The problem with libertarians and the problem with Anonymous and the problem with Facebookers is all the same sort of problem. They have no Leviathan under which their prerogatives are defended.
This is a problem that I have no answer for, but here is the first way I think about it. In the Old West, we think about whether or not law and order can succceed based on the character of the Sheriff. The Sheriff will or will not, based upon his gut and the resources available to him, defend your narrow ass from the various card sharks, snake oil salesmen, horse theives, claim jumpers, savages, lynch mobs, rapists, murderers, and outlaw gangs of the untamed wild West. But you should learn to carry your own Winchester.
When Doc first became LAPD one of the first things he noticed and communicated to me is the extent to which cops get on the scene five to ten minutes after the fact. It's almost never ever an intervention. It's a forensic reconstruction. What did you see? What was the order of events? What were you doing here?
It has been a while since I've been blogging on the regular. One of the reasons is that I have very few loose ends and questions remaining on the Cobb project. But one of those has to do with the material floor of all jibber jabber. OK so we have this new internet thing and we can all have all the conversations we want and answer all of our questions, etc, etc. But who do you call when people start shooting? Who or what has got your back when all of you ideas and money are just marks on paper? When everybody loses faith in everything, what do you have? This is a question I began asking when it became clear to me that it wasn't 300 Billion or 600 Billion that was at risk when Lehman and Bear Stearns went under. Around 2007 when I first heard of Roubini, I decided that I wanted to stop driving a BMW and start driving a Hummer. I started preparing for bad case scenarios - not worse case, and no I did not develop a taste for zombie movies, but I noticed people that did.
Peasant Theory came out of that. What does anybody have a reasonable chance to expect? Just last night I finished a book by Paolo B. It was a light book (Ship Breaker) that took up an interesting angle that I fundamentally agree with. Humans are somehow hardwired for feudal hierarchies. Loyalty matters. In many ways, it may be the only thing that matters, especially given human ability to lie and adapt. We only need a certain amount of pleasure and a certain amount of pain to bind us to reality, everything else can be invented. I'm going to leave it at that and not try to qualify this out towards grand theory.
Some entity called The Rude Dog reminded me that the blog is more about my own questions and my own tracking answers through the collective minds in argumentation here than it is about any public service. I am writing what I don't see written anywhere else and thus like the man who invents for himself rather than for a market, I'm pleased with perfecting what I want. Your mileage may vary. But I think I should use this opportunity to ask that question of the various entities who have some investment in Cobb by virtue of their past participation.
So I will begin asking you. I'll come up with a series of questions, the ultimate of which will be who is your Leviathan?
For me, my Leviathan is in fact human curiosity. I never learned how to cook, but I did learn how to find things out and tell stories. So I will always be responsive to questions of what and how and sometimes why in a world that I think doesn't ask enough or bother to find out enough - primarily because as I said, most people need just enough pleasure and just enough pain to find their reality and the rest can be made up. The fact that I envision scenarios in which all of that gets inverted is just like me.
The problem with most literacy is that it doesn't need roots in reality. The problem with most education is that most people don't agree with it. So there's a whole lot of thinking in the world that isn't truly defended and is therefore ultimately inconsequential. I'm not sure if that's what Michel Foucault was on about, but I'd bet he understands this concept.
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