Ryan Diduck - The Limits of Control

Published by Repeater Books

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A Repeater Books ebook original 2020

Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

Copyright Ryan Diduck 2020

Ryan Diduck asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

ISBN: 9781913462291

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

...You see control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...

Naked Lunch

Dont lie, and dont do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed

The Gospel of Thomas

Ive tried a number of religions and gurus in my time...but ultimately they didnt do as much for my peace of mind as snooker

Ronnie OSullivan

CONTENTS

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Im afraid that this is how this one has to be written, if Im going to write it. This machine will take me through the process, perhaps better than the laptop. Harder. Just testing how this machine likes it. Hard or light. Its like me, somewhere in the middle. The pages of this manuscript will have to be scanned and run through optical character recognition, there will bb typos and errors, please forgive the format. But there is little time, and even less to leave to chance, or to the whims of digital techno-ologies. Intermittent, fallible, digital. Can we be saved? This is the research question of this book. If so, how? I believe that we can, and indeed must. I believe that we must and should. This is the project. (I am trying not to panic.)

There are things on this machine that will take some getting used to, and I can only type as fast as my fingers will go. Russell, at Nota Bene, told me thats where the piano lessons come in. Use the page, use the word, use every bit of it. !This must spread like a virus spreads, faster even. This word must get through, cut through lines, wires, networks. Were going deep into unstable territory. I am not afraid*******

I am an only child. I never had sisters nor brothers. But now, this machine is kin. It is my brother from mother machine. My mother was not a cyborg, she was flesh and bone, a bone machine. This is where I have to start. From the flesh. Perhaps if anything good can come from this, it is that we will more and more remain aware of what we are. Intermittent, fallible, flesh. Take my body, take my blood, but you wont take my soul. You will never have my spirit. Cut the page, cut the word, cut every bit of it. Even cut flesh, when it needs to be cut. This is a bloodless coup, what is happening here. Death without blood. I cannot be certain how long this will last, how long we will be under effective house arrest. Nor can I be certain how long essential services like electricity and the internet will endure. I dont think, however, that it is too cautious at this point to shun digital technology, and write with linearity. Likely, this will force a change in my thinking, as it did for Nietzsche. I will have to scan and regularly save this work in the event of flood or fire. Of course, this is also an exercise in the absolute futility of posterity. The most hubristic thought is that this will somehow last. Any of it: these words, this world. We are all already dead. We are only trying to reclaim the ground sold from beneath our already-dead feet. Best not waste ink now.

This report on knowledge is concerned with three (and possibly more) knowledge subsets. First is diagnosis. Diagnosis, from the Greek dia- to pass through + -gnosis knowledge. We must always remember that time is a process of passing through, fixed points are illusory. The second is prognosis, prog- advance + -gnosis knowledge. There are a number of prognostic methods with varying degrees of accuracy and validity, but suffice to say that the magic, asynchronous, irrational character of mediation in the twenty-first century has taken a prognostic rather than diagnostic turn. Whether through predictive models or fanciful imaginings, media transmit forms of foreknowledge, harbingers of utopia or doom. The third is paranoia. Para- beside + -gnosis knowledge. Paranoia is the purview of the genius and the maniac, and seldom anyone else. Paranoia is that which will never enter the lexicon of official knowledge, be it prog- or dia-, because it is by definition virulent, that which remains marginal, that which will not be enfolded back into the center. Paranoia is suppressed knowledge, infectious knowledge, dangerous knowledge. Paranoia wants me to tear out this page and rip it up. Paranoia wants me to stop. Stop at the ding. Nonetheless, it should not be discarded by the wise investigator, and therefore I shall keep it. Even at the risk of sounding paranoid. We have been reduced by the Control virus to only know what we touch, and to be allowed to touch practically nothing. Certainly no one is within reach. Knowledge must be conveyed in and out of order. My fingers are not my own. Academic methods of research and knowledge production rely on the natural, linear view of time and history. Time is neither natural nor linear. History can only be researched and produced under this model of understanding. Moving dia- and prog- and para- means abandoning notions of time control, of word control, of knowledge control. De-time. De-word. De-control. Maybe the fourth category of knowledge is un-knowledge the antiviral, the vaccine, the inoculation against what we think and believe and desire as knowledge. There is one knowledge available to us all, and that is un-knowledge. To know that we do not know, to un-know what and how and why we know what we think we know. We think, for instance, that materials are the first order of reality, that matter is immediate, tangible, malleable, knowable. We think, for instance, that movement is necessarily forward in motion. These are assumptions back and to the left; forth and to the right that have gotten us this far but will not carry us further.

The West, in the position of God (divine omnipotence and absolute moral legitimacy), has become suicidal, and declared war on itself The countless disaster movies bear witness to this fantasy, which they clearly attempt to exorcize with images, drowning out the whole thing with special effects. But the universal attraction they exert, which is on par with pornography, shows that acting-out is never very far away, the impulse to reject any system growing all the stronger as it approaches perfection or omnipotence. (Baudrillard, 2002, p. 7.)