exponentiation ezine: issue [3.0: news]
This is War
When we look at our situation in the world as individuals, we must recognize that we are dependent upon the world around us. If our atmosphere goes away, or war comes to the land, we cannot escape it by changing the channel. Reality is here and will affect our future as well as our feelings toward how well our lives are spent. Knowing that we die, we wish meaning from life, but we would want it otherwise, as the alternative is emotional entropy a.k.a. boredom.
The heroic versus the machine
Nature is a large machine, if viewed in terms of function: sunlight hits plants, plants feed animals, animal droppings feed plants, and through natural selection better animals and plants emerge, culminating in sentient organisms. With sentience, we have the ability to choose our future: it is a dimension added to natural selection. If we choose badly, it will take many years for the truth to be known but the consequences will be felt.
We live in a world where most people not only do not think but believe themselves to be powerless. If they knew what lurked unnoticed inside of them, the inner potential to be heroes or vagrants, they would waver with a sense of vertigo: each decision is a potential castle built or leap off a precipice. They see modern society as something that has not only happened to them but will never change. If this magazine accomplishes anything, it is to remind them that they have _choice_ and can wield that.
Nature's machine has an ultimate goal, namely itself; it seeks to make itself better constantly so it can produce new dimensions of existence such as consciousness (choice). In contrast, the machine of modern society is both a mindset and a reality based on the idea of material product. Our goal is not to rise, in a sense of our personal abilities or spiritual growth, but to produce material objects and wealth and thus to enjoy comfort -- the pursuit of pleasure.
There is no greater pleasure however than rising above the trivial to find the transcendent, those moments of peace in which we see that not only is life worth living but that we enjoy it for its struggle, the overcoming of doubt and material sensation in order to achieve greater things. Giving birth is painful, and children die, but to raise children is a quest that approaches the religious in its ability to deny the risks and aim for a goal: that each generation be better stronger brighter more noble than the past.
Our quest is not to rage against the machine, but to replace it. We do this by making ourselves better via discipline and the kind of hope that is grounded in what our minds and hands can do. We do this because we believe in life. Life is not merely function and comfort, but a process of putting our failures behind us and becoming stronger in infinite ways. To a writer, it is describe reality more fully and to inspire others; to a musician, it is to make music that both transports us from our world and makes us see it with new eyes that can perceive the potential for greater things in every moment.
We are not talking about objects and sensations here, but _significance_. A moment of great personal victory -- climbing a mountain, writing an album, triumph in battle -- involves discomfort and suffering and loss, but the significance of having achieved that victory outweighs all else. Modern society does not recognize this viewpoint. It is a machine that takes raw materials and makes products that people want to buy. When we say we are at war, we are fighting against that mindset and its eventual outcome, which will be the consumption of all earth and human souls by the machine.
Moderndoom
Why would anyone object to this society? We have better medicine, more comfortable homes, cheaper food. Yet as anyone who has goofed off in class while the teacher was absent knows, there are eventual consequences. We can put them off but they will happen nonetheless. As our natural land disappears, our climate changes and species vanish; the earth can no longer renew itself as it once did. And suddenly we're surrounded by people, most of whom we would not care to know -- faceless drones, prone to opportunism either behind a desk or with a weapon, driven only by their desire for comfort and pleasure.
Steadily the progress of modernity has revealed itself. But more than any physical destruction is the loss of our souls, what both makes us human and makes us inclined to rise above human failings to achieve the great works of art and action that mark our history. We no longer believe in life as a pursuit of learning and accomplishment; it is rote task, making money and having a "life" in which all goals are set by others and there is no chance for the finer things such as transcendence.
In becoming modern, we have traded material discomfort for spiritual discomfort, in that we are no longer sure our lives as _experience_ are a fair trade for inevitable death. What is great in being promoted, or in starting our own business in a model that's well known? No frontiers; no space left to conquer; only places in the machine. This dulls our spirit and makes us see the entire world as material, and thus love becomes sex, cuisine becomes large portions, satisfaction becomes comfort and wide-screen TV, religion becomes having the "right" opinions. When we make war, we make war against this mentality.
Heroism
To go into battle is to be ready to die not for one's own comfort but for an ideal. Whether it is the survival of a tribe, or the establishment of a political or philosophical position, it is a willing sacrifice: to say "I believe in life enough that if my life is lost it is a fair trade." There are many ways to describe what we believe (traditionalism, existentialism, nihilism, idealism) but ultimately it is this process of putting ideas before comfort. We can design a better reality. We can apply design to ourselves and make ourselves better as people.
This is a creed that applies in every time period because it is inherent to the nature of being a thinking being. We call it heroism. The goal of this magazine is not to amuse you or to pass the time, but to inspire you to see that in yourself the possibility of this heroism is dormant, much as even in our world of endless concrete and plastic there is the potential for something better. There is no material proof for this. Only you can motivate yourself to make what does not now exist, but can be had for the price of some suffering and loss. And since with death all is lost at any rate, why do you hesitate? This is war -- together we raise our hands to better ourselves and our world.
News
Mall Escalator Malfunctions; Sixty Perish June 21st, 2006
CROSS CITY, FL ñ Sixty citizens perished and countless others were injured in a tragic escalator accident at the Cross City Mall on the morning of Monday June 19th. "This is the worst tragedy our city has ever seen," remarked Cross City city councilor Roy Ingram.
On Monday morning a two-story escalator inside the Cross City Mall ground to an unexpected halt. Customers aboard the escalator, carrying heavy shopping bags which made climbing stairs unreasonable, stood and looked around at each other in confusion. The escalator then started with a jerk, and riders with loose shoe-strings were caught in the device, kicking and screaming in peril as their feet were ground up through the accelerated machine.
The jolt sent other consumers flying, plummeting to their deaths. Obese shoppers with 0% trans-fat lite veggie burgers wrapped in McDonald's bags rolled and crushed other riders, including six members of the morning division of the elite "Senior Citizen Mall Power Walking Team" (SCMPWT).
Bayside resident Janie Smits recalls the incident, "I was eating my typical Monday morning energy booster of five scoops of H‰agen-Dazs double chocolate fudge ice cream in the food court when I suddenly heard a loud banging noise followed by a lot of people cursing, then there was a loud grinding and the most horrible screams I've ever heard in my life." Smits continued, "it was horrible, there was blood being sprayed everywhere, and what was worse, some of it got all over my ice cream, but I guess c'est la vie cause I was able to lick around most of it."
The incident has caused an outrage among human rights activists of the United Homosexual Church of Christian Migrant Non-denominationalists. Spokesperson for the group, Aaron Tite, gave the following comment, "Our citizens should not have to go through the shopping mall in mortal terror. We can't allow this travesty to occur a second time. It's immoral and inhumane what has happened here and we at the Homosexual Church see the mall management as a group of cold-blooded killers for not inspecting their escalators closely enough."
Cross City city council called an emergency meeting in order to deal with the problem of mall escalators. One of the proposed solutions is to raise a bill that will ban all escalators in Cross City. Other members of the city council vehemently opposed the idea, claiming that citizens should not be forced to burden themselves by walking up two flights of stairs with heavy shopping bags.
The custodial engineers of the Cross City Mall have looked directly into the escalator's problem and have implemented a temporary remedy involving bubble gum and twist ties. "If I finished the job now," says subordinate custodial mechanic Raum Mohammed, "I would have nothing to do tomorrow, and I'd be out of a job--they'd fire me. I have kids to feed. Five of them! I have to make money somehow. Besides we placed a little two by two sign about three feet away from the escalator with a danger warning painted on it, that should be good enough for now."
The escalator is currently in operation. Consumers oblivious to the dangers of such devices are still riding them nation wide.
Nation's Frats Experience "Genital Leprosy" Epidemic June 20th, 2006
HARTFORD,CT (UCONN) - Scientists have determined that an extremely virulent strain of gonorrhea is responsible for the outbreak of what has been dubbed "Genital Leprosy" among the nation's college fraternities.
The bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae is believed by experts to have altered its genetic character. Bacteriologist Harvey Whitfield claims this mutation is "due to exposure to high levels of known mutagens present in cheap beer such as Bulldog Light." Whitfield went on to say, "when the cheap beer is consumed in large quantities by male revelers carrying the infectious agent, a breeding ground is created for this new strain, which in turn is passed on to girlfriends, girlfriends-on-the-side, intoxicated party chicks who think they're bisexual, and other frat brothers 'on the down low.'"
Initial symptoms include feelings of fatigue, penis complexes, and a general lack of motivation, which leads to a mental, emotional and spiritual numbness that keeps sufferers from ever doing something about their self-inflicted epidemic. Symptoms soon progress to swelling and numbing of the genitals, and finally gradual sloughing off of tissue.
"Frat brothers engage in a self-medicating/denial behavior involving more Bulldog Light and grooving to 50 Cent on their trash and bodily fluid-caked dance floors," notes Whitfield. Current studies show this practice does not have any healing effects. Some experts believe such a response by carriers of the genital ailment makes the disease worse.
Those at risk are not letting their lives be run by fear. Despite there being no current treatment, students are taking it in stride, and continuing to have sex for status while getting drunk on cheap alcohol. Says Krystal, a sophomore at Dartmouth College and girlfriend of an Omega Chi Pi member, "I won't let this disease stop me from dating the only real men around here. If I had to stop going to the frats, who else would I hook up with? Those art fags? My boyfriend is in a frat, which will help him become CEO of Earth Pavers Inc. so he can make lots of money to spend on me."
Currently 65% of college frat boys are confirmed as being carriers of the disease. Estimates are that 85% of fraternity males will have the disease by the end of the year should the standard frat party behavior continue.
