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The borders of acceptability
The Future Is Like Pie #48
Lisa Maria Marquis
November 01, 2024
In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks.
On the day He was to create justice
God got involved in making a dragonfly
and lost track of time.
Getting an early jump on this month’s newsletter because the American election next Tuesday has fully hijacked the brains of most everyone reading this, especially mine. I’m a bundle of live wires and there’s no way I’m going to be able to write or send anything next week on my usual schedule; nor will I hazard a guess as to the mental and emotional state of my surrounding contexts and communities for the foreseeable future. What a time to be alive.
As if that weren’t enough, I’m neck-deep in a client project, fumbling some health issues, and entering grief season—so when I say I didn’t write an essay for this issue, I hope you’ll forgive me. Instead, I offer the usual hodge-podge of links and brainwork and heartwork and nonsense.
May we all get through this [waves hands] together, and in one piece.
“Making God”
This is a long, complex, fascinating essay by Emily F. Gorcenski about the historical connections between technology, Christianity, America, transhumanism, and AI. That description hardly conveys how much reading this made my brain spark (complimentary), and there’s no paragraph I can highlight that captures what a wide and brilliant net it casts, but here’s a start:
It was technology that gave America its ability to spread its wings and cover a continent on the currents of Manifest Destiny, a dominionist and white supremacist conviction that America was God’s chosen country with a divine mandate to spread from “sea to shining sea.” Children still sing these words in songs today. It was not difficult to see why it was so easy for the young nation to convince itself of its deserved fate: the virgin landscapes, tended for millennia by indigenous Americans, showed none of the scarring and exploitation of the tiny, inhospitable European continent. The land itself was like something out of the wistful German Romanticism trendy at the time; the fantasy scenes of a medieval Europe that no longer existed were real again as settlers looked down over the Shenandoah Valley and points westward. The implicit mythology of a unified and racially pure Europe was reborn as White Man’s Burden, and it was technology that brought the long reach of the continent into the newborn nation’s grasp.
“The Unexpected Corner of Culture That Explains a Lot About the Election”
This timely Jess Zimmerman piece looks at how society uses fairy tales, mythology, and monster stories to police what’s “normal” and what’s “weird”—and what’s been changing about those boundaries:
In short, cultures create monster stories to establish what’s normative within that culture. But there has undeniably been a recent movement among marginalized people to identify as monstrous—or at least to identify with the monstrous—as a way to celebrate stepping outside the borders of acceptability. The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born, now is a time for looking at monsters and saying: “Me as hell.”
Lightning round
The Avian Vector Encyclopedia [Scott Partridge]
“It’s not a technological problem. It’s never been a technological problem.” A comic by Juan Santapau [The Secret Knots]
On ownership expiration dates and right to repair [PIRG]
“Once this treaty is signed, the British Indian Ocean Territory will cease to exist […and] .io—and countless websites—will disappear." [Every]
The shared anthropological origins of constellation mythology [The Conversation]
Delighted to see that Approachable Open Source by Brian Muenzenmeyer is finally out and about in the world! I edited some early drafts and can confirm: if you or your developer colleagues want to get into open source projects, this is an excellent resource.
If you’ve canceled your subscriptions to the Washington Post and the New York Times on account of their endless iterations of cowardice, but still want to support journalism and publishing, may I direct your attention to ProPublica and Lux?
Throwback read
From issue #19
I went back to the newsletter I sent just before the 2020 election, hoping I had shared something, anything, that might provide a measure of anxiety reduction in 2024. I found “10 things you need to know to stop a coup” by Daniel Hunter. I don’t know that I can use the word “calming” here, but it helps me to remember that many people have been thinking (and continue to think) about this topic for a long time. Consider this pledge:
1. We will vote.
2. We will refuse to accept election results until all the votes are counted.
3. We will nonviolently take to the streets if a coup is attempted.
4. If we need to, we will shut down this country to protect the integrity of the democratic process.
November’s cause
Let’s send money to the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, which bills itself as “the only U.S. disability-led organization with a focused mission of equity for people with disabilities and people with access and functional needs throughout all planning, programs, services and procedures before, during and after disasters and emergencies.” Sounds damn necessary to me.
Workshop: last call
There are only a few remaining tickets for my virtual IA workshop on November 7! It’s a great excuse to spend the day thinking about anything other than American politics—plus you’ll learn all about techniques for organizing digital content. And remember, newsletter subscribers get 15% off registration with code NEWSLETTER15—I’d love to see you or your colleagues there!
