WALTER ALTER

BACK TO BOB BLACK: TECHNOPHILIA, AN INFANTILE DISORDER

retro- the new prefix

the primitivo-nostalgiac frame of reference from which contemporary 
artists speak contains a number of clandestine Fascist premises.  most 
analytic tracts on post-modern art fail to enumerate and appraise those 
unstated factors.  primitivist trends, from the proto-cubist "Les 
Demoselles" to neo s & m, self-mutilatory performance, ritualistic autism 
and all the stick, feather and bone fetishes in between, is a lying 
hypocracy formalized as "art" by a gang of elitist think tank social 
engineers with a high stake interest in the maintenance of Feudal caste 
stratification.  Romanticist attachment to a "simpler", "purer" existence 
in past times or among contemporary primitive or "Eastern" societies 
ignores the crushing reality that the innate direction that any sentient 
culture will take to amplify its wellbeing will be to increase the 
application of tool extensions.  if that increase stops, the culture will 
die.  for all the praise of primitive ways, damn few native/aborigine 
societies are being created and lived in fully by those doing the praising.  
primitive life is short and brutal.

since technology-based societies require a highly educated labor pool, 
and since a highly educated labor pool is harder to flim flam with 
irrationalist superstition and self-deprecating fatalism, the 
superstitionist's target is applied science and the interested state of 
mind.  scientific method is attacked from several directions.  technology 
is reported as a runaway, life-threatening aberration of the human spirit, 
opposed to the "intuitive".  the brain is categorized as left/right rather 
than something sensible like front/back (counterposing analytical to 
reactionary reflex mentation), or inner/outer (counterposing primitive 
sub-mamalian functions to the cortical speecch and dexterity areas), or 
electro/chemical (counterposing glandular endocrine biochemistry to 
mental electro-magnetic flux fields), or sympathetic/parasympathetic 
(counterposing rest and contemplatory states to active physical motion 
states).  what is most troublesome is that never is this Papal doctrine 
about the ground state of existence called up for question by those 
freethinking, literate, idealistic rebels in the Radical anarcho-Left 
alignment.  at best it is a double standard employing an extreme 
criticism against all Bourgeoise, Capitalist, spectacular, commodity 
factors while letting all manner of doltish, contradictory superstition 
bed down by their campfire.  at worst it is an agonizing stubborness 
fueled by infantilism and anti-parental vengeance.  the state will not 
wither, nor will it be overthrown.  it will, however, be rendered obsolete 
by decentralist, time liberating electronic technology.

the diagnosisis is obnosis- an inability to see the obvious.  the "anti-
authoritarians" expend a surprising amount of energy shoehorning twisted 
data into demented frames of reference as dictated by their "non-
authorities".  those aspects of pre-technological "primitive" culture which 
suit the tactic are caricatured out from their historic framework and 
given the impossible attribute of contemporary legitimacy.  the 
anthropologist's depiction of "happy" or "noble" hunter-gatherers is a 
plantation breeder's living myth.  Margaret Mead has been debunked as a 
semi-literate sectarian specializing in "doping the samples" when they 
didn't fit into her pre-existant doctrine.  bad scientific method has been 
the subsequent hallmark of the anthro-Romanticist's nostalgia for 
primitive humanity's scarcity-dependent rituals.  this is a strategy 
designed to destroy "sense".  as our cultural and personal data fields 
contribute to the amplification of awareness and cognitive method 
(environmentalism is not a product of industrial waste, it is the product 
of electronic "picture" information on a global scale- a holistic, 
decentralist, de-specialist awareness of biosphereic interdependence).  
remember that countless cultures hunted and gathered themselves to 
extinction.  the wanton exploitation of an environment is not a recent 
phenomenon.  cultures who outgrew their habitat either became predators 
upon their neighbors or succombed.  simplicity is simple mindedness.

whatever deity or chaotic attractor or big banger is responsible for this 
balloon full of calories we call a universe, the thing came out organized, 
patterned, predictable and graspable, by degrees, to be sure, but graspable 
nonetheless.  the grasp, however, requires more than ten fingers and toes, 
it requires extensions via instrumentation into previously invisible 
domains on either side of the visible light wavelength spectrum.  any 
obstacle to figuring this sucker out is Fascism.  primitivism in art is a 
Fascist psywar strategem.

an irriversible cultural phase shift is occuring towards the more complex 
matrix of visual field simultaneity.  cognition is directional.  it is 
constantly facing an unknown- the future.  this is the human condition.  
our instrumentation for illuminating this unknown has created a global 
village that has no room for global villains.  we can no longer afford to 
rationalize evil as a necessary and designed-in everpresent yin-yang 
50/50 counterbalance to that which is good.  our task as artists is clear- 
it is the exponential increase of human intelligence, ie., the creation of 
human genius.  if we don't take up the task, then piss on art; then let 
technology provide not only the instruments and tools for learning, but the 
lesson books and methods as well.  info overload is relative to your skill 
level.  the quantities of information we have access to today are the 
result of vast fields of flux throughout space and powerful negentropic 
vectors that have intersected on this planet to produce consciousness.  
life is not a spinoff of solar radiation.  it aint the creation of cosmic 
angelic super beings either.  it is the operation of potential from nothing.  
exactly how and why, we will one day discover.  but we cannot discover it 
by examining mind alone.  we must ping pong between that and an 
examination of physical reality.  what verifiies this method is the 
increase and extension of life- everyone's.

you can't exercise wisdom by posting warning signs around certain areas 
of knowledge.  to the curious and the interested the signal "don't go in 
here" is immediately translanted into "don't go in...where!?" cultural 
acceleration of the coming magnitude will require a guiding cohesive body 
of knowledge and experience as a frame of reference.  we can enter the 
21st century with or without a heat shield.  we need diagrams and 
manuals.  damn few artists are moving to help with this.  the few that do, 
involve themselves for all the wrong reasons.  they really don't believe 
that technology is a good thing, intrinsically.  they've been sold a load of 
psycho-mystico claptrap about consciousness, existnce and psychology 
that obscures true methods of discovery.  we have been programmed by 
think tank wrecking crews into harmful associative reflex-emotive fields 
through the use of a package of transparent behaviorist techniques to 
manipulate the imperceived into a surrender of autonomy- all this while 
proclaiming autonomy loudly.  that's the trick. 

self-definition automatically precludes self-analysis, unless that 
definition is, a priori, one of self-analytical being.  what yardsticks have 
been palmed off on us for the differentiation between the intrinsic and the 
manufactued? "gut feeling", "intuition".  like that's going to keep you from 
being conned, cheated, fleeced and peeled clean as a hummingbird's butt.  
if your intuition is so accurate, consistent, timely, and prioritizing, then 
why aint you won a million at the lottery, or made all the right decisions.  
clock yourself for the next hour.  how many times a day do you perceive 
yourself operating with the aid of intuition, really extending a forecast 
into a verifiable future situation that is not based upon learned 
experience, common logic, a gathering of evidence, a conscious judgement, 
a weighing out of alternatives with their assigned scenarios? how many 
times a day do you really strike forward on important matters 
intuitively? schizophrenics get intuitions all the time.  their minds are a 
spider web of intuitions; their resultant compuslions and inhibitions.

we are currently coming out of a state of low intensity cultural warfare.  
it is sub-military, borderline sub-political, covertly attitudinal, but 
mainly employing all mass media as psychological warfare chess pieces.  
to the extent that artists play into the manufacture and distribution of 
"miracle relics" for the ideologically faithful, whether they be objects or 
catechisms, they are lackeys and bootlicks of the mover and shaker 
Brahminocracy.  irrationalist "New Age" theology is as much the opiate of 
the people as are the established religions.  if Christian fundamentalism 
is seen to be an anathema to human intelligence by the radical vanguard 
and their artist popularizers, then so are all varieties of 
fundamentalism, including the "New Age" ones because their 
characteristic signature is equally the moronic embrace of some reifying 
dickhead's psychosis as dogma.  they are all revelations in a cabbage 
patch designed to create an acceptance of blind dogma and sacrifice of 
logic.

the art game is rigged, this the art strikers know, yet the depth and 
breadth of the rig is not being probed with modern, well calibrated 
cognitive instruments, that is to say, frames of reference not crippled by 
ideology.  we arters, not martyrs, must attempt to figure out why 
science is so powerful and gesture it to the side of the angels.  if there 
was not an inner logic to existence, we would not be here.

irrationalism equals self-annihilation.