Town’s silver trees have given me the examples and evidence that led me here.

Nothing lasts… nothing lasts. Everything is changing into something else. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing is wrong. Everything is on track. William Blake said nothing is lost and I believe that we all move on.
T. McKenna

I will never forget the buzzing September sound of the bees among the pincushions on the slopes of Table Mountain and the hum of the city below.

And so, good night sweet Cape Town – I will never be the same and I will always come back.

Man, I really don’t feel like spending too much energy on this. I’m sooo over Sarah Palin, but feel that I should at least document the passage of time. Will she win[1]? I don’t know, but I do think that it is likely that America’s wobbly middle is strong enough in their collective delusions/beliefs to make it happen. And by now it is clear that Palin wasn’t chosen to reel in the female vote; her mission is to bring Christianity to the McCain campaign, and by extension to the world. Hot damn, I can’t wait.

America’s most glorious believer had the following to say in a recent interview on US network television when questioned on her immediate willingness to jump aboard the McCain ticket.

I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on — reform of this country and victory in the war — you can’t blink.

That’s a hectic thing to say; describing yourself in such militaristic terms; on a mission, a mission of country and victory and war.

God’s own fist

Here’s more from the interview

Charles Gibson: [you said], “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

Palin: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That, in my world view, is a grand — the grand plan.

CG: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?

P: I don’t know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer.

God’s own family

Ok now I’m scared. There are several things here that freak me out but I won’t bother with the obvious absurdity of linking the rights of nation states to God’s plan for the world, or how unsophisticated it is to present God’s perceived grand plan as always being the American concept of life, liberty and happiness. But her concept of her son’s ‘decision’ is ludicrous. There is nothing ‘independent’ about Track Palin’s[2] decision. How could his decision possibly be independent when his mom cannot help but to remind him that it is serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself? He has been given from his mother’s bosom to serve as God’s own man, in God’s own family from God’s own land.
There is no trace of individual strength in this young man’s glorious conformity.

Boy oh boy! What a week in US politics. First Obama blows the doors off of the DNC in Denver and then McCain chooses a mom of 5 married to a guy named Todd as his VP pick. Bot more on Sarah Palin later – for now she’s still busy sinking into the world of doubt and made up scandals. But browsing the DNC’s site I had that sinking feeling again[1].

I’ve previously written about the perpetual ‘Americaness’ of Obama; his platform may be Change but in reality he sells more of the same; more belonging, more togetherness. And the price to be paid is the same[2]. One of the strong messages of the DNC was Unity; after a bruising primary race the party needs to reconcile Hillary supporters with Obama, and Hillary was there doing her part to heal the wounds that she had helped to bite open. But what struck me about the DNC was not the unity nor the colour and the pageantry. I got no sense of hope of a bright new era, no sight of change – the DNC was a bombshell display of only one thing – uniformity. Wave the same flags, hold up the same placards, chant the same slogans, sing the same songs, cry the same tears.

This glowing church to the shared experience of belonging was an enormous success, leaving its participants and viewers energized and sated. But despite the odd freaky outfit or wide-brimmed hat they all marched in order in a jubilant parade that makes the Chinese regiments at the Olympic opening ceremony look like nothing more than a stage show. The DNC was raw with the emotion of submission into the warm arms of God and country and having a father figure till you die.

And yes, the protests outside were overrun with individuals with homemade placards and real diversity, but that’s not enough. I want the really dangerous kind of individualism. I want the kind of individualism that doesn’t have to be demonstrated with a wild hairdo, but that exists in the way that people speak and permeates suburbs and schools, and runs into that glowing church.

This blog is not anonymous. Even simple google searches will let you lock me down to a first name and probably a last name as well. You can easily determine the city I live in and probably also the suburb. But Anonymous is anonymous.

Anonymous is a group of internet users/vagrants who formed out of the seedy underbelly of the internet – 4chan. 4chan is a nasty place where bad people hang out and anonymously post bad things. It’s most famous for its Random forum where absolutely anything goes. 4chan itself does have rules but the rules for Random itself are summed up as follows

1. ZOMG NONE!!!1*
2. Global rules 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, and 10 are enforced.

You’ll notice that rule 3 doesn’t apply, being:

Do not post [...] Trolls, flames, racism, off-topic replies, uncalled for catchphrases, macro image replies, indecipherable text (example: “lol u tk him 2da bar|?”), anthropomorphic (“furry”), grotesque (“guro”), or loli/shota pornography.

4chan is big on memes[1] and one meme which has developed in the life of 4chan is that of Anonymous. It started out as an idea/attitude[2] and developed through a groundswell of disgust[3] into a concrete form. Today Anonymous is a group of people who are best known for their anti-Scientology protests known as Project Chanology. This protest started in response to the much discussed Tom Cruise Scientology video posted on Youtube in January 2008.

Tom Cruise loses it

Anonymous responded to Scientology’s reaction to the world’s reaction[4] to the video in a video of their own entitled Message to Scientology in which it accused Scientology of internet censorship. This escalated into a series of Denial of Service attacks aimed at Scientology web sites and a variety of real world protests.

Anonymous loses it

All of this has brought Anonymous to where it is today; a mysterious, vulgar, unregulated, non-hierarchical, not-accountable organisation which has no agreed upon goals, agenda or modus operandi. Right now they seem to be focussed on their plans for Project Chanology, but I have a feeling that it will be around for some time.
Personally I don’t entirely agree with their take on anonymous protest[5], but that’s a topic for another post. So well done to Anonymous. I am glad that you are here. More power to you, more power to all of us.

But that’s not really the point of this post. What I actually want to write about is Wikipedia, or more specifically Wikipedia’s article on Anonymous and precisely about the image displayed on the article – the one below.

Anonymous
Because none of us are as cruel as all of us

There is an ongoing battle being fought on Wikipedia about whether this image should be removed or not. It comes down to a disagreement on whether the Wikipedia policy on non-free content (i.e. the image) allows for content which cannot be attributed to any person or definable group to be used in an article. This is a subtle and fascinating issue. But first, how cool is the contrast between Anonymous and Wikipedia? Anonymous is all about personal outrage, disregard for institutionalised protection and rejection of any sort of accountability. Wikipedia is all about verifiable references, attributability and community-agreed-upon policy. 4chan (from which Anonymous was spawned) is all about uploading images without any sort of copyright/ownership. Wikipedia has long-running, principle[6] arguments about whether a single image should be allowed. Anonymous sees no value in laws/rules[7] while Wikipedia, on a daily basis, builds its policies into laws based on precedent and forum discussions. Interesting.

But back to the story. So Wikipedia is having a long argument about this image; here’s some of it.

Will: Speedy delete – in big letters: will perpetually fail WP:NFCC#10a because we can never know who holds the copyright. I seriously can’t believe people want to keep images that are blatant violations of our Non-free content criteria. Will
        Comment NFCC10a demands source and copyright holder. A source was found (seemingly midway through the debate). Please note that WP:NFCC does not require that this source be linked to. A specific description of where this source can be found in some other media may be acceptable as well (although this is not relevant as a source was found that could be linked to…again, the undercurrent and implication of where the first source for the image was, has likely colored the discussion). The copyright holder is anonymous (or Anonymous).

Ayla: Overturn and keep. After re-reading the relevant policies and discussions, I have come to agree that the WP:NFCC#10a issue is addressed by the fact that the copyright holder of the image is either Anonymous (the group) or anonymous (undisclosed). Given the nature of the group, it is more than likely that such would also be the “copyright holder” for any alternative logos. Ayla

st47: Delete per WP:NFCC#10a. Our non-free content criteria are not up for debate here. st47

IronGargoyle: Comment again. As I clarified on my page (to which Sceptre has decided to conspicuously ignore, uncivilly shout down opposition, and use blatantly misleading speedy deletion tags to game the system–all due to his conflict of interest), works that are explicitly created anonymously are copyrighted–this is clear to most parties I’m sure. As such, for explicitly anonymous works, that anonymous individual (or group) is explicitly the copyright holder (and we don’t know who they are any better or worse than any of the many pseudonymous editors of Wikipedia). It’s not that we don’t know the provenance of the image (cf. some random picture without source on the internet). It was quite obviously created by a member of Anonymous. A little good faith and common sense on that point would be excellent.

Will: Comment The point is, with Wikipedia, we can know who uploaded it (example, we can differentiate between you and I with uploads). With 4chan, you can’t. Nearly everyone, especially on /b/, posts as “Anonymous”. We don’t know which “Anonymous” uploaded it, whether it was 123.45.67.89 or 98.76.124.3. Will

Coffeepusher: Overturn this is abserd, and at least the 5th dispute I have seen that is WP:GAME against the Anonymous/Project C (I really can’t spell it) that has occured since the wiki creation…Involving editors whos interests in the project are apperant disruption of the articles themselves and a complete contempt of consesus. it also is in direct conflict with the spirit of the rules that are beeing quoted. The Non-Free image rules are created to keep from stealing someones work without giving them credit. If it is imposable to find a spicific individual, and no one will be able to validly claim that it is her/his work, no one has any actual claim on the image (orgonizational or otherwise)…?!?Coffeepusher

Stormfin: Comment This shows the massive gaping flaw in Wikipedia policy. This is an image produced by a loose group that falls under the vague ideology of anonymous. Anything produced by this community will and indeed is expected to be edited, changed, saved and redistributed. To me, this is obviously the same as having no copyright license attached. Of course, to the blinkered view fostered by WP Policy ‘it *must* have a copyright. Which it doesn’t. So we end up here. Again and again and again. The online world plays by a different set of rules to the real one, and if Wikipedia doesn’t realise this soon then it might as well give up covering online communities and websites.

Ale_Jrb: Delete – WP:NFCC#10a – the copyright holder cannot be identified. WP:NFCC isn’t randomly optional for some images, and as the creator of the image cannot be identified, it doesn’t matter what it’s of. Ale_Jrb

And it goes on and on.

This is a very relevant debate to Wikipedia policy and is best summed up by Stormfin in saying ‘[...] to the blinkered view fostered by WP Policy it *must* have a copyright. Which it doesn’t‘.

In my opinion what is missing from this debate (and by extension from the Wikipedia policy) is the issue of intent. Copyright[8], by its very nature, comes with a specific intent on the part of the owner to protect its claim to content that it has produced. In the case of Anonymous the intent, the principle founding idea, is to, as identifiable natural persons, not lay claim to or be held accountable for anything that they do or produce. The Wikipedia policy does not make provision for this: intent to remain anonymous.
To Wikipedia, keep the frickin image. Anonymous has no will, no hunger or identity – but it never forgets. And Wikipedia just cannot deal with that.

I love Americans! They’re so warm and cuddly.

Apart from the long slow public death of Britney Spears there’s no bigger story in the states at the moment than the presidential election primaries and particularly the race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination.

Obama in the Sun (Time for a Change)

Before Iowa the common understanding both in the commercial media and on the internet was that Hillary Clinton would win the nomination because she is the preferred candidate with the Democratic Party establishment(the old boys). But then Obama blew Hillary away in Iowa, mostly because he was able to radically mobilize independent voters(who typically don’t vote in large numbers) behind his slogan of Change! – whoopdedoo.

The Hillary Show (More Change?)

All of a sudden Hillary was dead meat. The internet was abuzz with Obama-praise with some writers comparing him to JFK and even Martin Luther King Jr[1]. Within days the common understanding switched to one in which Obama would continue to produce record turnouts of independents who would board his all-singing-all-dancing change-train. Obama arrived in New Hampshire ready to drink champagne from Hillary’s cold skull. But then Hillary cried on TV, or at least almost cried. And before you could say Oprah a furious debate started up in the media over whether the tears were real or faked and whether voters would see it as a turn-on or proof that women aren’t strong enough to be president[2]. As it turns out On Monday Hillary Clinton teared up in despair. On Tuesday she had reason to cry with euphoria. The televised secretion may have changed the election.

Breakingdown News

As we all know by now she stormed back into the lead in New Hampshire by out-doing Obama in the mobilzing-of-a-record-number-of-voters stakes. So where does this leave the primaries? Well, it’s a sure bet that the democratic race will now settle into a standard drawn-out battle for Super Tuesday. Both candidates have shown their mettle and found their voices. Obama will continue pitching his promise of hope and change. Hillary will continue pitching her message of being up to the task and strong while not being afraid to show some emotion. And the Republican primaries will remain a very, very distant second as far as star power[3] is concerned.

Mike Huckabee tries to be as cool as Bill Clinton

But what I’m interested in is why Americans responded so strongly first to Obama and then to Hillary. What is it about that great(?) nation that makes them so absurd?
Through my visits to the US and my lifelong consumption of its media I’ve come to learn, among others, two things that seem to be ingrained deep in the psyche of the overwhelming majority of Americanos. And I believe that these two characteristics, bred and refined over generations, were demonstrated with unique power and in close succession in the Hillary v Obama drama.
But let me first say that while I consider these behaviours to be weaknesses in the US overmind/oversoul they are also two of the fundamentals that give the American nation is undeniable strength and part of the reason why they have come to dominate the planet. It’s swings and roundabouts, what the individual looses is gained by the group.
The two characteristics[4] that I believe drove the primary votes are, firstly, a very strong need to belong and, secondly, reverence for the act of ‘opening-up’.

Belonging

American kids are raised to(among other things) belong; belong to a family, belong to school, belong to a team. Nowhere in the world is the notion of supporting your school, your alma-mater as strong as in US college football. Men wear signet rings of the years that their schools won the State Championship with more pride than their wedding bands. When attending a conference they might remove their wedding band when screwing the PA, but no-sir that 1998 Mid-Western States Championship ring aint goin’ nowhere.
What makes this drive to belong even more amazing is that it isn’t seen as fear of isolation, people don’t join church groups and soccer lift pools and community watch teams and fucking veterans’ appreciation societies because they fear being isolated. Somehow they’ve developed an understanding that belonging is a positive thing, it’s warm and friendly and makes the world a better place. They really do believe in that shit. They really believe that there is no reason to not belong to every grouping imaginable because there’s nothing to loose. So what if we all wear identical uniforms when we go bowling or drive 9 hours in convoy supporting our school’s cheerleaders when they compete out of state, it makes us a community. It freaks me out that they don’t get the fact that while belonging to a group isn’t a bad thing it doesn’t come without a price, there always is a part of your individual identity that you have to give up.
And Barack Obama tapped into this glowing need to belong. He found his voice when he pitched himself as the man to change US politics once and for all – to deliver it from the evils of partisanship and self-serving infighting. But while his campaign advisors certainly did expect to get a big bite from disgruntled voters from this pitch I bet that never in their wildest dreams did they expect to pick up so many independent voters. In a veritable showering of love and belonging hundreds of thousands of independents have bought into Obama’s message and have joined him in his crusade. They’ve joined him and are ready to heal the world, because they know that Together We Can! Chant that until you puke.

I belong to Obama

Opening up

If there is one thing more bizarre about Americans than their overwhelming joy at belonging to something[5] it is their reverence for the act of opening up. There seems to be a subtle distrust of people who don’t share their feelings with the group. Reality TV is a prime carrier of this sentiment. In a previous season of The Bachelor one of contestants[6] was continually berated by the other chicks for ‘not sharing’. She was ostracized from the group and described as ‘not real’. Later during the season the chicks got together, after what seemed like several glasses of wine, and through a series of confrontations eventually this girl broke down and cried a little. She then sat down with the girls on the couch and explained how she was afraid of being hurt so didn’t want to show too much emotion but that she now realised that they would all support her blah blah blah blah. A later interview with the ringleader of the chicks was revealing; suddenly she ‘really appreciated’ how the first girl ‘opened up’ and ‘shared her feelings’. How fucked up is that?
And so, the voters responded when Hillary opened up, when she shared. And if there is one thing that is more powerful than simply sharing it is the redemption of a person who previously was cold and aloof who then opened up to the warm embrace of her loving community. Beautiful.

Obama got voters to join him in his quest, to be part of his mission. Hillary opened up and shared her hopes, dreams and fears with the nation. And for both of them the nation responded in a cascade of votes. An absurd and beautiful land.

[1] This is reasonable comparison given the fact that he is a truly fantastic orator.
[2] No-one has actually seen GW Bush cry while he’s been in office though many think that he probably does from time to time.
[3] Talk about mega-celebrity, Obama’s roadshow features Oprah and Hillary’s feature’s Bill – two of the most gifted entertainers of our time.
[4] Characteristic isn’t really the right word. These are so strong that I almost want to call them *shudder* values.
[5] Something, something! Anything!
[6] Who actually turned out to be the most interesting person by far