Agency Part Three: Spatial Identity

I like stories, and tend to think of the world mostly as an interconnected mass of stories roughly assembled into narrative constructs. Through such a lens, storytelling appears to be a potent tool for participating in the creation of reality. Every story has a spatial context, though, and I wonder how our changing perceptions of and interactions with space might impact our stories. More specifically, I wonder how the parts of our identities that have a spatial dimension or express themselves in our understanding as space-like interact with and alter the entirety of our identities, given that these are changing in accordance with and in proportion to the significant restructuring of both physical and non-physical existent spaces.

It's a mouthful, I know. But I think it's important. If human activity is changing the nature of the spaces we inhabit, and part of how we define ourselves to ourselves and each other is in how we perceive and interact with space, then it follows that changing spaces are tantamount to changing identities. There's no small amount of evidence that points to significant behavioral shifts accompanying significant change in environment, and clearly we're changing our own ecology in huge, complex, and arguably destabilizing ways, so who and how we are is likewise changing. In my opinion, who and how we are goes quite a bit further in shaping future history than our perceptions of event sequences leading up to the present.

What happens is more about who is involved and how they are than what anyone believes is happening, at least to my way of thinking. Not so much a ”What is this?” as a ”Who are we in this?” Because if who we are is changing, then not knowing how we're changing makes looking at how we'll respond to present and future conditions into an impossible guessing game.

The physical spaces that we occupy can include such things as surveillance by radio controlled insects, truck mounted acoustic weapons and pills that electronically communicate with a monitoring system. Some people spend more time in the digital shadow world than not or are socially or economically reliant on what goes on there. These things and more make getting a feel for how we'll choose to respond to a palpably and increasingly unpredictable future both more difficult and more crucial. And our future ability to act, as well the nature of what agency we might wish to exercise, is dependent on the lens of spatial identity we see the world through.

Agency Part Two: Spatial Influence

Every action has a spatial context, and the rise of the "information age" has led to the beginnings of a near-complete redefinition of space and place. "Virtual space", in its "construction", "colonization", and "occupancy", is now such a part of most people's world that our experience of it can feel almost physical. More than physical, in some ways, because physicality imposes rather finite limits on how many people can perceive a given locale, and for how long.

The agency a person can exercise in virtual space often far exceeds that person's agency in physical space...largely because most of physicality itself has been commodified, and resources are distributed unequally. Though less true all the time, the virtual world is comparatively more accessible, and this access enables us to make a greater range of (virtual) choices. But the commodification of the virtual has merely lagged behind that of the physical, and the supposed freedom granted by the apparently limitless opportunities of the virtual is gradually turning into a logging of unfathomable quantities of data, which is being inextricably bound to the already commodified physical to create a digital shadowland.

Already, this digital shadowland is having an impact on our lives, and one that's sure to become increasingly significant as time goes on. As we say goodbye to privacy, we say hello to the internet of things. Which not only does away with the agency advantage of acting in virtual space, but turns it on its head, paving the way for dramatically more restrictive physical and virtual spaces.

The virtual world can tell me that oyster mushrooms can clean up oil spills and turn the hydrocarbon pollution into edible proteins. That pteris vitatta, or brakefern, is a miraculous phytoremediation plant that vaccuums up arsenic like nobodys business. It can also tell me that both plants have been patented for this environmental cleanup use...and that the company that patented brakefern now calls the plant Edenfern, and refuses to allow anyone but them to cultivate it for cleaning up arsenic pollution.

The point I'm trying to make is that having new spaces to act in doesn't necessarily translate into an increased posession of agency, and sometimes the influence of those new spaces will actually serve to further limit one's agency. If a person feels powerless right where they are, it's almost inevitable that that powerless will carry over into whatever new space they enter. As massive events in human society continue to show us the limits of our power, it could be time to stop pretending that this changing space we inhabit, be it physical, virtual, or something else, is itself an answer to our difficult questions.

I mean, my ancestors came to this country to get away from the structural imposition of powerlessness they experienced in Europe, and wound up contributing to a similar situation right here. My peers have increasingly chosen the virtual to the physical, because virtual agency is theoretically better than none at all, and are discovering the limits of that approach. What options we possess are largely determined by where we stand, both individually and collectively, and taking an honest look at where exactly that is might prove a challenging prospect, especially as this place appears to be moving more and more quickly.

Agency Part One: Murky Context

As summer turns to autumn, my thoughts tend to gravitate towards considering culture in terms of harvest. We're beginning to reap what we've sown, for better or worse. From where I stand, beneath the surface of lackadaisical trepidation in the air over our future is an ocean of complex misgivings and strong opinions. Interconnected environmental, economic, and health care issues swirl around schools of thought like schools of fish, all of whom pretend to have answers. And surely some do-there are more and more thoughtful and clever solutions to our collective problems being developed and put out there every day-yet the fact remains that most of us lack the AGENCY to transform these theoretical solutions into practical courses of action.

Now, we can talk in terms of deliberate reorganization of human activities like Jeff Vail (who looks increasingly inclined towards practical solutions development with what he calls "the diagnal economy"). We can consider the narrative-shaping potency of storytelling like these folks (via Jason Godesky's new blog). We can hold the conversation to the power of DIY in everyday life, and focus on skill sharing in this context. All of these things have the potential to help us learn to more effectively develop and increase our agency in the present psychocultural context, and ought to (I think) be embraced. But it's a big and murky ocean we're in, and the things that we don't see can be difficult to act on.

Uncertain future musings

I made the coat pictured above from scratch, and have worn the thing in all manner of circumstances. For the past couple of years, this coat has hung on my wall in Brooklyn. Strung up on rattan and stainless steel poles, it gave an impression that was part museum display and part nostalgic shrine. Though I didn't make it as an art piece, that's nonetheless what it became when I moved to New York City. Now that I'm leaving, I wonder about what place it may have in my future life. Will it again protect me from cacti and brambles in the wilderness, find a home on some new wall, or disappear into a cache of past treasures set aside for future use?

These are far from certain times, and the changes that are taking place on all levels of American life are barely beginning. As with my coat, the things that we as a people have created are big, intricate, and took some doing to put together. They were pretty useful in the past, but that usefulness grew less practical as circumstances changed, and has come to be valuable in primarily aesthetic and nostalgic terms. Which are of course important, but can hardly factor into how we plan for an uncertain future.

From where I stand, things are beginning to unravel. Big things. Like the economic underpinnings of our society. Like the fundamental illusions we cling to about healthcare. Like our stubborn denial of the fact of our self-created confinement, on which our continual acceptance of inhuman conditions is predicated. Some doors, once opened, can't be closed so easily, and more of these are opening every day. They provoke rifts in the continuity of our imaginary world, and every patch we manage to sew over these draws more attention to the tattered condition of a discontinuous collective worldview.

Over the next few months, we're going to be faced with less and less reasonable circumstances. Catastrophically unreasonable, in many places and for many people. Because the problems we face are systemic, making sense of things will be all but impossible if we hold to the idea that the individuals who represent these systems in our everyday interactions are responsible for the activity of these systems. As individuals ourselves, letting go of this idea can be quite challenging; doubly so if one is attached to the notion that these systems are necessary and right because they exist...

A big part of the difficulty here lies with the reality that most of the systems we are enmeshed in were created to function in a societal context that has already changed. Another part of it is that many of these systems are constructed to prevent changing in precisely the ways that may be necessary for continued viability in the face of such contextual changes. But the big one, the "kicker" as it were, is that these systems offer us the illusion of stability to the extent that we continue to fund them, and in continuing to fund them we give the people who depend on their continuing existence for economic stability a serious dose of motivation to hold on tight no matter what.

Independance Day, you say?

On an American holiday that so many people use as an excuse to drink the canned and fortified fermented corn products mistaken for beer while temporarily replacing vocational stress with shared celebratory indulgence in socially acceptable audiovisual stimulation, I like to meditate. And ask questions.

This year in particular, it seems prudent to take every opportunity to consider where we as a people stand, where our meaning is placed, and how to proceed from here into an uncertain future.

Here's an article, via cryptogon, that takes on some of the issues associated with even attempting any manner of consideration in our present context. To me, this seems important, as it focuses on some of the increasingly relevant challenges to clear thinking that we face.

For some time now, there's been quite a bit of talk (in the "progressive" and "intellectual" circles I often run in) about transforming the "independence" ideal into one of "interdependence" in order to more accurately reflect our individual positions in an inevitably connected world. Though such talk, and more importantly the motives behind it, is maybe good and valuable in many contexts, it can make it all too easy to gloss over the continuing importance of independence in thought.

Reasserting the importance of independent thinking seems fitting on independence day, so I would like to do precisely that. We've become very good at repackaging old symbols and standards of archetypal interaction, but in doing so, tend to lose sight of the timeless value of authentic originality. The unique character of truly original symbols, whether new for an individual, community, or larger social body, can make such symbols appear frighteningly alien or too subtle, mundane, or unworkable for us to allow ourselves to give them their due. Without creating for ourselves the space for independent thought, we mostly can't even see things that are new or different. And it's these things, these qualities of genuine newness and unfamiliarity, that allow us to truly move forward.

Of all the questions I ask the universe today, "what am I not seeing?" seems like the most important one of all.