Critical mass / people made of stars (with stripes)

Forward

We tend to romanticize the past, transform facts into myth. We reinvent our history as we eagerly stride forward. There is nothing left to help us retrace our trajectory to the origin. Still, as complex and as tangled the path may turn to be, somehow we manage to always make our way back. History repeats itself, it’s just built that way.

This essay is about Mass: Critical Mass and Mass delusion. A recounting of history, of madness and it’s reason.

This essay wishes to assign the attributes of the New World to the great orgasm and to the crowdedness of 15thcentury Europe, then it would show the natural continuance of this colonization as the drive to the invention of the digital universe and the cut\paste culture. In short, if you don’t really fancy reading, sex is the art of the artificial.

But first thing last, we start this exploration in an event laid late in the 15thcentury, a critical time and place in the events of the 'New World': Columbus's rediscovery of the Americas.

At this point in time Europe is the center of the world. This is the century in which we learn that the earth is round, and that it revolves around the sun, the time in which the Christian church falls from grace and the dimensions of heaven, hell, and purgatory no longer claim hold to the minds of man.

Science is the new rule; this is the dawn of a new world.

It's the end of the unknown, every act of nature is to be explained, and every piece of land to be mapped. All the witches already burned, and natives of barbaric tribes are long christened. There is nothing left to do, nowhere left to concur.

There is a dire need for a new world at this point, not just land mass but a new kind of world which can sustain endless possibilities and territories, a world which resources will never exhaust.

At this exact time Columbus sets out to announce the world's end, or at least that it’s roundness. While sailing west with the trade winds, Columbus expects to close the circle and reach the east shores of India. After one month at sea Columbus and his crew reach a mass of land they believe to be India. America is now officially discovered.

This essay claims that the discovery of the Americas is a part of a chain of conscious and subconscious events that created a solution for the upcoming end of the unknown.

America was a critical Mass large enough to be self sustainable, a place which could be the grounds to create the largest act of man-made diversion and mass delusion. A diversion so carefully designed that it kept us from noticing that god is dead.

Land - Population overload

As hunter-gatherers the tribe did not depend on land, it was in tune with the existence of it's surroundings, perfectly natural, growing or shrinking in population according to the cycle of nature.

It is only a speculation, but it’s argued that the actual history of territorialism dates back to the first time man achieved the great Orgasm.

The argument goes as follows: As man started to have sex for recreation the number of children and women in the tribe grew. The receding mobility and the large number of non-hunters which had to be fed changed the way men regarded land cultivation. Men became a farmer and a territorial mammal. For the new Man, the farmer, other animals or gatherers who trespass his fields turned into a nuisance. [God never accepted the gift of the brother which worked the land. Cain didn't kill out of anger. He killed for land, to protect his crops]

Since that time land has been stained with blood. It became a point of dispute. Land was the measure of the mass of the world which divided between its “rightful rulers”- human beings. This was the birth of materialism.

Shortage in realty

As population grew in numbers in 15th century Europe, material and realty were divided between people and created shortage, every person now owned a shrinking piece of the world. Humans became more and more dependent of each other, guilds were formed and trading became a necessity.

We are all part of a huge human fabric, each one owning and caring for a single little piece.

Although the capacity for knowledge of the individual does not change, society in general gains more and more knowledge. Not without a price, though. as the parts unknown to us shrunk so did the virtual space in which we believed god to exist.

In other words, there was not enough God to go around. Faith could not exist in competition with the material world, and growth of population made the value of material rise and the competition between spiritual and material even firmer.

Recycled realty

We need the unknown as much as we need the known. Lack in one breeds lack in the other. In eastern philosophies both are parts of the same whole. We need our history and our myth. the 15th century church with it’s old stories were not enough to capture the growing needs of the crowd. Society had to invent new myths.

In order to invent a myth it is not enough to think of one. a myth needs an existing base in realty (Material), one must carve it in stone.

Myth and realty can be recycled. It is the same process as replacing the actor who plays James Bond… the myth is taken apart and reassembled. The myth is contagious, as if carried by air. It is enough to have a little myth dust mixed in the pot to make the magic come true. Thousands of fans push against the cops to get a glimpse of a celebrity.

In cinema world we call it suspension of disbelief:

If in a crowded street someone would point at the sky and say 'look!', if he could keep the appearance of excitement long enough people would turn their heads to see what is up there, and many more people would turn their heads to see what the other people are looking at… pretty soon everybody will be staring at the empty sky, no-one knowing the exact reason.

In this way, with a little manipulation myth is recycled. The public is told what to think, what to want. It's a state of hypnosis, mass paranoia.

Now, the only requirement for a myth to take hold of society is critical mass. same as people staring at the empty sky, in order to make a turn in history this mass delusion depends on critical mass.

The New World

There is something great about North America, a whole continent free of history, a clean slate. Yes, there were some inhabitants before the conquest, but these natives were named Indians, an honest mistake by Columbus who thought he had finally reached India. Strangely enough this misunderstanding was never corrected, maybe because it was easier to think that these inhabitants had belonged to India which is in Asia altogether. At any rate, they had no claim of the history or the land. The good immigrants cleared the territories and the vast landscapes.

There was more land then people could actually occupy. The Cherokee Strip Land Run in Oklahoma was the most sudden human migration in history. Whole towns were built during an afternoon, store fronts erected in hours.

This rapid land settlement was the cause of the homogenous character of the American states, the reason this country was called the land of endless possibilities.

The famous Sears Catalog is only an example for how the US was established. Mail ordering being the cheapest way of production\consumption allowed for a different scale of a community. Every house hold in America had already ordered the 5 hook drapes in one of the 20 seasonal colors, every self respecting man in the tri-state area owned a 45c true merit striped shirt manufactured in Chicago, Illinois. Fuller and Johnson produced their outboard motors in a small factory in Michigan and shipped them all around the country, distances shrunk. The whole country was built by mail order, literally. The cheapest way to build a house was to order the 725$ last year's model of 'modern home no. 115'. Even the architecture over the landscape was mass produced and delivered, customized in standard dimensions so it would be easy to box and ship. The true nature of the states was conceived. This did not only effect the span of distances, it effected the whole fabric of culture.

North America became the United States of America, and not only by Constitution, but also by the sears catalog and the common identity the states shared.

To look at it from an out side perspective you can imagine a European driving two weeks from California to New-York watching identical road signs, similar houses on the road sides, Meeting with similar people, looking at the same products laid in similarly designed store fronts. For an outsider this is an act of delusion, one is convinced he is dreaming. Such a grand coherent fabric gives the appearance of plastic, of fakeness, of a film studio.

For the American on the other hand, being born into such a realty created a much greater effect, It created a world which can fall into standards, a simple world in which black and white, right and wrong exist without shades of gray, a world of categories. The American legal system, economy, movies, are all based on that notion. Man can  live the American dream and never wake up, as long as he stays within the continent. This was the critical mass of mass delusion that was needed to create a new Myth.

New York

New York is a direct product of the Americanism. A city planned on a grid is a metaphor for the American freedom limited within a box. The results are not less then amazing. There is an attempt to recreate the world in each city block.

The grid system is a sophisticated form of controlling the city. Unlike the roman grid, the American grid system does not form zoning vocations in the city, there is no center and there are no documanus or cardo.

The city is divided to 139 identical blocks, and each block exists on it's own right. Surrounded with roads on all sides, the block is an island in itself, representing the island of Manhattan, which in turn represents the continent of America, which in turn represents the world. The content of the block is not limited, construction is allowed as tall as one can dream, all is possible in theory, within the constraints of one block,  within “the grid”.

The block is a metaphor of the world, now known in dimension and limits, the world itself is reflected as a finite unit, like man, like the block, like the city\island and like the country. A new scale is found, and thus there is a whole shift in scales.

If before we had man/ world, then man/ city/ world, then man/ city/ country/ world, now we have man/ block/ city/ state/ country/ world.

One could argue that by creating America (and America in essence is completely man-made) we have created a reproduction of the known world and managed to have now two worlds in the western hemisphere, the old world and the new world.

By allowing freedom within its limits each cosmopolitan is a gene, a cosmos in itself, by creating the city block as an autonomic free unit we multiply this world 139 times. We are now in the realm of linear multiplication, The possibilities are almost endless.

This is a sparkling image of the tower of Babel, this attitude has also been the birth of the modern skyscraper. The block as world having no place to grow to but vertically, becomes a tower, a stacking of utilities. Each floor can exist without dependence of what is taking place on the other floors. The scale multiplies itself yet again.

Man is the measure of all things but the statue of liberty is precisely 20 times the scale of a human being.

Digital Age

Now, it is no wonder that these same principles of the New World apply to the world of computers, the categorization, the right/wrong (1/0), the grid. It is only an empire with the architecture of the United States that could invent the era of the computer. It is a digital world, man-made, if checked under sufficient resolution we can start to see the same bits and bytes that compose it. It is a process of cut and paste, of addition and multiplication.

It is all a question of scale, if the illusion is grand enough then in the new world the analog world is categorized as collector vinyl items and sold for 1.99$ in a retro music store. If something does not fit into the equation, then the equation grows to fit it in. This is the meaning of critical mass. It can swallow anything in its way. Anything can be understood as a long string of ones and zeros, or more accurately, one with a long string of zeros behind it and a $ sign.

The computer has the exact same architecture as New-York. A grid for easy orientation (everything has an easy numerical address), congestion for maximum speed of data flow, and layering which accounts for critical mass. If the invention of the print enabled us to cut&paste words, America is a practice of cut&paste in realty and the computer allows us to cut&paste our collective conciseness.

Conclusion

what America was for the old world in the 15th century can be compared to cyberspace; A place that expands the realty of this world to the infinite, the collective sub-conciseness coming to the surface. The new world has been a success; god was born again inside the matrix. Nietzsche predicted it, the Americans invented it and sears got reach over it. The truth is made out of stripes and stars, out of power. The new world is beyond the revolution of print, it is the revolution of cut&paste, not only words but  realty can now be mass produced.

Funny how the story of Roman expansions also ended in India, after conquering Babylon, Alexander the great sets to India [just like Columbus]. When Alexander reaches India he realizes it cannot be concurred.

The far-east has always been considered a danger to western expansion and materialism. The east held it’s own philosophy, not based on the logic of aristotle.  it was the land of mystery, and the big unknown. without reason wars cannot be waged, countries cannot be concurred.

It is told that Alexander, seeking advice finds Diogenes of Sinope [a great indian philosopher] tanning naked on the bank of the Ganges. Alexander then proceeds to  ask Diogenes what he would like to have from the great Macedonian king, the eastern philosopher only answers that he wishes for Alexander to move, so that he would not obscure the sun.