Draft NOTES to Viking & Bandit Piece

odd snippets, from emails, notes

Evil Eye

Photography as Spiritual Vampirism

Imaginary Letter from Jason Houston,

Hi Dave,

Sorry to delay this response, I am not the "arrogance-of-power" that feels it need not respond to a questioning of values, I just needed to meditate on the issues. I'm evolving, thinking about photography on a deeper level, how commercial photography & print has laid waste to countless forests, a mercenary prostitution of Art better kept sacred. My jasonhouston.com domain now fills me with loathing. That Frequent-Flier Carbon-Denier personae- what was I thinking? Logic like "destroying the village in order to save it."

What a shock to learn that in much of the traditional world the Evil Eye is were a stranger has gazed on a child. In Mexico the custom is for an outsider to pat the kid on the head, to prove one is not a goblin, something few Gringos know. The poor mother feels obliged to pay a healer, money she can ill afford, to cure "susto", a child's loss of soul leading to sickness or death. It always bothered me when the face of an anonomous poor person hardened before my lense. My well-off audience surely took the scowl as "poverty sucks", unaware of Jack London's experience as a hungry tramp, the poor are more generous &, in a hell created by the Monster (Domination System), find happiness denied Scrooge. Now I can't photograph someone's poor sick Mom without learning her name & trying to do something direct for her, money, medical help, whatever it takes. I feel much better.

Thanks for pointing out the problem with photography as understood by the traditional Kickapoo in Northern Mexico, where outsiders, especially photo-journalists, are not allowed into the community with cameras. Clearly the peoples of quested-vision know something essential to my culture of commodity image. When you first rode your bike in, unnannounced, to befriend them, they first asked if you had a camera. By good fortune you had mostly outgrown the device & didn't bother with one, you, who as a kid were a mascot to National(ist) Geography & Blackstone Photographers. You who hoped to become what I became. The Kickapoo were impressed, unable to remember, in recent years, any stranger without a camera. Passing that test made you an honored guest, treated like family, your stay there a precious spiritual experience which I envy, to leave the camera behind in order to learn something deep about photography. I am tricking out a nomad bike from salvage, maybe I'll visit those Kickapoo.

I have been that Great White Photographer (GWhiP) jetsetting about, verily the Master's Eye, baleful, panoptic, insensitive actually. Great Whites answer to no one, except Greater Whites. You would laugh at how Orion officers once vied over who got to drive Al Gore back & forth from the airport. Yes my first impulse was that I didn't have to answer your questioning of ecojournalists' carbon budgets, the arrogance-of-power does not have to answer such impertinence. You had not yet followed my advertising link off Orion's site yet & thought I was Orion's galley-slave, down with the liberational message. But you are right about the eco-ethical crisis of professions; how the loss of moral innocence forces the stark choice between willful indifference, moral eco-criminality in boarding that jet, & truer paths of inner transformation. Henry Thoreau & Emily Dickenson hereabouts did not need a jet to catch liberation.

How wonderful, that African children given cameras redeem photography, they are not "specializing in poverty (photography)", shooting from the height of a well nourished westerner, with the latest fancy equipment in the style of the Empire. The sheer joy of a little thumb impinging on smudgy lense chasing that mangy cur, itself in happy play, thru a dump. Oh the shots when the shutter is pressed accidentally by innocence, that the motor-driven pro is forbidden.

I got a copy of Juarez: Laboratory of the Future, that harrowing masterwork of Mexican photojournalists, with awesome afterword by Galeano, & realized my poverty-porn could never top such heart-filled work. I realized my highest role is to mentor such folks, as you do by giving them bikes. I feel more a part of redemtive-vision this way, than when my hand held the gadget. In our attention economy I no longer want to hog the lime-light, let people tell their own story best.

The camera is too easily an Idiot-Box, humans are capable of more, as 40,000 yrs. of painting proves. Van-Gogh could whip out a master-piece faster than a 1hr photofinisher can return my crappy shot of the same scene. I have started to draw seriously while I reconsider photography. Here is a list of excercises for myself, a photojournalist in recovery from ethical & eco-ethical crisis

1) I shot my own face, close-up at full resolution, thinking about photography, the anger felt at the attack on my "shallow ecology"; at my pain for the poor I "shot" for money without helping them so much as helping myself. I'm seeking the power in micro-expression not found in normal unawareness.

2) I took a picture of a flower to compare, side by side with a real flower. I noted the total superiority of the real flower & pondered the dangers of a fake flower as any kind of substitute. Simulated nature is one reason why the Monster destroys nature so unfeelingly. Pity the photographer who is killing flowers by photographing them (by travel, consumerism, etc.).

I started a Cameras not Bombs program to piggyback on Bikes not Bombs' Boston shipment to Iraqi & Darfur refugee kids. The first shipment of 300 old cameras with expired yet good film, & old dark room stuff no one knew what to do with, is going to displaced photographers who will support the kids efforts. Orion will feature the kids work, along with the best of the frankly weaker elite gwhip work.

Yes, The Orion Society had become just another corporation, a crypto-agent of the Monster. The board & staff split, some going on to Chevron/Harper's ecoPRwing. The folks remaining voted to drop 501 status & take on the War & eco-crisis bravely. In a festive spirit we are giving up cars (a battered women's center got mine), lawns, space-heat, & such & telecommute or crash at the office. Amazing new folks have shown up & the writing & art is far better. The Orion garden is bursting, we trade with Food-not-Bombs & eat better that the restaurants we once drove to. We slashed the budget of destruction & money is actually piling up to buy land to recover & open as ecovillages. The bloated mag is a lean zine now, little thumbnails & text fragments point to hi-rez files online for those who want more. Its now clear how unnacceptable it was for a wealthy reader to flip thru our glossy ecophotospreads, inconspicous hyper-consumption, tossed away & soon forgotten, like kleenex.

My new deep-ecophotography workshops are better attended & more gratefully recieved than the old ones; since I undertook the "change-over", folks really get it.

>>>>>>Jason, i must pause here to go on to other work, but you get the idea. Any feedback?

notes,

Perceptions of "adventurous"- thats how jasonhouston.com describes the easy train trip across the Tarahumaran Sierra. My brother & i, as kids, made the same trip with our elderly grandparents, before you were born probably. We were border natives on a tame holiday, including side trips. For the radical standard of adventure there read Antonin Artaud's (rad hero) shamanic quest narrative in the thirties, on muleback. On the other hand, gringos in mexico can be in grave danger, which even seems to be growing lately, for they exude a culeless vibe & resentments have grown. On our routes murdered gringos are described as wandering "disquieted", like bait. Always have a native protector, a role i play for my friends, unless you are truly tough.

Living Death, Knights of the Living Death, humans taken by the Monster as Zombies, the diagnostic clues... Zombies don't know they are zombies, they try to make others become zombies by tagging them, stealing their soul for the Monster, they spread living-death, they eat it, breathe it, etc. The process of a zombie recovering to full humanity goes like this =>anger--denial--depression--self-loathing--evolution--redemtion--joy

Ivan Illich- Energy & Equity which made a dent on Mark.

Cultural Imperialism, Radicals "calling each other out" as healthy ethics. Denial of need to justify a destructive way-of-being, while striking a noble pose, as ridiculous.

Understand how thinkers have identified a phenomonon, call it Poverty Porn, the being of The Other deoderized, sanitized, for consumption as entertainment basically, for hardly are folks ever tranformed by such mere images as powerfuly as by reality. False inspiration, as by a Hallmark Holiday Special, rather than true inspiration that transforms. Could it be that a photographer on location, seeing thru a camera, so "at home" that they are shielded from transformation?

What kind of new photography is called for? Native images made by natives is supressed in the attention economy where jet-setting photo-hounds get the money & audiences. The best practice is for the privileged photographer to put cameras & audiences in the hands of those who never got tell their stories unmediated by outsiders

Abandoning of an inferior way-of-being is easy if you haven't identified too deeply with it. One's Atman is undefiled by a wrongful path left behind. Siddhartha was a spoiled brat.

Would you want a poor photgrapher in your house after shots of spiritual poverty? (like tableaus of mass-consumer vanity objects)

Unprintable
Harper's Kills Cool Story
Prints Shit Instead

If Harper's had an appropriate fact-checking process for scientific issues, it would have been realised that this should have been fact-checked with expert researchers. (Gallo, et al. 2006)

ULA Writer
Stalked by Iowa Writer's Workshop Grads ;^)

"...the worst asshole I ever met," Writer, Mark Svenvold, on assignment for Harper's.

"Mark is a very nice guy." santos, confirmed BADASS

Viking & Bandit Along the Tex-Mex Border

When i see the sat-view of big weather over Del Rio, i dread john & lily's repeated struggle, on low ground, to save the children & losing everything, while the Hodge mansions on the hill get a good lawn watering.

Soon after we passed the carbon zone 70 miners died underground in a huge accident caused by terrible conditions & all Mexico hung to the news for days then mourned, no survivors. they made 6$ a day, the families had no insurance. i pointed to the lightbulb & declared to our Mexican group that it was the cheap addiction to that that killed them & everyone nodded gravely.

Chevron v. Mutant Bike Nomads

Chief O'Reilly, master greenwasher, ChevronTexaco gives millions to the Republican Party, Named a supertanker after former boardmember Condi Rice, met secretly with Vice President Cheney to maximise profits & oppose Kyoto Protocol,

Held Hostage by Domination Systems

"...several variables... force the development of the Stockholm Syndrome.  Finding oneself in an isolated situation with distance from the individuals...previously perceived as meeting (one's) needs, (is) central to all theoretical formulations of the syndrome...The "high-risk" (Stockholm Syndrome) profile starts as one who has a highly unfulfilling private life, and uses (a) rigid (social) identity...as an important veneer to an incomplete self-concept." Gilmartin & Davis

Modern isolation is separation from the old depth of family & community bonds in exchange for a "rigid" identity as "veneer" over the incompleteness. The individual takes up

"{Cultic) ...closed (cultic) systems start with isolation and end with total dedication to a person or doctrine." Dorothy Dedication to the Monster system doctrines.

Mark's failed transformation may have been due to a Stockholm Syndrome-like mechanism, those held in the thrall of the Domination System or Authoritarian Hierarchies in general, come to indentify with the oppressors (Harper's)rather than would-be liberators (Bike Nomads?).

Destructive legitimizing myths are nightmares of reason sleeping.

Parsing Roger Hodge*

* has not replied to queries, at this writing.

Lapham, who backstabbed Willie Morris, no less, to head Harper's, hands this obscure intern, Roger Hodge, the "top-job" in the literary world? Its as if Monica became president. Is there anything really postive to find on the net about "Marlboro Dude"? Poor guy!

From Roger Hodge's '99 review of Jedediah Purdy's For Common Things:

Alas, such books are all too common. Jebediah Purdy belongs to a publishing tradition that includes Dinesh D'Souza, Katie Roiphe, and Wendy Shalit, a line of young Ivy-educated authors whose prose briefly quickened the hearts of the marketing executives who decide which titles will appear at the front of book catalogues, in Barnes & Noble display windows, and on the banner of the Amazon.com home page. How nice that these young sages were fortunate enough to attend expensive schools, how nice for them to be published at such a tender age. And yet how utterly worthless are their books, stacked on remainder shelves in the basements of used-book stores soon after their publication, their notoriety worn thin, their authors' careers all but over.

*GASP*, Roger gored Jeb-Boy!..."utterly worthless" aye? These books would be the jewels of Borge's Library.. a Michelangelo can only arise where a hundred Bunglinos thrive. Remaindered books do become classics. Hodge finds these books utterly useful to him as objects of ridiclue in Harper's.

So how bad are these writers proving, really? Dinesh about as good a thinker as a social conservative can be, a vaguely exotic blend of India & blended strains of Buckly/Wills/Reagan/Goldwater, without the crap of truly failed neocons. Katie is an interesting contradiction of hip & reaction, fully at the forefront of social trends she gives voice to, hardly "utterly worthless". Wendy is a fresh voice for old-fashioned modesty in the face of the decadent raunch most of us are inured to. Minority opinions considered repugnant by such as Hodge are not "utterly worthless", for we need more voices of otherness, not less.

Hodge somehow singles-out for denigration & dismissal an ethnic Indian, two women, & a kid (the wunderkind he never was), in a publishing world as-ever dominated by older white males like himself. In all, the "utterly worthless" are original & better writers than Hodge, who suffered coniptions over the misunderstanding of his failed satire (Onan the Magnificent), which a most readers, including me, mistook for a creepy hypersexual manifesto. The hastily apended heading, "Satire", needs to printed even bigger to clue that humor is intended. Having Harper's print your crap without end is a key perk of the top-job, as Lapham proves.

As for Baby Jedediah, the "Corn Pone Prophet" as Hodge labels him, an actual literary prodigy from West Virginia, he grew legs & continues to mature & could tutor Roger on graceful celebrity & how to complain intelligently about, call it Hodge-Speak.-

"The idea you have when you imagine celebrity is that a lot of people are going to know a lot about you and appreciate the things about you that you want them to appreciate... (that) it's like having a lot of really good friends. And what happens, of course, is that people know snatches and confused summaries about you, and they attach their own hang-ups or agendas to those, and you're this vehicle for other people's opportunistic sentiments. . . . And that's almost the opposite" Purdy to Washington Post

Jedediah is at-ease in his rural soul, but Roger radiates loathing of birthplace, yet clings to outmoded mythologies of Texas land baronage, cultic hunting rituals, & the American-Westernized fiction of native Rhode Islander Cormac McCarthy. Alienated from the poor classes of his Del Rio hometown, & their easy informality, on the Net he projects a banal urban sophisticate identity under a cardboard "Marlboro Dude" facade, for a shallow fan base that worships him more as male-model than literary-being, a weak Dan Quale of Letters who lost in the desperate odds against greatness. Check his pastiche of "Findings", the Onan Blooper, & the mean writer's-cop dismissal of the "utterly worthless".

Roger overawed Harper's technophobe culture with a smattering of XML, a weenie language (Lapham boastfully admits he can't even use a computer, using wage slaves to do the same functions), but the website ended up with a lame schema, utterly unwhizzy. Many an amateur's plain HTML site is more compelling. Still, he tried, give him a C+ (no C++, ha-ha)

Rick MacArthur is a decent journalist, the absentee puppertmaster/kingmaker at Harper's, long ago bored by that-seventies-toy (hush little baby, don't you cry, (grand)daddy's gonna buy you Harper's Magazine

Avenging Willie

Oh the Horror! Lapham, back in the seventies, back-stabbed Willie Morris to become the voice of the "windy echo chamber" that Harper's degenerated into.

Note- My mom was a journalism major at UT, working with Willie Morris on the student paper, The Daily Texan, as he started his legendary career, that mostly ended with Lapham's well doumented betrayal at Hraper's. Willie was my english major dad's hero as well, so i was brught up hearing about this Great One.

Lapham's two-faces- Class Traitor, exposing the flaws of his Ruling Class culture in numerous writings, & Class Upholder, unable to escape his own critique.

Answering Lapham
STATEMENT FROM LEWIS LAPHAM
(about his film, The American Ruling Class )

(Lapham's words in italics, mine plain.)

...I don’t know of any topic as relevant to the predicament in which the country now finds itself than the composition of the American leadership class.

A bright third-grader can see the set of possible solutions to a predicament is logically more relevant.

...on what ethical ground do we defend our American freedom and prosperity?

American freedom is defensible in not infringing on the freedom of others, including future generations. American prosperity is defensible to the extent that it is not off the backs of victims (slaves & other underclasses) & the natural environment.

Nobody disputes...our military predominance, but with what moral and intellectual force do we confront the hostility of people who don’t see much of a difference between the prospect of death by starvation, gunfire, or disease?...

To bore or annoy the ruling class, merely propose that a Thoreau, Ghandi, Mandela, or King provides a worthy model of moral & intellectual force.

What do we expect our leaders to know? What values do we require them to hold?

Sadly, one can't expect Lapham's inbred class of "leaders" to know much or hold wonderful values. The best leaders do not act as a Ruling Class.

Of whom does the American leadership class consist; where does it find its philosophy, and how does it differ from its Asian and European counterparts?

Lapham persistently conflates mere ruling or directing with real moral & intellectual leadership.

Define the American directorate as the few...who manage the government, coin the money, write the laws, administer the schools, own and operate the news media, and how do we know them when we see them? From whence do they come, and to whom or to what do they owe their positions of authority?

Take Roger Hodge as an example of the media "directorate". He comes from a fouth generation provincial aristocracy that owes its existence to a history of genocide (Native Americans), slavery (African Americans), ethnic cleansing (Mexicans), & environmental destruction (Texas #1). He owes Lapham himself for his position of authority as editor of Harper's.

(The meaning of class) shifts with the social setting and the tone of voice, with the height of the ceiling, the names of the other people on the guest list, the view (or lack thereof) of the mountains or the sea.

Interesting that by these criteria we, Mutant Bike Nomads & Biosquatters are a higher class- The Cosmos is our ceiling, everyone, even Lewis & Roger, is welcome on our guest list, & our views of the worlds mountains & seas are more varied & persistent than anyone else we know of.

...from whom else do we expect answers if not from the American leadership class?

From the other 99.9 percent of humanity, where most intelligence resides. People from the underclasses, like Diane Wilson (An Unreasonable Woman) have more answers than a host of Laphams.

------------------

"...the jewel of flattery concealed in the glove of insult...(a form of) American Humor." Lapham's natural voice surely, & hardly funny.

==============================================

Sociology Notes-

Physical & symbolic violence tend to act upon victims by elevating levels of the stress hormone cortisol, literally killing neurons in the hippocampus, a cognitive integration center controlling memory. This mechanism is consistent with the prime predictive mortality factor in humans- social status. The science reveals that prisons, bad schools, denigrating messages, & poverty directly brain-damage humans.

social endocrinology, perceptual fluency & apperception, exposure effect,

"Legitimizing Myths" is a sociological concept that explains much of the "(History/Science/Carbon) Denier" phenomenon. Many of the "repugnant"* questioned posed aim at such myths, the stock stonewall being "bad people" "don't deserve to know" (RWA codespeak quoted from research).

.  

Continue to study in LMs (Legitimizing Myths), for example Palmer's Control Myths & how truth ruins them.  

Social Domination Orientation (SDO) index   ; Left-Wing Authoritarian (LWA) "Double High" (high SDO too)- Lapham   Mark & Roger as LWA follower orientation w/ Roger tempted to excess SDO.   Moi as classic Hierarchy Attenuator (HA)   - exploring neurochemistry of dominance/status relations, good tack  

"Sport Hunting" in terms of power relations, that famous high (involving adrenalin & seritonin) at the moment of non-utilitarian pleasure-ritual sport-killing, the same power high studied in social settings (Snubs, service . The 4H culture thesis dovetails in. Such phenomena offer an explanation for the "willful indifference" of Byron H. type thinkers toward the rape-of-nature & social injustice.  

Formal Ethics mapped to the new periodic knowledge space, (computer science work i did in the 90's inspired by Dr. Peter French), & a calculus of social responsibility emerges. All of this is a special subset of Borges' Library, & form elements of hypothetical Cosmic Redemptive Texts mentioned on our bike voyage.  

Powerful tools to undermine many Legitimizing Myths of current Social Domination Networks (including Wink's classic Domination System on one scale & Harper's on another), for myths are unstable before evidence-driven scientific method, the Socratic Questing Force, Exupery's Little Prince as relentless questioner, Hiedegger's "questioning as the piety of thought" on steroids.

================================

Harper's AIDs Denier flirtation symtomatic of scientific illiteracy now repeating in Carbon Denier mode, where the legitimizing myths of petro trust fund kids are at risk

Chevron's place in the Magazine is the front piece ad spread, with a emptily laid-out psuedoecology-for-dummies pitch. Chevron is the current parent of Texaco founded by Lapham's great granddad. Lapham's impreesion that the Harper's reader is too cool for Rolex ads is falsified by even more tawdry "Gold Buffalo" coin ads.

Attorney Byron Hodge, Roger's bro i think, vented at a recent Del Rio public on water conservation, as the attending Neanderthal. The family owns 40,000 to 100,000 (?) acres of land (NYmag prints "156 sq. miles"- no way) seeks more water rights, apparently to expand largescale hunting tourism operations, so Byron demands (the harshest note in a public meeting transcript full of hushed sweet voices of the Old Border) Del Rio state its future water needs NOW, while the prevailing concensus, from small business to ordinary citizens, pleaded to wait a little for a bit more science, a course despised by the "country lawyer".

email snippets with Mark-

Dozens of people were misled by the "failed" premise of the article. i would not have agreed to such hard work, if not for the misrepresentation.

Harper's avoids "delegitimizing" truths. So if the original story, as you represented it, is gutted, Harper's needs to compensate me (& others?), for lost time or face legal remedies (J.R. MacArthur & Allen Austill take note!  give Harper's legal staff a heads-up.).

 killing a "repugnant" story may be a long unfolding PR debacle.

Harper's many critics have converged on a "windy echo-chamber" critique of the magazine under Lapham's rule. The general complaint of "thinly veiled contempt" for subjects is repeatedly made against Lapham, & as you know, also directed at poor Svenvold on Amazon, a clear cultural pattern. Our (Mutant Bike Nomad) way-of-being represents an antidote. On a fraction of the petro-wattage we are worthy artists & thinkers beyond the "gold buffalo chip" mentality.  

Our dream came true too, the Cyclown Circus invaded flippin' Mongolia on Mutant Bikes, half-way around the world from Biosquat, in Austin, & no one yet hurt. Cyclowns are vainglorious, but aren't we not also glorious? Check out Pete's MySpace website for a picture of him juggling while hands free steering my original tall-bike.  

the story has emerged as an Agatha Christy style plot with clever resolution, a story of the great moral crisis of our day (see NY Times, John Tierney), just like slavery was; of stereotypes like "bad people" & "good people v. new ideas like- frequent-flier Carbon Deniers, Blood for Cheap Electricity, Environmental Classism, etc., 

where story leads-   -what was it, in psychological terms, that marked the German freethinkers for lynching, was a superior attitude derived from literary culture the rednecks had largely lost exacerbated by the intolerable self sufficiency of slave-free DIY.

Harper's rejected, without comment, a suggestion to hire an eco-physicist (for carbon footprint calculation), psychologist (to assess motivations, charges of "going after", etc.), & ethicist (to determine if folks have crossed lines of acceptable behavior) to vette claims in this story, or the dropping of it, to fact-check the divisive points. This might be a great way to use some of the foundation money to tighten up the great fascinating stories of our time.   Please review the following, i pledge to abide by it, & hope Harper's will too.   trying to help,   dave   ps. finishing a house-sit gig, will be off-line soon, please message comments promptly. Biosquat wi-fi will come up in a few days hopefully. thank you for careful consideration of issues.    

Selections from-

Ethics Code of the Society of Professional Journalists

(Code text bold print, comments in fine print)

Seek Truth and Report It
Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Focus on peak oil while killing coverage of radical consumption reduction culture is not courageous, honest, or fair.

Journalists should:

— Tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even when it is unpopular to do so.
Many Harper's reader's will be afffronted by radical nonconsumerism as a more ethical way-of-being.

— Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others.
Harper's culture of editorial secrecy forces that value on our transparent open-media model of our rafdical community.

Harper's imposes an exploitation value in making dozens of informants from the bike nomad subculture contribute many hours to the project it initiated, & then canceled without explanation.

— Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.
— Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.
We seek a voice for several marginalized groups who have little or no voice in Harper's world. These groups include radical social & sustainabilty bike & eco-village collectives, Kickapoo & Masgogos, Mexican coal miners (70 buried alive during course of story, near Del Rio).

We represent considerale unofficial knowledge contradicting many of Harper's official sources.

Minimize Harm
Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.
Rodger Hodge extended an invitation for hospitality in Del Rio, then did not return his reporters calls or emails, causing considerable inconvenience. No explanation or apology was over given. The lapse caused considerable antagonism, still unresolved.

Journalists should:

— Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
Many individuals & groups were inconvenienced by Harper's project including teh Crawford Peace House, Rhizome Collective, Biosquat, Recyclistas, Bikes Across Borders, Cyclowns, etc.

Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
There is an appearence of arrogance in te way Harper's is conducting itslf with regards to this story.

— Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. .
What the private people are asking is for the story to accurately represent ideas & conditions, as promised in writing, or pay those who did substantial work under under false pretence of publication.

We did not seek publication, Harper's ( its writer) initiated the project.

Act Independently
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.
The public has a right to know of relevant powerful ideas that strongly contradict the views of Harperr's staff, advertisers, & readers.

Journalists should:

—Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
There are many real or pecieved indications that the editor killed the story primarily due to personal considerations related to the fallout over the hospitality/explanation/apology failure.

— Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
Harper's should openly acknowlege its conflicts of interest related to the supressed story.

— Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
Harper's represents the power class, as exemplified by the person & writings of Lewis Lapham. Early on the story focused on Harper's own culture of consumption, compliance with war taxes, high carbon fotprint behavioral norms, as the community openly processed the project. It would be "vigilant & courageous" to be accountable for its own power dynamic as it relates to this story.

Harpers should be vigialnt & courageous in taking on Chevron Oil's power, despite being Harper's major advertiser.

— Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
We believe Harper's favors Chevron with weak "peak oil" coverage that promotes extraction & downplays pollution & climate change.

Chevron is allowed to buy large spreads will misleading information. We ahave a history of boycotting & protesting Chevron & other major oil companies. Supressing our story amounts to favored advertiser treatment.

Be Accountable
Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.
Harper's needs to be openly accountable for its handling of this story. Silence & screcy violate the essence of htis ethics code.

Journalists should:

— Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.
This ethics compalint is a request for Harper's to clarify & explain the questions raised about the story, in the spirit of inviting dialogue.

— Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.
Harper's should embrace this complaint as worthy of constructive response & not stonewall.

— Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
Harper's errs in undertaking this story & then killing it without explanation. The bad effects on the private individuals involved remain uncorrected.

— Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.
Private individuals adversely affected by Harper's handling of this story appeal to the Harper's Magazine Foundation Board to expose & correct any unethical practices commited in the course of this story project.

— Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.
There is a perception of a double standard if Harper's routinely holds public figures & institutions of all kinds to higher standards than shoun in its condust of this story.

The SPJ Code of Ethics is voluntarily embraced by thousands of
writers, editors and other news professionals. The present version of
the code was adopted by the 1996 SPJ National Convention, after months
of study and debate among the Society's members.
 

When I was an intern at Harper’s Magazine in 1997—a position I lucked into with no connection whatsoever—I sat in on editorial meetings and watched in quiet awe as one Famous Writer’s short story after another went down like Japanese Zeros over Midway. I would need several pairs of hands to count the writers, many of them excellent, wired for every connection one could dream of, whose novels and story collections continue to go unsold. Tom Bissel in the mag., The Believer

Harper's represent's a classic artificial shortage. They could publish, online, all of the stories rejected on various pretexts; the world a better place. Mark's story rejected twice (2 kill fees?)

When i next see big weather on the screen over Del Rio, we will dread john & lily's repeating struggle to save the children while losing everything. On the other hand, the Hodge mansions on the hill will get a good lawn watering.

Yikes! My swinging muck-rake had hit the Del Rio Richard Cory in the head. Svenvold glared in disgust, Pete missed the moment. We were indeed the Three Stooges, escaped from the Mad Hatter's (Robert) Stooges Museum in Quiet Valley.

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Power Disorders, epsodic & structural (PDE, PDS), the structural violence (SV) relations between narcissism (both creative (CN) & desructive (DN)), sociopathy (S), authoritarian orientation (both RWA & LWA), domination orientation (& "double high" DO-AO),hierarchy attenuators & enhancers, (HE-HA),

narcissistic (or cult-like) behavior narcissistic (or cult-like) behavior, which we resist in various only temporarily effective ways, the problem being that it just keeps popping back up behind clever firewalls made of self-love- We use Humor, the lampooning, voluntary poverty & simplicity, negative charisma like plain talk & dress/grooming, continuos critique.

Narcissism is an essentail survival strategy for the downtrodden of society, many a rejected person functions rather wll on vainglory. For the priveldge narcissim is a special trap,

i struggled, in the course of the story, to discover the relation of status, class, mortality, & the environment, with sources.  As i slowly zeroed in on a set of meanings, i didn't even know what Mark's piece was about anymore (cutting-edge radical thought, global warming, or nice people who say tame things?)?

Authoritarian Meanness takes the form of "Kiss-up, Kick Down." Those below one in a power hierarchy get kicked. Recent research here in Austin at the Social Endocrinology lab showed dogs suffer a damaging cortisol spike (stress marker) when rebuked by owners after a poor performance in competition. The punishment was worst by higher testosterone owner.

In reviewing Mark's amazon reviews, clearly the treatment of the junior college co-eds was very insensitive to those involved. Sprinkled between rave reviews & crank reviews ("throw out the extremes" technique) were some thoughtful critiques that sensed "thinly veiled contempt", "meanness,"

The over-touted factual pastiches of Harper's Index & Findings can never amount to much more than mental junkfood for a dull readership.

As the media landscape shifts dramatically & complaints accumulate about Harper's dullness, snobbishness, & the loss of its original greatness, Hodge declared to the Washington Post that he intends no major changes.*

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* In the same Post article Lapham recounts a CIA interview he naively sought.- "The second question was: You're..on the final tack at...Hay Harbor on Fishers Island in...late afternoon -- what tack do you take? I don't remember...the answer..., but I got it right because I had sailed at Fishers Island."

Goodness, rusty pilotage! I googled the chart- he final approach to Hay Harbor is on a southwest heading, a fair-day yachtie in a PM seabreeze from the southeast is on port tack. Less obvious is a class distinction implicit in the question, that a year-round working-class sailor like The Old Master, Slocum, in the prevailing westerlies of the latitude or, often enough, in a formidable nor'easter, reaching or running in on starboard tack is the correct answer, nevermind the CIA's sailing norms.

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Google- Your search - Harper's "Chevron Boycott - did not match any documents.
We are chevron boycotters! And Exxon, BP, etc.

“I am proof that you can actually attain your dream job.” Roger Hodge

“We’re all sort of the anti-blogs,” Hodge said, “and I think we will eventually triumph over the blogs!"

"Not likely." Carl Swanson, NY mag.

Right, "eventually triumph"... like ” Iraq.

As if the best thing in Harper's wasn't Silverstein's Blog, not that its so great as Great Blogs go, & its too bad for trees when blogs print-out to snail-mail (structural violence) to pimp Chevron.

Fate made me a Father Bear to the Blogsphere. Hodge was attacking my girlfriends' babies. My ancient duty was swat this fly (sorry nothing personal) with a hairy literary digital paw (forgive Mexed metaphor). If a lone-blogger (oxymoron moron) out of billions can do that (outright parenthesis disease), so much for the triumph of the ancien régime's vanity press.

Soon, with help, Tio's house got rigged for solar, a first in Victoria.  

Money somehow taints writing, even kills it.

Alas, poor Phaethon,
the BBQed one
Fed to the Griffins that
Drew Lapham's Sun Chariot

(shoot me, i can't help myself, apology to the Sun ;)

Foer (New Republic) on Harper's- “White guys are still in charge?” True-that Dude.

Roger's crib notes for greatness-

represent the transformative power of journalism- cut your ridiculous salary drastically (charity will do), slash expenses everywhere, because its not about money (maybe with modest writer incentives for manifest glory during early transition) <== ability to compromise ;), & put Harper's Foundation money to nobler purposes like remediating the social damage to ethnic cleansed Black Seminoles around Del Rio (Hodge land?). modestly paid literary competitions & gleaning the best of the written word from any source, even blogs, would restore the old quality mojo. instead being literary Rumsfeld crowing about crushing the blogsphere, he needs to

cultivate a self depreciating humor able to face the santos, svenvolds, & lilies as social equals, a magazine with heart. Transparency & willingness to admit mistakes should be automatic (he doesn't even have the courage to put the AIDs denier article online, much less brook critique in the mag.) the club needs to open up or die (either way, i'd be glad to help)   Everyone will do better in that kind of world,

 i really can't help inquiring into the fascinating mysteries presented. As de-Exupery insisted about his little prince, once the prince had posed a question he never relented.  after so much admitted "help", i don't even know what your story is about anymore (cutting-edge radical thought, global warming, or nice people who say tame things?)?

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Harper's Ghost Troop has been mobilized

convening a Harper's Ghost Troop- Melville, Hawthorne, London, & Mencken, to advise us, a "call to greatness", from them to you to buck up your courage)  

its spooky, the trip was like a fairytale quest (like hobbits & such) & now as if the Ghost Troop really were guides to the true ideas.

Harper's Ghost Troop News- J. London clamoring for RH's scalp, the other self-mades like Melville & Twain barely holding him, themselves poorly sympathetic. Menkin greatly amused. Hawthorne offers this from his 1868 notebooks-   'A person to be writing a tale and to find it shapes itself against his intentions; that the characters act otherwise than he thought, and a catastrophe comes which he strives in vain to avert. It might shadow forth his own fate - he having made himself one of the personages.'  

Am situating Ghost Fort in Goethe's Walpurgisnacht (as described in Faust), a fine land to integrate/conflate many loose threads in progress (twilight zones, imaginary hyperdimensions, etc.).  

Harper's Ghost Troop Notes- Twain glided up all excited- He proposed that Mark & I could, like, team up as a serious-comic duo (Viking-Bandit) to resolve Harper's pickle (wih young Roger as proud midwife of a literary coup rather than nixonesque denier of a mess), just look at the narrative power of Brozo the profound Mexican clown. i could serve as a sort of willing buffoon/profound jester, a perfect foil for your style as we plumb the great questions of the times along the midwestern Twilight Zone (see latest Wheeliad). if the response was good, we might continue the formula in web, book, or vid-doc.

A stony sphinx, answers locked.   Vinted veritas, Dr. Johnson unnegated by drink, prohibition as inverse addiction. "You must trust us, but we won't trust you," for uneasy sits the power-trip crown. "Anyone asking such questions does not deserve an answer," is another such trip.  

The Mutant Bike Nomad Homeland compared with New York, etc.

The Big Apple can be insightfully compared with our bike-nomad Tex-Mex homeland by mapping across a one to two order-of-magnitude scale mismatch. First, take our nomadic region as a whole & note our respective populations as roughly similar, with similar social diversiity & historical weight.

The taller skyscapers are urban peaks somewhat over 300 meters while our natural peaks in the Sierra Madre top 3000 meters. On bikes, we migrate over distances around a thousand kilometers, while New Yorkers might commute up to 100 kilometers, often by subway or other mass transit. Our sort of bike hipster, the NY bike messinger, is more nimble in traffic, but their bikes would be ridiculous for the epic distances we traverse.

New York's monstrous financial empireroughly matching TX giant natural resourse economy (the oil that won WWII), its dense urbanism balanced against our rural expansiveness, where Central Park is inversely mirrored by our Dallas or Houston, say.

The New Yorker's spirit is weighted toward collectivity, social animals in service-webs, while our spirit is more lone-wolf, more individually self-sufficient.

On a mythic level, we are considered "the-middle-of-nowhere", a boring desert to a city mouse, NY, the "center-of-everything", dark & cramped, despite its lit skyline.

We got a Neocon plague, NY has a Neolib plague.

In Austin, in microcosm the same relationships are found between urban warehouse style Rhyzome Collective, with strong elitist NY connections & Biosquat, a forest eco-village with rural Mexican and Black roots. Both benefit each other.

For too long the direction of fertilization has been from NY to us, & for good reason the New Yorker has been rightfully apalled by our part of the world, but now we should plan an invasion of Gotham, for it seems we have something of what they need to address the modern crisis.

A parallel experiment of texts unforced by payment (Wheeliad) & those well-paid (Harper's article), both deliver, partisans are mistaken.

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Arrested Transformation

At first i thought i was observing Failed Transformation in folks who were stuck on the shore of what Rolando calls (the change-over?) to the better world that we know is possible, in fact some of us have stand upon the new shore, if only for moments. Humans don't stand still & a better concept is Arrested Transformation. Suddenly my mother's right-wing neighbors talked like radical ecovillagers as their wells dried up, even to considering banning their beloved lawns in favor of subsistence water..

standardized spirit, Social squares molded by cubicles, nature percieved by the alienated as passive-agressive & by the native as loving mother.

Everywhere, those we love are enslaved, born in captivity, breeding in captivity, brutalizing their children into the domination system. Most don't so much choose a life but are stamped into a mold. They are little (Peak Oil) Heinbergs awaiting leadership; beepered sheep, clones on-call. Unready for real revolt, the "small man" finds its too much, even merely to file a complaint, yet depend on this little human to bust free eventually.

Alarm Clocks run on Anglo mean-time, a Gregorian patch-up promoted by corporate interests, Julian celeb calendar, Babylonian sundial slaves. Leisure as natural wealth. Time is soul-money.

Demonic time is a grinding treadmill, mechanical clock as Babylon's beating heart. There began the smashing of natural space time, the collision of presence of Monster & Human. Travel becomes violent, it "steps on". A high-dimensioned constraint resolution problem, in this case, how to integrate "Babylonian time" scheme used in air travel with the natural rhythms of moon, and weather systems.

Reality porn for those without vivid lives. pale palliative rather than the transformative jolt of direct experience. Tele-absence  

Harper's difficulty in taking a stand on the scientific reality of AIDs is likely due to the human tendency to see a false pattern in isloated facts, thus a misdiagnosis here, a toxic reaction to medication there, a lucky few with genetic resistence crowing to the world, buzz about courageous mavericks taking on big science, not being a rocket scientist, & mental laziness or hastiness tempts one to miss the overwhelming weight of evidence. A bad betting strategy. History will soon resolve this.

Such a weakness can repeat-

Carbon Deniers- modern superconsumers who, despite much evidence of a gobal problem, continue to generate huge "carbon footprints" by choice of lifesyle, even if they pay lip-service to the science.

The destruction of nature & Enviromental Classism (superset of Envir. Racism) as the great moral crisis of our time, just as slavery was the great moral crisis of the era of lynched freethinkers.

Lapham decried the absence of Big Ideas, Wheeliad is full of them.

Crisis of Willful Indifference; meekly paying war taxes & having a big carbon footprint are but but two of many ethical challenges for the average North American. The emperor is naked so folks deal with it by putting their heads in the sand.

Its not hard to envision a calculus of mortality, a measure of future death per lifestyle choice caused by the willful indifference of the brutalized super-consumer.    

Privacy lost doesn't hurt so much as lost mystery worth privacy. Hardly anyone is sheltering Anne Frank or running an underground railroad. The modern's secrets are shallow cosmetological banalities, privacy a commodity fig-leaf over trivial nakedness.    

The Little Prince, Exupery repeatedly stressed, never retracted a question, but insisted. Heidegger declared questioning the piety of thought. The question is the atom of questing. To forget or ignore truth is to murder meaning. The Brainstorm Rule- forgiving offensive ideas for the sake of revealment.

Status forms unstable stratified structures fated to fracture, swirl, upend & wear down.

false-dawn of arrested transformation The door unknocked upon- self down-classed, the unconsciously self-censored text of the clipped soul.

Branding the Golden Calf is pretty much such, a burning-in of ownership tokens, originally with hot irons. Commercial branding is idolatry, a crying calf sacrificed under the Golden Calf logo. The Pollo Loco, as a brand, pimps its own snuff-act. Poor minions of mammon, bred in captivity.  

The Question of Tents- We mutant-bike nomads have never used them in Texas or Mexico, avoiding weight & fuss. In these parts a simple ground-cloth, bug-net & rain-fly/sun-shade is enough. The weather most always fine; this is not the Antarctic. Rain is a harmless free shower, rather than a problem. Tents are fine in alpinistic extremis, but not as final redoubt of domination system.

Oh, to see the stars unpolluted by Satanic glare & haze, nude eyeball pressed upon the cosmos. A tent is Urbanist Brutalism's flimsy last resort against excessive beauty. Seems meager fare, just moonbeams & stars, but it gets poets drunk.  

Ghost Troops in Twilight Zones

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In Authoritarian Hierarchies candor is only for confession by the lower or accusation by the higher, when lies didn't get the job done.

the world's whistle-blowers, insisting on the hemlock cup for asking the "wrong" questions that push the "wrong" buttons.  

a journalistic cover-up compounds original error,

Note to Mark- I faced that scary guy, Marcus who charged at me at KFF, faced him like Delgado, the crazy neurologist who stopped charging bulls by a brain-implanted electrode, in my case a calm gaze radiating at ~500 terrahetz manipulating Marcus's own axions as delgado electrodes, the effect the same, Marcus, the violent ex-marine, froze in his tracks, though i would not chance it twice.

i am a native to the vast blogsphere, indymedia is my home, & rally to forestall a stupid "triumph" by Dinosaurs:

stories emerge from Seas of Detail, this one is Venus-on-a-half-shell.

Roger has very reactionary views about border history as covered by del rio herald, & some reviews of redeck apologists, lily is right! the whole 4-H thing very acute. he's really blown it lately- thinks he will "triumph" over millions of bloggers (with 315k Harper's salary from oil & real estate & scant talent), & gambled all by takes up with AIDs deniers, to global derision. Care to guess his carbon footprint compared to us bike nomads? Between the earlier adulations are growing claims of arrogance, incompetance, etc.

Hodgian power lunch wowed Mark.

it would be easier if you all just were open. maybe roger could just apologize to the group for the failed invite, like a normal person.  

 the whole world can read my struggling or failed drafts anytime, why not Mark's?

if you are dropping the whole sleepless-night-off-grid, free-thinker, mamba -in-the-bedroom, lily, pete, rolando, kff dead trees, etc., etc., ok with you if i try to "make it work"? i think its a fine story. as an amateur it would be a thrill to succeed where a pro gave-up, all that material is a gap in my account of revealing (Wheeliad), thinking, all this time, you were on it. i think i know how to tie all the loose ends together to address the big carbon-footprint/socoal justice story of our time, if you or Harper's won't.  

my main reason for so much effort was curiosity to read what we can now call the "mistaken" piece, how you would resolve the sincere questions posed by your subject. that's my payment, otherwise your mistake did waste a lot of my effort. sorry you made such a big mistake. could you forward the rejected work, in the same transparent spirit i've shared my writing (including failures) & life with you?  

in effect a choice between cowardice & mediocrity or moving decisively toward restoring the venue's noble roots & avengin Willie Morris.

Pete Murray's myspace => PEOPLE WHO HAVE INSPIRED AND AFFECTED ME PROFOUNDLY: BIOSQ: http://www.main.org/polycosmos/biosquat/wheeliad.htm

Mark, actually, the migration was a success. we got Mexico mostly without gasoline, remember? Pete doesn't think migration was a failure. Bethany was jazzed. you should have ridden with us in a mixed nationality party of 9, deep into the sierra, right after you left. but its not about numbers, it was an existence proof that one needn't sit around in a heated apartment, or fly about like Al Gore.  

my sense of that story, was to see how Mark Svenvold, given the radical perspective amply presented, would proceed in life with, like, flying in the helicopter with the rich guy, scaring caribou, or dropping 2 tons of CO2 just to frequent-fly to a treehouse (the question of transformation or not).  

people i conferred with think the story became much more fascinating than your wimpy Heinbergian premise.

In agonizing over the story & how to move beyond to something everyone can live with. There is so much pain in the world right now & so hard to know what to do. hiedegger's notion, "as the danger grows so does the saving power" suddenly seems but a poetic fiction, there is no such linear relation, the saving power must be its own reality free of danger.  

too often a heartless Bazarov to friends & family & deeply regret it. The sickness of Byronic Negation.

Young Byron killed a friend in a rage & was broken hearted ever after. My grandfather on my mother's side (maybe) killed a playmate when he & his little friends were throwing rocks in an orange orchard, the death was never clarified, but he slowly processed the trauma into a widely percieved saintlyness.  

Poor Charlie O'Brien, the eighteenth cent. Irish Giant. i just  read The Knife Man about John Hunter a real-life faust, founder of modern surgery & the persecuter of the real-life charlie. Hunter was model for dr jekyl & mr hyde novel. charlie in reality was a simple minded gentle person who only wanted to avoid being a display as he died, he believed his soul would never rest, he still is on display to this day, native americans know what that means- we must actually bury poor charlie o'brian to heal the western soul, am trying to relocate the indian-chief quote, that western rationalism leads to "ruin in all spheres."

i thought marlboro-dude was probably laughing at the hapless "sarge & gomer" at SEE-1 (ecovillage) & so was i was primed for a come uppance as the doors opened along Hiedegger's Framework- the failed hospitality, Lily's sad story & Hodge opinion, & the mocking white mansions at spitting distance, a pefect little storm of revealing.    

been thinking a lot about Rousseau, snubber of kings, in his relationship to philosophes like Diderot & Voltaire, whose daring was bought-up by the ancien regime. a good lense to view what i attempt in poking Harper's.  

Freedom fighters & mercenaries don't mix, apparently. An emulsion mixes incompatible ingrediants by encapsulation by an emulsifier.

understand how difficult it is to operate in the dark; why exactly did the Hodges go silent when we hit town? its a key to mystery.

cloaked problems, secrecy is far inferior to transparency, chasing the rat out of the clutter, cleanliness is transparency/surveilence..

viking piece is all over the map responding to the opaque process you & harper's presume. six months of thwarted curiosity is difficult for this monkey, all too eager to see the ball downfield.

The Call of History

A comfortable neoliberal transforms too slowly for history.

Why is asking what lewis drives or if roger pays his war taxes so taboo? Why an asymmetric cloak? Should one self censor to get ahead in a conventional sense? (no) I puzzle over such questions you, & most everyone seems to innately already know the seemingly obvious answers to.  

Think Rousseau

Rousseau's precocious reading struck a chord, as from my dad's english major bookshelf my first novel at age six was Steinbeck''s The Red Pony followed by The Pearl, these depressing books had a great effect. Other incidents, like watching a family die on the highway as we left church on Easter, when i was eight, led me to war against percieved victimization of the weak. A woman friend told me that my meanness was a hyper developed protective instinct, too much of a good thing aimed too close to home.

At the doorstep of conventional success Rousseau bravely snubed the French king & paid dearly, but clearly  made the better bargain than the sell-out philosophes.  

For the public writer, loyalty to the reader trumps all.  

this mess is a better story than the expected crap

Dave,   Great news. Harper's wants me to do a long piece on the biosquat migration! By long I mean ten thousand words, which is fantastic. Plenty of room. So it's a go...  Best,   Mark

Note to Mark- (Please forgive, my Muck-Rake swung loose & hit Lapham & Hodge- my-bad. But You, on the other hand, were excellent, no joke, a tough assignment, true-that, hope you got paid), but Someday... The Return of...The Viking! PeaceOut

Cool Books

Two recent books that, taken together, present a very big picture-

The Global Class War, Faux's devastating analysis of the global "country club culture"

Thin Ice, Bowen

Good summary of current atmospheric science by an alpinist physicist- the sad shocking loss of tropical glaciers & the race to get ancient ice cores from them & the lessons- how CO2 has long been a driver of extreme climate change & how dangerous the changes underway are to the world's poor in particular.

note on "domination system": i found the concept in the Peace House library in "Engaging the Powers", by Wink, the radical theologian, excellent, but i take it secularly, thanks to Skip Longo, of the Waco peace group.

Wheeler,Weinberg, Everett, Deutsche, Prigogine in Austin, '77.

Laureate Prigogine'sd entropy studies led him to the view static ways-of-being as entropic quagmire, but ways-of-becoming as freeing. All beings are on paths of becoming, transformation is the rule & the arrow of evolution, Carbon Denier => Biosquatter, points true. The challenge is to spot false myths as they emerge & replace them with truer ones, Marcuse's "false conciousness" into truth.  

It was a rare pleasure to sneak into Prigogine lectures at UT, his poor English making great mysteries more so. Great scientists are great mystics, any Newton or Einstein driven by mystic inspiration. A sense of humor is also diagnostic of this crowd, science deniers mostly have a humorless character with so many mortally wounded legitimizing myths paining them.

supposed Near-Micron Fallacy- the theoretical discounting of faint, yet real, residual quantum coherence of large bulk objects (say, a mountain or a star), & effects below near-subatomic to superstring scale, outside the near micron scale where coherence is demonstrated.

probalistic feedback in bulk objects

pattern languages of being