Previous: Together in a Boiling Pot
On our break, we took to musing (TTM).
We TTM abt our fav crackpot: the futurist Anthony Judge. We say “crackpot” w/ great warmth in our voice. We love a crackpot: we think that lots of them have v. good ideas & are disparaged on grounds that they express themselves in a unique way. We fear some crackpots are disparaged for their good ideas, & that, in order to block others from taking their good ideas seriously, their unique styles or personality quirks get overplayed.
Anthony Judge is a v. interesting man. He worked w/ the UN for decades, & has a lot of thoughts abt the pitfalls that arise when diff. groups seek to communicate. He has lots more thoughts on how, nonetheless, comprehension & a kind of zen acceptance between groups is essential.
He urges readers to stay aware of which “regime of truth” they live under— so that, when they encounter those from neighboring regimes, they can be fairly cosmopolitan abt it. They can resist dismissing their neighbors outright; they can resist the urge to convert them, or to stamp them out thru scorched-earth tactics. They can meet their neighbors not w/ the fear of one who has never seen “outsiders”— but w/ the knowledge that multiple regimes of truth exist, & this is okay. This is natural.
It can be easy to fall into thoughts like, “this or that regime of truth is dangerous & ruining things for the rest of us.” In our opinion, sometimes these thoughts are warranted: if a regime of truth has normalized & centered assumptions like, “We must destroy our neighbors’ regimes at all costs”, or, “There is no regime but ours. Nonbelievers must be converted or persecuted”— this is dangerous. This leads to the pondscum-like creep of some regimes at the expense of others, & is, we think, harmful to the truth ecosystem. At this point, the Ziz, the Behemoth, & the Leviathan may be needed to restore balance.
There are other times when the dangers of an unfamiliar regime may be overplayed in our own minds. It’s unfortunately easy to confuse “novelty & foreignness” for “danger”. It’s a difficult balance to strike: how should an outsider comment on cultural practices they wouldn’t practice themselves, & abt which they might have grave misgivings— w/out casting those who do practice them as “barbarians”? How do you raise concerns w/out touting your own regime of truth as the one true way?
These kinds of q.s are on our mind bc we’ve found that we disagree w/ sthng we said in the last part of this program: “We don’t know who it helps or what truth it reveals to divide ppl into camps.” We’d revise this:
It is helpful to be aware of your own regime of truth, & to carry the expectation that you’ll encounter ppl from other regimes.
The case of “the Zizians” has brought into contact ppls from many, many regimes— regimes which might, under typical circumstances, have kept to themselves. This is v. exciting. This is like a big open-air market full of traders from mysterious lands. We see over & over again in history the auspiciousness of such cultural exchange. Terrific insights & advancements may come from this— if we can maintain our hospitality towards strangers; if we can resist small-minded chauvinism.
Unexpectedly, the “division” of Ken & ourself into 2 neighboring regimes has dissipated our prickly sense of competition w/ him. Looking back on the footage from pt. 1 of this program, we’re pretty embarrassed. We’re not sure what we were so afraid of; we do, indeed, occupy separate niches. We don’t retract any of the concerns we shared w/ Ken, but we’d like to reframe them in terms of what they show abt our regime of truth— which Ken is welcome not to share, even if that difference gives us butterflies in our stomach.
***
We’d like to sit down w/ Ken over some shish-kabobs from this open-air market, & speak more plainly abt which forms of knowledge we at zizians.co prize, & which we find taboo. We would say to Ken:
Back home in our beautiful regime of truth, what we like most of all is when Ziz & friends (ZAF) report on their own lives. We assign great value to these reports, & believe they are v. lucky to own.
While we enjoin our young ppl to treat all info critically, in practice we find it impolite to dispute ZAF’s statements abt what they’ve gone thru & how they feel abt it. Others might consider this practice shocking, but it is our way. We’ve been raised on a mythology that warns of the dangers in denying or minimizing others’ experiences.
We don’t, in our regime, have a big culture of venerating journalists. We in fact have many wards & charms to keep their opinions at bay, out of our homes. Fighting w/ the press, when they say things we find illogical, conspiratorial, or against our moral norms, is our national past-time. We see it as an art, a game, & a means of ensuring survival— psychically, but there are some who believe it ensures our physical health too, & the prosperity of our crops.
Underneath it all, we value solidarity w/ ppl on the margins. We would like to see them all thrive. Four times a year we hold a big festival. We set up poles which represent the marginalized, & wrap & shroud these poles in rags which represent the press. We then tear down & burn these rags together, in bonfires which last all night.
If you visit our regime— & we hope you will; our autumns are esp. nice— there is but one name which you must never utter: that of The Unnamed Site. We consider it unclean. If ever we have to reference it, we spit three times & spin counter-clockwise to protect ourselves from its witchcraft.
***
Then, feeling homesick, we would ask him to describe which regime of truth he comes from. We won’t attempt to describe it here; we won’t put words in his mouth.
We won’t pretend that Ken hasn’t alarmed us— he has not followed our taboos; he seems not to use the same wards & charms. We do not plan on becoming a weeaboo for Ken’s regime of truth, but we’ve enjoyed our time w/ him at the market. & we’re excited to see which exotic trinkets he next brings out of his pack.
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Next: Suspicious Activity