[-empyre-] Week 2? What is Dystopia, Really?

[Alex Young]

Craig and Eric, I think this discussion is pulling in some interesting
directions. However, sadly, the demands of the day are pulling me away...
So, I just wanted to propose a few questions that are hopefully not too
pontifical?


Without getting too circular, I wonder if by making strange the strangeness
of an inherited infrastructure—lurking somewhere behind a dazzle of
appearances—that props up an insulated reality of ‘blackbboxed platform
capitalism’ we are not explicitly speaking of empowering those that are
alien or lost in subsumption to it?



Whether by design or some manner of monstrous unwitting kludge it would be
difficult to discount the idea that there is some form of intent verging on
teleology that has shaped the networks in question, even if the vehicle of
that intent is beyond individual reason as something more memetic and
acephalous. What is a teleology if not a succession of acts of further and
further estrangement? In moving myopically forward, there is a left behind.
How might we simultaneously resist the breakneck speed of present systems
(toward slow _topias) and manifest an urgent realization of equitability
for all who have been cast off, neglected, buried, villainized, etc. both
human and other-than-human? How do we move—each and all—collectively onward
after a prolonged funnel cloud-like rampage of moving forward?



While the shadows cast by those powerful entities driving toward unending
growth blanket us with an apparent paucity of options: an end or exit is
ultimately inevitable… but on whose terms?  Today, I awoke to a glimmer of
‘hope’ upon seeing a friend had shared a link to Out of the Woods
Collective’s new publication *Hope Against Hope *was immediately drawn to
their notion of ‘disaster communism’—as outlined in its synopsis: “the
collective power to transform our future political horizons from the ruins
and establish a climate future based in common life.”



Fodder for coming ruderal _topia(s), I am sure.


-Alex
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