Ten Metropolitan Musings

  1. The MET is congratulating itself on over five-thousand years of art in its new showcase. Ancient cultures that tried to propitiate the anger of the gods and displayed their endeavors; we have looted these oblations and put them in glass boxes and call it art. And what? What have we to display for ourselves?
  2. The level of distraction in our present culture has reached new dystopian proportions. One cannot walk around New York City without a sense of bemusement when one sees individuals engaged in work that doesn’t involve a cell phone and air pods. Or, perhaps, we are all awaiting the singularity, when artificial intelligence will take away the need for any and all work. But this is artificial thinking and an artifice.
  3. That clouds still saunter listlessly above New York City is simply the mercy of God.
  4. People travel to big cities in hopes to find something—perhaps themselves—and can become disappointed when they are unable to pierce through the dirty veneer. In truth, the commotion of a major metropolis speaks to man’s inability to be bored. He needs to be engaged in commerce (commercio) and we call this business: for modern man is now a busy-body. And, is it any marvel that we are still looking for community (communis) with no communion? A city, like New York, of eight million souls and yet so lonely! Forsooth, one needs silence! St. John of the Cross’ La noche oscura del alma happens not in a city that never sleeps…
  5. The present global obesity rates bespeak the triumph—much to the chagrin of Plato—of the appetitive part of the soul. Hereby the apostle Paul is confirmed: their god is their belly (Phil 3:19).
  6. They say that laughter is the best medicine—but there exists a friend who does not merely laugh at your joke. Rather, she knows the essence before the punchline and it is vectored by means of a gaze bursting with hilarity. This is a laughter that lightens the spirit, cachinnation pure and gay!
  7. It is unclear what will replace military hegemony and global domination. After two attempts at this, another boots-on-the-ground world war no longer seems like an exigency. The migration of all things into the digital stratosphere augers a future digital calamity. For it is much easier to control a population with digital mechanisms whereunto they voluntarily submit. After all, rising obesity rates proves that Americans especially have a hard time not to “accept all cookies.”
  8. The efficacy of the capitalist dispositif is shown, by way of example, in the existence of climate change awareness groups. The existence whereof is justified inasmuch as one is justified in attempting to convince a burning man that he forsooth is on fire, when there is no economic nor political expediency to acknowledge the same. Still, Gaia justifies herself; and our history shall be the judgment of God.
  9. It has come to my attention that Cortical Labs has placed 800,000 human neurons in a Petri dish, which grew to learn how to play the old computer game, Pong. As disturbing as this fact is, what’s more harrowing is that this amount roughly equates to the brain of a cockroach. If human beings will soon be so asinine and hedonistic as to voluntarily seek base stimuli as the sole ground of their existence, I would much rather have the Kafkaesque lot of Gregor Samsa, and play Pong as a vile vermin. Mine shall be a choice in freedom! In fear and loathing, yes, but a choice nonetheless!
  10. September first marks our national holiday, Labor Day. A day of victory for the working class over their bourgeois masters. Unfortunately, the day—meant to be a day where labor ceases—has just become a mere pause before we “clock back in.” Heidegger forewarned and Adorno adjudged that language shall be the tool of control; nevertheless, we have seen this being dialectically negated, for even the language of the most powerful has become the most insipid: homogeneous, banal, and smooth. Academia no longer has control to the gates of power. Knowledge has become democratized and thereby language serves less as a dispositive than the pleasure principal which is becoming increasingly weaponized. Lo! How hard the beast shall labor for but a mite more of pleasure!
Figure cut out of the sketchbook, ca. 1901–ca. 1907; India ink on paper; 6.3 × 4.6 cm. Drawing by Franz Kafka. The Literary Estate of Max Brod, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem. Photos: Ardon Bar Hama.

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