encyclopeadic

i've written on transhumanism--the idea that technology will make humanity more than, and ergo no longer, human. i sat at the window yesterday and wondered if glasses, cars on superhighways, and a morning of reading uselessly informative internet biographies make me already far less human than my grandfather.

this creates very awkward questions for poetry, such as, "is poetry dead?" to which my subconscious once wrote, "poetry, as she lay dying..." and perhaps this means that we are no longer human, and poetry really has died, or at least very nearly so.and i wonder if we will miss poems, or humans.

such few remain

i see in your watercolor sky

images of lonely childhood

the hermitage of youth, aloof:

a naive story, intentfully so.

your pencil-line hair is a challenge and mystery

to my seedy cynicism sown careless and material,

in which i wrap my frothy knowledge of the world.

what pain and hesitance begot you,

solemn slender soul unbound

by all around, and what's below

or deep within: what origins inspired

such careful, constant eyes

or taught this listening mouth?

well--i neither comprehend nor wish to change

your different heart, 

nor linger long at this cracked-open door;

your rare innocence, a beauty undiscovered,

shall remain unsoiled in pastel skies

merely remarked by we,

the dirt-bound passersby.

2/15/2012

i haven't written a poem in months.  i wrote this in response to people i met through a training class at work, who reminded me of the long-lost innocent-minded friends i had in college, freshman year, 2003.

Raging On Editorial Blunder's

Top headline on Google news today, from Reuters--and I quote: "Did Gingrich's stumble on immigration?"  My comment on the Reuters site: "Bring back editor's that understand apostrophe's."

It fills me with a desperate rage to see these kind of obvious, obvious mistakes littered throughout published articles from major news corporations.  I find them from the New York Times, Forbes Magazine, Time, pretty much every AP news story, Fox--every major news outlet is guilty of trumpeting some really horrible writing.

With the decline of the magazine industry, I thought the field of journalism would become more highly condensed with the best talents, as the less effective, less skilled journalists were cut off the vine.  Apparently that is not the case, at least when it comes to editorial staffing.

The Highest Life Form on Earth

While reading the news on economic protests yesterday and pondering the entities being protested, it suddenly occurred to me that I cannot think of a suitable test to distinguish corporations from living beings.

Not in a biological sense, of course, but in the gritty sense of defining life--carrying on metabolism, reproduction, internal repairs, responses to external stimuli--I cannot think of a useful tool that excludes a corporate "life form" from a biological or cellular life form.  In fact, the more I examine this concept, the more I perceive that humans are to corporations what cells are to humans: and in the sense that we cannot share any intelligent communication with our cells (or the reverse), so we also cannot communicate with corporations (or the reverse).  The degree of separation between these life forms is too great to allow any appreciable exchange.  To finish my thoughts about the protesters, I realized that the impetus behind their protests came from this inability to communicate.  Invisible and silent as individuals, they formed together to create a corporate body--a protest, in America; revolutions in the Arab world this spring--because these bodies were capable of speaking to, and acting upon, other corporate bodies.

Almost before finishing this thought, I realized that the concept had to be expanded past corporations, of course: what I am truly identifying is an Organization.  Corporations in the American sense of the word are economic Organizations, but all Organizations bear the same lifelike characteristics, from governments to religions to school yard gossip circles to barbershop quartets.  Similarly, we cannot limit the scope of our view to human participants: herds of cattle are as much an Organization as a school board.  The two differ wildly in terms of coordination and capabilities, of course (one hopes), but they are Organizations nonetheless that bear "life," in the truest sense of the word.  In general, it appears that the complexity of an Organization reflects the relative intelligence or complexity of its "cells," but I wouldn't hang my hat on that rule.

The reach of this idea is too much for a hastily scrawled blog note, but I thought it bore mentioning, at least in passing.  I may tease out some of its implications in later posts.  In the mean time, I'm curious--what reaction do you feel, in response to the idea that, in every way we know to define a "living being," humanity is not truly the most advanced life form on Earth?

not one word

not one word is left untouched; not today.
we brought the biggest minds together--
and spoke at once all our many words! which,
when done, meant nothing.
all's left now is silence, and its comfort.



and from this daydream, i came to wish that i could read
silence.




October '11