It’s been about four months since I introduced my four questions in FUQ#7:
What’s your story?
What’s your problem?
What are you hearing?
What is a Jew?
In this post, I’m publishing my latest responses. Due to its length, this post may appear clipped in your inbox. To read the full version, open the post on Substack.
Just as FUQ#7 marked the end of a chapter in my Substack career, so does this post. As the next chapter takes shape in my mind, let’s revisit the four questions.
Question #1: What’s your story?
For this edition of M2D, the story focuses on the meaning of making yourself an Ark. This biblical metaphor seems urgently relevant whenever Denial becomes the prevailing response to the reality of the Flood.
When I started writing about the Flood, I didn’t see Denial merely as a prevailing response; to me, it seemed like a tyrannical force. Building on the hard-wired institutional and interpersonal enactments of Denial, the addition of the algorithmic layer concealed the reality of the Flood so totally that anyone hoping for helpful guidance had no choice but to create it. That’s what I did in Make Yourself an Ark: Understanding media through the prism of Genesis 6:14.
As I kept writing, my view of Denial softened. Whereas I initially saw it as a tyrannical force, I increasingly recognized it as a fear-fueled response to our special moment in history. With compassion for everyone consumed by this defense against reality, I felt moved to offer this elaboration on the subtle art of ark construction.
Beyond Metaphors: The Subtle Art of Ark Construction
I didn’t realize this at the time, but I started to develop this idea four months ago when I joined forces with a kindred spirit to produce the first episode of the M2D podcast. This wide-ranging discussion centered on the repertoire of human responses to our hyper-acceleration into a future we can’t describe. In this context, we touched on humanity’s possible future as a multiplanetary species. Specifically, my guest and I focused on Elon Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars. More recently, in FUQ#9, I published my initial response to the question: Is Elon Musk the modern-day Noah?
What’s much more important than my view of Elon Musk is the meaning of Genesis 6:14. This is where the “One True God” (OTG) commands Noah (and, arguably, all of us, including Elon Musk) to:
Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make it an ark with compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch.
In my initial interpretation of this verse and related verses, I outlined six principles that I’m applying to the architecture and security of my Ark. My initial six principles included tearing down paywalls, reclaiming creative sovereignty, forming agreements, investing in cybersecurity, creating trust-based media, and remembering that “Thou Art That”. This list continues to grow, but I don’t anticipate adding a seat on Musk’s starship to the list.
The design principles for the Ark may remain a work in progress, but as we move toward our stormy horizon, we can no longer afford the naïve (if not delusional) belief that our debates and speculations will ever settle into a languageable consensus. The principles will continue to evolve, but we no longer need to debate or speculate about the meaning of the flood metaphor.
The fabric of our sociality is already drenched in the waters of the Flood, and we can barely hear each other through the howling winds. We may describe the Flood differently, but let’s not pretend that we are describing our past or future. The Flood is our present moment; we are living the metaphor.
Perhaps the preceding paragraph came out as it did because I dictated it into my Samsung voice recorder while walking on a very cold, cloudy, windy and rainy late afternoon. Just as my environment froze my face, it may have also shaped my message. Regardless of how this message resonates with readers, one thing is clear: we’re no longer just mixing metaphors. We must find a way to hear OTG’s message. We must make ourselves an Ark. The translation of metaphor into matter is no longer an intellectual pursuit; it’s our daily work. Instead of speculating about the Flood or nitpicking each other’s descriptions, we can simply dare to observe and carry on the daily work of Ark construction and maintenance.
Dancing with Denialists: Shifting Metaphors from Killing to Choreography
To those with the ears to hear the message as it is intended, no further explanation is necessary. But there are others, for whom no further explanation will suffice. The others stick to the antediluvian party line about the Flood. They claim that they neither see it nor hear it. In my experience, these are often the same people who stick to the party line about the Emperor’s new clothes.
Instead of remixing these old metaphors, I simply call these people Denialists, and I think of Denialism as their ideology. In FUQ#7, I wrote that, in every life, there’s a story that must be told. In my life, the story that must be told is the story of my confrontations with Denialism and Denialists. I have long felt that, much more than any other ism, Denialism is the mind virus destroying my world.
Not surprisingly, in my earlier writings about confrontations with Denialism, I often employed the war metaphor. Until recently, the language and iconography of war still reflected my lived reality. However, increasingly, I think of my interactions with Denialists as a kind of dance — a carnival, part of a cosmic costume party.
My Stories
As an anti-Denialist participant in this costume party, I often cast Denialists as characters in my stories. In the past, I’ve cast them as:
Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf,
Pharaoh’s agents whom we encounter on the way to lands flowing with milk and honey
Members of messianic cults guzzling the latest batch of Kool Aid or opium for the masses.
As antagonists, Denialists have animated my stories, but I would like to set these stories aside for the moment. We have a real problem to solve.
Question #2: What’s your problem?
The Flood is upon us. However, the Flood isn’t the problem. Even Denialism isn’t the problem. Misguided responses to Denialism are the problem. The most common responses are misguided because they’re atomized; they trip over obstacles to collective action. As any other pandemic, Denialism demands a collective response.
What complicates the problem is the difficulty of reaching people willing, in Marshall McLuhan’s words, to contemplate the situation. In the five years I’ve been thinking and writing about this complication, I’ve seen it manifest in two forms. First, it takes an inordinate amount of work (i.e., whether screaming or whispering into the digital wilderness) to reach the shockingly few people receptive to the message. Second, the message reaches many people who react with aggression, defensiveness, or indifference. The prevailing wisdom on Substack and elsewhere only recognizes the first form as a problem. I disagree, even though I understand that the second form is an inescapable feature of any one-to-many communication.
I often recall the story of Diogenes with his lantern searching Athens for an honest man. It seems equally difficult to reach people who dare to contemplate how much is lost — and how much can be gained — in the translation of metaphor into matter. It’s hard to reach these rare souls for many reasons — the noise in our media, the mania around the Golden Calf, the machinations of Pharaoh’s agents, the pathologies of the attention economy, etc. Despite these distractions, and even with my modest lantern, I’ve found people, including parasocial and IRL connections, drawn to the post-Denialist horizon and the possibility of outgrowing our problems. I’m grateful for these connections and unanticipated affinities, but this is only the beginning. The quest for better problems continues, focusing on more fruitful responses to the pandemic of Denialism.
Outgrowing Our Problems
The obstacle course of daily distractions can keep us stymied in our quest for better problems. Getting unstuck requires us to notice opportunities for upgrades. For example, as I reported in To Whom It May Concern, when I realized that my subscription-based service model had become obsolete, I upgraded to full-time engagements that honor the design principles I sketched out above. Similarly, when I felt that I was over-relying on writing as a medium, I started seeking out kindred spirits to join me as guests on one of my podcasts.
These upgrades now appear in the rear-view mirror, and what I notice with the benefit of hindsight is that I strive toward better problems through the art of decontamination. Instead of orienting toward some ideal state, this art emphasizes the timely identification and removal of “contaminants” from my environment. The latter include not only daily distractions, but also the previously unnoticed obsolescences and toxicities.
The most toxic contaminant in my environment is bullshit, particularly the bullshit that legitimizes cultural default settings for the future of work. As I move through the dense fog of Denialism coating the job market, I see with increasing clarity why I prefer my alternatives to what David Graeber described as “bullshit jobs” and “managerial feudalism”: the default means death through economic and creative constriction.
Resistance to Bullshit
What stands in the way of better problems is that individuals and institutions engulfed by the Flood have convinced themselves that Genesis 6:14 is “just a myth”. Sometimes, this conviction simply means that they prefer non-biblical language with words like existential risk, meta-crisis, epistemic crisis, mental illness, heat death, and so on. I see no problem with this preference. I’m happy to use any language that suits the occasion and brings us closer to the truth. However, in the vast majority of cases in my experience, dismissals and trivializations of Genesis 6:14 do not just express a language or stylistic preference. They signal myth deficiency (see Part 3) and an adherence to Denialism.
The dominance of Denialism is understandable, because the propaganda is relentless. Without even trying to maintain a veneer of intellectual consistency, Denialism claims that the Ark is unnecessary and unrealistic, purely imaginary yet politically fraught.
In my view, the most effective Denialist propaganda is the softest. It doesn’t explicitly deny. Instead, it reminds people about the ‘normal’ progression from diagnosis to remedy. We need more data about the Flood, the argument goes. We need an Environmental Impact Report on the Ark and a PR strategy in anticipation of NIMBY resistance. We need more experts to publish whitepapers and peer-reviewed research. We need more inter-disciplinary committees to acknowledge what canaries in the coal mine have been telling us for years. Soft Denialism sounds like an episode of Yes, Minister.
Given the flood of propaganda about the Flood, it doesn’t surprise me that what I’ve published so far about Genesis 6:14 has reached many people not yet ready to hear the message. Some of them reacted with anger, fear or indifference. Some seemed ideologically entranced and immune to language. I don’t find this outcome disappointing, but instructive and, depending on the context, even amusing.
Either way, to graduate to better problems, we must learn to resist the propaganda about the Flood and the Ark. If this message only reaches the few prepared to hear it, I’ll consider it enough of an accomplishment. If this message reaches the many not yet ready to hear it, I’ll deal with the consequences.
To conclude my answer to the second question, I’d like to point out what’s no longer my problem. Ever since I removed paywalls from my Substacks, it’s no longer a problem that the publication of this message doesn’t pay the bills or satisfy the ravenous appetite of the Almighty Algorithm. That’s liberating.
Question #3: What are you hearing?
I hear that our problems will get worse before they get better, and the appeal of Denialism will continue to grow before it collapses.
I hear that we often stumble over what we perceive as money problems because we don’t recognize them as disorders of love.
I hear that healing from disorders of love is our urgent task and our best way to resist “the enclosure of the human psyche”.
Here’s what I mean…
Healing from Disorders of Love
In my Unheard Story of Money, I started to share what I had been hearing about disorders of love. In Part 1 — Defense Against Kleptocracy — I examined disorders of love that manifest either in the love of money or the hatred of money, and I turned to pattern recognition as the golden road to altered states of monetary consciousness. In Part 2 — Money as Medicine: Healing from the Ideology of Clinicism — I suggested that the conversion of metaphorical speech into economic reality requires that we neutralize corrupting influences, including the ideology of clinicism.
The Present as the Future: A Pathway to Overcoming Psychophobia
Fear is another corrupting influence. How can we heal anything until we dare to see it? How can we heal the psyche until we overcome psychophobia?
Marshall McLuhan said, or so I heard, that “There is a repugnance in the human breast against understanding the processes in which we are involved.” To heal and to cope, we must overcome this repugnance even if, as a result, we find ourselves in roles that move us far beyond our comfort zone. In an interview with ‘Encounter’ Magazine in 1967, McLuhan said:
We need new perceptions to cope. Our technologies are generations ahead of our thinking. If you even begin to think about these new technologies, you appear as a poet because you are dealing with the present as the future. That is my technique.
Sex Organs of the Machine World
In UM, McLuhan offers another technique that I call ‘Fecundations’. It involves thinking of oneself as a sex organ of the machine world. Applied correctly, this technique can have a psychedelic effect.
Physiologically, man in the normal use of technology (or his variously extended body) is perpetually modified by it and in turn finds ever new ways of modifying his technology. Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth. One of the merits of motivation research has been the revelation of man’s sex relation to the motorcar.
Healing from Myth Deficiency
I hear that people seeking ways to heal from disorders of love can find great value in the study of myth. James Hillman argues that “mythically deficient” people face an elevated risk of a turn to fundamentalism through literalism.1 In a talk titled Myth and the World Around Us, Hillman elucidates why mythically deficient people are vastly over-represented among Denialists: They can’t acknowledge, as Joseph Campbell did, the present-moment resonance of myth. Campbell wrote:
The gods are not in Greece or in myth books or even in Campbell’s books, but are right on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street waiting for the lights to change.
Socially Distancing from Denialism
I hear that, without a cultivated resistance to bullshit, interactions with Denialists can be unsafe. The main cause of safety risks in these interactions is that Denialists are terrified and they are often possessed by the my-side bias, aka identity-protective cognition. They will not hesitate to weaponize bullshit. In fact, they can’t help it. They are trying to survive, and we can’t expect them not to bullshit any more than we can expect a drowning man not to grasp at straws.
Awakening the Sleeping Conscience
Rene Girard observed that:
The more probable the apocalypse becomes, the less we talk about it. Therefore, we have to awaken our sleeping consciences.
That’s right. The idea isn’t to talk more instead of talking less. It isn’t to scream into the wilderness; as the Horn Gate points out: “Those who scream the loudest lose their voice first.” The idea is simply to awaken.
Resistance to the Enclosure of the Human Psyche
What Denialism enables is what L.M. Sacasas describes as The Enclosure of the Human Psyche. In an evocative analogy, Sacasas suggests that forces we struggle to understand are now doing with the psyche what they once did with land.
The enclosure of the commons is the name given to the centuries-long process by which lands available to the many were turned into a resource to be managed and extracted by the few. My claim is that structurally similar processes are unfolding with the aim of enclosing the human psyche and transforming it into a resource to be managed and extracted.
Fittingly, he quotes McLuhan:
Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left.
Mazel Tov to Denialists!
I hear that our dances with Denialists will not get easier as we enter Web 5.0. Andrey Mir describes this horizon as a transformation of digital platforms from tools of liberation into proxies for state control through social scoring. In my view, this transition is already suppressing free speech, and it marks the beginning of high times for Denialists. To people who value free speech, I offer my condolences and commiserations; remember that this too shall pass. To Denialists, I say “Mazel tov! Enjoy the party!”
Question #4: What is a Jew?
Denialism not only militates against the free exploration of the fourth question, it also fosters broad acceptance of false answers. In fact, the more I explore my fourth question, the more it appears as a mystery flooded with false answers, including the canonical and the conspiratorial. In the New Year, I'd like to explore the falsehoods one by one, but the via negativa path is neither the subject nor the organizing principle for this post. Instead, I offer you my first affirmative answer, a Soviet-era Jewish joke, a thought about Denialist Jews, and a bonus response from Google Gemini.
An Affirmative Answer
What’s the story? Jews are people who once stood on Mount Sinai and heard the word of the living God. They carry an ancestral wisdom whose origin reaches even further back in pre-history. This wisdom allows Jews to stand in the flame of revelation and not be incinerated. It empowers them to prevail over Pharaoh's armies, build tabernacles in the wilderness, and arks to protect them during world-engulfing floods. With their ancestral wisdom, Jews also part seas on their way to lands flowing with milk and honey.
What’s the problem? Both as matter and metaphor, these lands are a fraught terrain where Jews and non-Jews alike continually screw up the subtle alchemy whereby Word is made Flesh. They trip over the connection between matter and metaphor. They fall because they forget what they once heard, and Jews are people guided by their ancestral wisdom to remind themselves: “Hear O Israel!”
What are you hearing? For millennia, Jews have been asking themselves and each other about what they hear in the lands they inhabit. Their ancestral wisdom continues to guide them through what McLuhan called the acoustic age. (More grandiloquently, we might call it the Age of Resonance.) As Jews move through their lands, they develop scribal traditions that guide modern scribes to write for the record, even if no one is reading.
What is a Jew? Jewishness, as I understand it, is transmitted neither patrilineally nor matrilineally, because Jewishness is only trivially a genetic condition. By this, I mean that Jewishness is transmitted through memes more reliably than it is transmitted through genes.
A Joke
There’s a well-known Soviet-era joke in which two Jews are having a conversation while sitting on toilets in bathroom stalls next to each other. One guy asks the other “Do you think what we're doing is physical or intellectual labor?” The other guy answers "Of course it’s intellectual labor. If it were physical, we'd leave it to gentiles.”
Denialist Jews
Jews don’t always follow their ancestral wisdom, which is why they are amply represented among Denialists. However, if there is a Jewish essence, it is always drawn to the post-Denialist horizon. It recoils from the antediluvian party line about the Flood, and in the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, the Jew is the child who dares to speak the truth.
Bonus
Inspired by the joke above, I asked Google Gemini if it agrees with this statement:
Jews are people who have learned to maintain their balance at the intersection of matter and metaphor in part by favoring the latter over the former.
Gemini wrote:
The statement "Jews are people who have learned to maintain their balance at the intersection of matter and metaphor in part by favoring the latter over the former" is a complex one that can be interpreted in different ways. It is important to remember that not all Jews will identify with this statement, and that there is no single way to be Jewish.
Some people might interpret the statement as suggesting that Jews are more inclined to focus on the symbolic and spiritual aspects of life, rather than the material and practical aspects. This could be seen as a reflection of the importance of tradition, history, and religious observance in Jewish culture. Others might interpret the statement as suggesting that Jews are more likely to think critically and creatively, and to find meaning in unexpected places. This could be seen as a reflection of the emphasis on education and intellectual pursuits in Jewish tradition.
Ultimately, whether or not one agrees with this statement is a matter of personal interpretation. It is important to consider the different ways in which the statement can be understood, and to be respectful of the diverse perspectives of Jewish people.
Thank you, Gemini. I agree.
These are my latest responses to the four questions. Feel free to share yours in the comments below. In the meantime, subscribe.
Housekeeping
At the start, I mentioned that this post marks the end of another chapter in my Substack career. If you’re curious about the next chapter, let me know through Chat or email.