I read these two articles on self-organizing criticality today, posted by a fine British reposter of articles, and found them pretty interesting.

I like the idea of self-organizing criticality for a lot of reasons, but in the Shaviro article he is saying that you can't automatically trust a structure that has come into being through its own ability to thrive in the first place, because by defining a structure simply by its self-organizing traits you wind up making opposing forces into the same movement, and thus a reduction to absurdity.

For instance with the self-organizing principles of radical free market theory, eventually coming into conflict with the self-organizing principles of active resistance, Shaviro is saying that generic, uninformed, blind faith in a movement that eagerly builds itself leads to grand calamity and eventually grand conflict. Well sure.

The rat self-administering cocaine until its heart explodes, this is self-organizing too, if you put enough rats near enough cocaine you will have a temporary society with some pretty successful ingestion of cocaine, but then there is collapse, which is I guess the essence of any attack on self-organization, what to do about collapse as proof of no useful organization.

A violent mob with pitchforks is self-organization, no mathematician ever said a violent mob was a good thing, the mathematicians just tend to say that there are certain critical points around which mass will organize itself. If you express this as human narrative, then you could say that a population will try to move to it's healthiest point through support of social structures which assist a state of thriving. Trust the mob because it is undeniably mob-like.

To the extent that this applies to the Gaia hypothesis, and the idea that a Medea-like creature is more responsible for various extinctions than a Gaia character is responsible for guiding us toward life, Peter Ward cannot figure out why a world mind would purposely head to its own demise.

"The Earth cannot possibly be alive", Peter Ward argues, "or else it would take better care of itself".

He is saying that if a significant series of extinctions was created by life itself, and not a meteor impact or extraterrestrial event, then it makes no sense that an underlying system is purposely making Earth more habitable, it makes more sense that a giant Earth Rat is self-administering cocaine until its heart explodes.

The question I have for Peter and Shaviro, is about why a living being would purposely head for its own demise, and why Gaia's hypothetical suicidal rampages are being interpreted as an absence of Gaia. How do you think she would hypothetically feel about that?

There has never been a point in all of Lovelock's writing on Gaia where he wasn't demanding an "aesthetics of decision", as Shaviro demands. We have always known that when someone runs with just the perfectly wrong idea that it could turn into Hiroshima eventually, the question has never been about why it's okay to seek out your inner exploding rat heart, it's always been about how to survive the rat heart once it explodes, there has never been a point where Gaia didn't punish an angry mob, whether it was witch hunting farmers or a gigantic algae bloom, you can't say that because the itch is too big no one is even trying to scratch it.

It is not the mechanical functioning of life that contains it's own self-annihilation, it is the mechanical functioning of choice, perhaps these guys give themselves too much credit believing that critical theorists are the kind of life form that helps life in general.

There comes a point where some people won't try to fight their own cancer, it is too advanced, mutational lung mass has forced it's way into the brain and you're pretty much just fucked, if some global attack on these giant tumors doesn't happen then there is no survival at all. Mass extinction could just as well be a survival method for global life in general. It could be the same striving towards comfort that happens when you kick people the hell out of your house at 3 am because it is just too loud. As long as you're anthropomorphizing accumulated terrestrian phenomena as the work of a personality, and can easily see the give and take of actual conversation with the elements, it is ridiculous to ignore that heading to one's demise on purpose is what thinking creatures do sometimes, often due to being upset at the behavior of other thinking creatures.

Lovelock is saying that the Earth will conspire to create areas of stillness in which life can thrive, we all like a comfy living room, Peter Ward is saying that the Earth will trash the living room sometimes, thus proving there is no living room and no Earth, when in fact, the Earth could trash Peter Ward's living room any time it wanted and Peter Ward too, because no one can relax at his place. Peter Ward then writes a book called "You Horrible Bitch Earth" and supposedly this is brand new science.

Shaviro is saying that a "metaphysics of emergence", is not enough to get us through the hard times, that we shouldn't just keep the living room the same way just because it worked for Grandma, because eventually our hearts will explode.

The real explanation, which I will tell you because you will never believe me, is that there's a lot more alive around here than just the Earth, and all of these things have feelings too, and they get pretty upset when interrupted by Mormons while hanging out naked in the living room. Funny things happen when you interrupt the naked Earth in a private moment.

In some samurai traditions, it is appropriate for a master to behead a student who has interrupted his flow, just in simple conversation, so just try sneaking up on the master when he's naked in the living room. Then try to say afterward that there was no naked samurai in there, only some kind of sword machine that constantly swings at you.

No seriously, you should try it, for science.

By the way, they're going to sodomize the moon in October, twice. Yes they're taking pictures. No I don't know for sure how the moon is taking the news.