501. Whacky Gibberish Poem Entitled "The Co-Evolution of Collective Action"

PDF for Poem "Co-Evolution of Collective Action" can be found here:

http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/coevolutionofcollectiveaction.pdf

Epic Tattoo of the Phoenix on the back of my great friend, Lauri Green. The Phoenix is a most appropriate metaphor in terms of exploring the simultaneous feedbacks between constructionism and deconstructionism in the above poem. Candidate for Vispo!

Epic Tattoo of the Phoenix on the back of my great friend, Lauri Green. The Phoenix is a most appropriate metaphor in terms of exploring the simultaneous feedbacks between constructionism and deconstructionism in the above poem. Candidate for Vispo!

Sunday night I was going on this philosophical stream of consciousness and "heading toward the right direction of my powerpoint presentation," and Monday morning, I woke up realizing that my day was going to be chopped up, and I wanted to give myself something to do in Barry's creative writing class (giving myself something--some fiddling project--to do ultimately keeps me more attentive in class for some reason), so I brought these two poems I had concocted, as inspired by readings from Mike Davis, Chapters 15 and 16 of "Dead Cities." Chapter 15 explored the notion of nonlinear contingencies in the history of life on earth, synthesizing some literatures in planetary geology (whoever's responsible for studying asteroids), ecology-evolutionary biology, and some social science sources. I was elated that Davis synthesized the often philosophically disconnected fields of geology and evolutionary biology (very much disconnected in mentalities I had experienced when ploughing through the coursework) in a way that I synthesized the fields, but through independent labors. I would write the chapter with slight differences, and also some additions, but overall I was a very happy, very inspired reader. Chapter 16 entailed "science and imagination," how certain scientists and naturalists envisioned post-disaster cities in "imaginative ecological reconstructions." (And on that note, I wrote Blog 502 on "thought experiments" that can't exactly be tested or replicated, adding to the trail of "Mike Davis" Blogs 482, 475, and 466).So, last quarter, these two chapters were superb, extremely inspirational readings I had spent quite a bit of time with. I was quite intellectually aroused, my entire "oak tree" or "coral reef" inside my head was shaking around, getting stimulated.... So, at one point, I was zooming up to Riverside to attend a Mike Davis-and-Bub-field trip (which was quite a bit of fun!) and I had one-point-five hours in the car to think about whatever the hxll I wanted, and that is the time I devised these two poems.... The Intergalactic Tide of Hyperassociations, featuring my Greek Mother, and The Co-Evolution of Collective Action, which is seen here.

The idea for the poem actually came much, much earlier. At the end of March 2009, I finished CHESS and I'm still trying to find poems to include in the second edition (besides having intentions to illustrate and visualize the set of poems). April of 2009 I went to the Origins Conference and was exposed to the Medea Hypothesis of evolution, in which life itself mass accumulates certain properties and sets up its own "unnatural disaster," or collective suicide, much like humans. In other words, you need to have a mass accumulation in order to create a mass extinction. Medea is "kind of" in opposition of this whole Gaia (pansy-xss) mentality, and what is interesting here is that both theories imply some form of "super-organismic" evolution beyond genes, individual organisms, species.... And then my clever little brain... as I just had taken "environmental institutions" course with Oran Young, I started to think instead of associating these very cool phenomena with "superorganismic bullshxt," that we should borrow the term "collective action" from political science and call these Gaia/Medea/Shiva effects (Shiva is a metaphor that Mike Davis uses and represents as some form of destructive element imposed on a system, like a meteor impact). So, it's not just evolution by natural selection, it's evolution by collective action, but in order to publish such a beautiful idea, I first have to create some bullshxt math model from fake data and then the great idea becomes science. My xss. So, I publish in my blog... and maybe make a film, eh? Or, a nice little poem here. Theorizing with poetry, eh? I also further noticed that there are two modes of thinking in evolution, construction and deconstruction, and they go hand-in-hand, you need both in a dynamic dance, and so my ultimate metaphor for all of this constructive deconstructionism, deconstructive constructionisms is... THE PHOENIX (which is an ultimate tatoo of my friend Lauri)! American interpretations of Darwinian evolution is largely competitive and deconstructivist, whereas Russian and Eastern European interpretations are more constructivist. And of course, somehow capitalism and socialism gets factored into cultural interpretations of Darwinian theories... Bah! (So, all my past references to this past paragraph are in Blog 475 Untended Cemeteries, Blog 425, life-death cycles, Blog 424, Gaia-Medea, Blog 380, Poem, Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia).

As you can see, the construction of this poem has a LOT of recent historical baggage, recent evolution, intricate internal neural wiring that lays deep in my head.... So, the issue was... why did I procrastinate in writing this poem last quarter? This quarter is Anti-Procrastination Quarter, just to let you know, it's about Just Do It Now without any questions asked. And I'll be danged if I am going to procrastinate again. To think that I was going to be able to write such a complicated poem, Co-evolution of Collective Action, in a distracting classroom environment? HA! Ya right. Well, I always think I will get a project done in a jiffy, and I end up being a slow poke... oh well.

I was quite amused when I was scribbling chicken scratch on the car on the way to Mike Davis' field trip. I told a very nice Asian student in class that I wrote that poem and she was amused. We exchanged emails, and I am dufous because I did not follow up. *Sigh.* I dont' know where the email is at the moment....

So FINALLY, after a two month lag time, I hammer out this poem, and I take a step back... it's engrossed with alliteration. I am sure Shelly Lowenkopf would say "gibberish." Same for Barry. It would probably drive him crazy in a good way. So, maybe if I email Barry and say, "if you respond to this poem as 'whacky gibberish,' then I think I may have done my job." Because I think it's as far as the poem is going to go in other people's heads.... Besides all this profound underlying meaning... Barry felt the same with my "Whatever's Left of the Wild West" poem. Oh well... and so it goes.

Ooo... blog 501 is a toughy. "01" makes me feel like I'm starting from scrap. The more and more I am blogging, the more I am coming to realize there are "narrative threads" (or more so "vertical stacking" over "horizontal spreading" of mental coral reef growth) in the blogs I write. Blog 52 connects to Blog 101 and the string of Blogs 455-461. Emergent themes, emergent storylines, I suppose? And the other trend I noticed, is the more that I write, the more I am associating. Creativity is a [scary] expansive feedback effect... and my own "recording/writing" head has a hard time keeping up with my right brain and prefrontal cortex. Definitely some internal neurological conflict of rates of processing... *Sigh!*

380. Poem / Song / Chant Called Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia (Quite Catchy, eh? Ha!)

Poem / Song / Chant Called Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia. Page 1.

Poem / Song / Chant Called Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia. Page 2.

Poem / Song / Chant Called Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia. Page 3.

PDF file for the poem:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/principlescientificecologicalinertia.pdf.

This poem is old. It was written I think in the Spring of 2006, during the time I was taking Dr. Martin Kennedy's Sedimentology course at UC Riverside. This poem draws the parallels of mutations, their successes and failures in evolutionary biology, ecosystems, as well as behavioral changes, and changes in entire human societies. If it works, it sticks, and it grows. It it doesn't work, it decays or collapses, and its parts morph into something else. So I would know, being a survivor of anorexia. Simple, simple logic under the whole jargon conundrum of the University. And so, this form of reasoning is being explored at the societal level by the Panarchy group, in which my advisor, Dr. Oran Young is affiliated with.

It's funny, my poetry--though out of place for a few years, now has context, and growing significance for what I am doing. I feel better, almost every single day now, being at UCSB.

So, the main theme is the properties of cycles of growth, change, collapse, and rebirth. I inserted a phoenix in the end . Because I didn't want to end in "decay / collapse." Coupling of mental observation-processing, mental mutation "epiphany," behavioral change, technological use-creation-change, environmental re-organization-use-change.... I have been wanting to write a story called the Phoenix of Science, documenting how a society had an intellectual bottleneck, and the ones who survived were the rebellious who hated the system, so they re-invented the language, they re-pigeonholed reality.

I also read this poem in light of my grandfather. He is still here, in my mind. He's in the mountains, you know. He's all over Mount Baldy. He's all over southern California. He's not gone. Hardly. In fact, he's freeer than ever.

The other thing I was thinking about is higher levels of organization beyond the individual. Like forming a group, a deep bond with a small group of humans, the co-alignment of purpose and motivation and skills, who create something greater than the capacity of any human can do. With film production, music production, creating an organization that can lead to the first grass-roots gay-elected official in San Francisco (so I have been inspired by Harvey Milk as of late--my neighbor friends took me to watch the movie, he was a phenomenal character). To be able to create a level of organization beyond one human and act like a coordinated super-organism is one of the most thrilling, engrossing feelings I have ever felt in my entire life. I have experienced is most consciously once with the final round of filming at Shifting Sands of Goleta Beach.

Not to mention, "the hardest part is always starting, but once you're going, you keep on rolling!" Get rolling, Vic!

204. Preliminary Interactions with Kristine Barsky, Invertebrate Biologist, California Fish and Game

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/kristinebarskyratedxquestionlist.pdf

When I first started interacting with Kristine Barsky (fisheries biologist, California Department of Fish and Game), I made a few booboos. The first booboo was that I compiled a preliminary "ultimate" question list of questions of all possible things you could know about rock crab, from biology to chemistry to physics of atoms to integration of science and management and regulations. That was not good to give Rate X Unadultrated (however spelled) question lists, especially to people you have never ever met. In fact, Kristine is the first person who I interviewed formally without ever meeting her before. Everyone else I just tagged along with a shaky camera, and I'm on a second round.

This Rated X Interview List was GOOD FOR MY OWN PURPOSES, but NEVER GIVE TO ANYONE ELSE. You don't want to scare people away before you even MEET them!

Mind you, I am writing this blog quasi-brain dead. I need some sleep.

Kristine was very kind to let me go with this boo boo. Her husband is actually an underwater videographer, and so she even provided a lot of input of where to do the interview... in which she recommended the National Marine Sanctuariies Museum at the Ventura Harbor... a nice break from her office too!

I do admit, Kristine was quite skeptical of me, but for all needed purposes. She was perhaps equally as skeptical as Charlie the geography-majored crab/lobster fisherman. But now, after he found out I wasn't a dirt-digging sadistically irrational "enviro," we are ALL in good terms. I only make friends. I thrive off of everyone's positive traits and abilities. I can't deal with making enemies. It's like an addiction, some kind of inherent addiction I have. Genetic? Maybe. Or maybe my parents gave me some good manners from the getgo. A professor casually commented one time that the quality of the interview also reflects not only the person in front of the camera, but the person asking the clever questions behind the camera. That was a nice, indirect compliment!

By the time Kristine and I met, I had a much more simplified question list. She was much happier with it, and the interview went well. I will include the Simplified Question List in a near-future blog.

Kristine was also the first person she could not answer certain questions that I ask, given that she is representing California Fish and Game (she was wearing the agency's shirt)! I respect that entirely. Since then, I told everyone I am interviewing that no one has to answer a question if they don't want to. And if someone has something to say that I did not mention, just go ahead and blurt yourself to the camera!!!

But this situation has made me want to ask a set of questions that I was not going to ask otherwise. I only ask these questions in the most liberal of interviews. The discrepancy between individual views versus the individual view point in light of the agency they work for. You think you have freedom of speech in America, but the truth is, you are under the rule system of whoever your employer is. Micro-governance. So, for the liberal "artist-minded folks" I am interviewing, I will ask them How they Classify Themselves and then I will ask them How Society Classifies Them. I then started theorizing about Fight Club the movie after realizing this Discrepancy... how the narrator represented How Society Classifies the Individual versus Brad Pitt, who represented How One Classifies Oneself... and in the end, how two dichotomized characters merged into one integrated whole... after a shootout... after mega-dynamite destruction of giant skyscrapers.... It's almost as if this Discrepancy exists everywhere. And the only way to integrate discrepancy is through abandonment of societal rules and some strange mental form of system destruction (for me, it's system DECONSTRUCTION) in order to reconstruct from scrap and become one whole piece? Who knows whether I am interviewing anyone who is truly being "themselves" without any form of societal or system construct imposed upon the way how they behave... except... maybe... T$#!*l.... But that's a whole different story....

Kristine hasn't seen my 7-minute film. I certainly hope she doesn't. I don't want ANYONE to see that film. I tell everyone I am starting from scrap. That was something I had to turn in last year.
In the end, I really hope Kristine Barsky will like some end products of this film....