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Domestic Abuse

Hate Crime

[ Reposted from my blog at Humanity+ Magazine ]

Recently I was added to a group on Facebook called Cyberpunked: Journal of Science, Technology, and Society. I was given a shout-out by a fan of my music and drawn into a few interesting discussions. Since Transhuman Separatism had a cyberpunk flavor to it I posted a link the Transhuman Separatist manifesto but explicitly mentioned that I was no longer affiliated with the movement. People are wondering why I am no longer involved with the old movement that I co-founded. Why did I leave Transhuman Separatism? Have I reformed my beliefs? Have I been cured all right?

Cyberpunk would be a good starting point here. Transhuman Separatism was cyberpunk. It was a fantasy. It was a utopia for the freaks. A lot of people ended up taking it too seriously and I quickly realized that the Transhumanist community as a whole was concerned about the image of this group. My initial reaction of course was to rebel against the Academic world but I also understood why there was so much concern about the image in the first place with Transhumanists already being branded as techno-fascists. There were talks of us being a dangerous paramilitary organization and I was even told that there was an FBI scare related to the Transhuman Separatist movement.

Let me start by saying that I have not reformed my position and become some Xavier or Martin Luther King of oppressed artists. This is not a a Disneyland essay about how I changed my entire belief system for the press or even the lulz. This is about learning to present myself in a way that does not alienate the very people I am seeking to reach. Transhuman Separatism was alienating to the Transhumanist community because it was extremely agitprop in its approach. Not everybody in the world is capable of understanding agitprop and sometimes it is better to use logic and reason than shock tactics to create a revolution.

I left Transhuman Separatism because I wanted to start The Human 2.0 Council. I was no longer in contact with the person I formed the organization with and my views on society ware starting to improve now that I had connected with so many intelligent people. There were other organizations out there that were better at uniting the mutants than I was such as the Real Life Superheros. The point of Transhuman Separatism was to create unity among the creative/oppressed and The Real Life Superheros were living proof of this new mutant society. It was already happening. Did we really need Transhuman Separatism when we had Real Life Superheros? Yet in the end what was really exciting to me was the concept of Transhumanism as a whole which is what lead me to form The Human 2.0 Council.

My interest in Transhumanism far exceeded my interest in “fighting against the sheep” because of all the cybernetic augmentations that were being developed to help people with physical problems. I think is fair to say that if we didn’t have any physical problems we would not have to experience the oppression of human biology. Scientists such as David Pearce were presenting theories like Abolitionism (the use of biotechnology to eliminate suffering) and Aubrey de Grey started the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation. I have to say that these people were a lot more radical and “on the edge” than I was and that I was beginning to feel embarrassed that my interest in Transhumanism had previously only been philosophical and cyberpunk. There was so much more out there.

I recently saw an article that suggested it was possible to eliminate groupthink without taking militant measures to do so. The article states that “Scientists have identified the part of the brain responsible for controlling whether we conform to expectations and group pressure.” This was extremely inspiring to me as someone who views groupthink as the major problem with Humanity 1.0. There was no longer a reason to go around calling myself a Separatist of any sort when I had found Transhumanism. Ray Kurzweil was able to map out the Technological Singularity in a Scientific manner, and not as a utopian fantasy but an upcoming reality. We do not need to separate from one another to separate from groupthink. Max Stirner refers to a Union of Egoists which is now possible with modern technology. The Human 2.0 Council is a union of Extreme Futurists and our philosophical dreams are being awakened with the Extreme Futurist Festival in December. We are donating 10% of proceeds to the SENS Foundation.

In a perfect world there would have been no disagreement between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. In a perfect world Magneto and Xavier would have quit their petty infighting and realized that separating from their own tribe based on issues such as “is violence good or evil?” were a symptom of baseline humanity or Human 1.0. People holding up arms against their government and people flashing peace signs would have stood together as one movement. The new revolution. The rising up of the oppressed. The freedom to exist without oppression. Humanity 2.0.

After reading the Disinformation article In Defense of the Hipster I decided that I would defend another subculture that may in fact be universally hated more than the utterly despised (especially by its own kind) hipster. Why does everybody hate the Clueless Fan? The new and enthusiastic kid on the block who asks every writer/musician/comic book artist/filmmaker to take a look at their work. The Groupie 2.0. The type of person who just happens to be a huge fan and supporter of the work that came before them. The Uberfan who is now ready to work with their idols yet completely misunderstands the way that their industry works.

What does one do with the Clueless Fan? Does one post their emails on their blogs so their fanbase can get a good laugh? Does this humiliate the Clueless Fan to the point of psychotic revenge-stalking? These are questions we may not want to ask ourselves but one must wonder how Clueless these New Players actually are in terms of various obsessions. One must assume that the Groupie 2.0 is well-versed in their knowledge and extremely passionate about their own work. In the end all that matters is the quality of their work (and this is true for all artists regardless of ranking) but does the naive attitude of the Clueless Fan prevent their work from being distributed?

One may suggest that all successful artists have been Clueless Fans at one point or another. It is a skeleton in the closet but we all know that our greatest idols have been Clueless Fans who most people looked down upon. I think it is important to remember this no matter where you are in the game. If you are a professional artist why not put your work alongside the work of one of your Clueless Fans and see how it compares. If you are a Clueless Fan why not do the same thing but with a professional artist. View/read/listen to the art for the sake of the art and forget about anything related to personality dynamics. Don’t ask yourself whose work is better but what you like about each presentation and how can each presentation can be improved. If you are the Clueless Fan email the professional artist with your opinions and if you are the professional artist email the Clueless Fans with yours.

In giving the Clueless Fan a chance to present their work and refusing to get caught up in social dynamics of “how the industry works” you are allowing art to take its natural course without letting your industry experience or social opinion effect your perception of Groupie 2.0. Of course there is a major chance that the Groupie 2.0 has no talent whatsoever but I’m asking to give Groupie 2.0 a chance since they are taking so much of their time to email you in the first place. So their emails are annoying. Did you never send anyone annoying emails? That pushy young upstart was you once.

The quality of our work is the most important thing in the end and the only artifact that remains is our output. As artists we view each other on even ground despite our social rankings. Anyone who puts our social rankings before our art is a person we should not be in contact with. The most Clueless Fan in the world could become the Greatest Artist of tomorrow.

a million ideas but complete lack of function
how many times have i been at this junction?
inventing creating without any parts
memetics divided in spreadsheets and charts
left brain where are you i know you exist
will you help me i need you i must make a list
my ideas have been pillaged by pirates of reason
i’m feeling a new sense of corporate treason
if I can invent a new theory each night
maybe one day i can learn left from right

is there an app for that?
i know you’re out there
helping me with the baseline
so i can deface mine
polishing fantasies onto a grid
is there an app for that?

(c) rachel haywire | 8/15/11

If you are like me you might come from a generation that was raised online before the boom of social networking sites. The Internet was once a secret room that only the freaks could experience. We were trolling before it was called trolling and we didn’t do it for mob sport but intellectual exercise. My first exposure to the Internet was through a free text-based service where you could view alt.newsgroups and send email through a program called Pine. There was no world wide Internet that I could see from miles away.

I remember the act of “scrolling” which was placing ASCII skulls and bongs in AOL chatrooms. A/S/L anyone? I remember deleting the information on AOL discs and putting new material on them. I got suspended in elementary school for “hacking” when I brought these discs into class. Of course it was only a matter of time before people saw outside of Plato’s Cave so when Truman decided to get out of AOL and saw the mountain called the Internet a company called Geocities began hosting websites. (also known as “Geoshitties”) At the same time a bunch geeks like myself were starting our own domains and creating our own content to express ourselves and meet new people. We had no real life friends which was common in early Internet culture. The digital world was like a bar for the socially inept and we were all the bartenders.

The Make Out Club was founded in 1999 and considered to be the first popular social networking site. It was the site that everyone who had their own domain made fun of. After this came LiveJournal which was practically a subculture in itself and the place where I launched my project Acidexia. Next there was Friendster which was the first time the Internet truly opened its doors to the general public. I remember enjoying Friendster because cyberculture was coming into human form. People were dressed up like cyborgs in their profile pictures and you could find them out at clubs dressed the same way.

A lot of people consider Myspace the downfall of the Internet and in many ways I am inclined to agree. Yet I remember when Myspace was cool and it was a great way to meet other musicians. I could always search for Industrial artists in my area. It was a great way to get feedback on my music and present Experiment Haywire to the general public. When Myspace died there was no longer a central community for musicians and to this day the closest thing we have is SoundCloud. Of course Myspace did open the flood gates for a lot of idiots. It’s hard to deny that through the creation of Myspace the general IQ of the Internet population dropped at least 40 points.

The Internet was becoming a fancy strip mall full of ugly icons and flashing lights. With the creation of Twitter (which I’m still not convinced wasn’t predicted by William Gibson in Pattern Recognition) the Internet was now a business in which memes were an economic transaction and hastags were the key to success. The Web 2.0 was beginning to form. There was also Facebook which overthrew Myspace and introduced us to apps. Facebook wasn’t too bad when it first started out but with the rapid growth of the Internet it became the Orwellian conspiracy we all feared. With the rise of the iPhone and Droid it was clear that Facebook was making itself a forced connection to the digital world. Flashbacks to AOL anyone?

There is hope that Google+ will kill Facebook once and for all. In fact it is almost like Google+ has become Obama and since Google+ is not Bush everybody is voting for it. Yet I don’t see anything Google+ing Twitter. Maybe this means that Twitter is here to stay for a while. It turned the Internet into a popular business tool which I now see as a good thing. Information-as-currency is a subject that has always fascinated me. I love going to conferences and contributing to discussion feeds. Maybe the Internet has not become an Idiocracy like it appears to have become on Facebook. As people who used the Internet in the early days we have now grown up and are utilizing our digital knowledge to help a new generation.

1. If you kill yourself your enemies will win.
2. You are better than your current situation and you must live in order to prove this.
3. Your experiences of suffering have gained you wisdom that will last you your entire lifetime.
4. You have millions of ideas that you have not yet invented.
5. People like you are dying out and you don’t want to contribute to this.
6. You have a torch that you need to carry on.
7. No matter how brutal they are you can share your experiences through conversation and art.
8. You have no idea what could happen to you in the future.
9. You want to finish up your plan for world domination.
10. You deserve to enjoy yourself more than you have in your lifetime.

So you think that your life is over. Your entire existence has been a struggle and everything that you touch ends up falling apart. You find yourself in a place of darkness that you are unable to escape from. The only emotions you know are hatred and anger which you have learned to glamorize for the sake of art or survival. You do not believe in concepts such finding the light beacause you are too intelligent to believe in mystic jargon. What’s the point in being happy anyway? Isn’t happiness for the unenlightened? The many? The humans?

I have news for you. It is possible to be happy after having been through the worst of the worst. No matter how much trauma you have been through there is a light that you can find. No matter how far into the depths of human depravity you have plunged: no matter how much terror you have witnessed: no matter how many horrible people you have been around: it is possible for you to be happy without sacrificing your knowledge. All it takes is deprogramming yourself from the verbal and emotional abuse that has caused you to sink into this hole.

Step 1: Cut all of the people who make you feel bad about yourself out of your life. In extreme cases like mine this may mean both your spouse and your mother. Acquaintances are another factor. How many people are you in contact with who make you feel bad about yourself? Get rid of these people no matter how many mutual friends you have. They are not going to help you advance in any way. You may feel like you need these people to survive but it is better to be sinking alone than swimming with people who will end up drowning you. Let yourself sink alone and you will realize that you no longer want to sink. Now you have no choice but to learn how to swim.

Step 2: Accept that you may not be able to swim as well as someone like Amanda Palmer or the organizers of SXSW. Accept that your theme camp may not be the most exciting attraction on the playa. Admit that you may have a difficult hand or disposition and that life is not fair. Do not fall into a mystic trap and blame this on being enlightened, cursed, etc. Now swim as hard and as fast as you can. Do not look back. If you can get through this struggle you can get through anything. Some day Amanda Palmer may be coming to you for advice and some day you may have the most exciting theme camp at Burning Man. Things like this often change overnight with a simple news article or collaboration. Yet in the end you should not be comparing yourself to other people. What matters is what you are doing with the cards you have been dealt.

Step 3: Make the decision not to be a pity machine. Realize that nobody is going to feel bad for you if you live in a country like America. If you have a semi-large audience who is understanding of your struggle this may be difficult. For every 5 people who wish you well there are 15 people who wish you would get over yourself. I hate to put it that way but this is a lesson that I learned the hard way. Discussing your personal issues is never a good way to advance yourself. It may get you support from the people who truly care about you and it may even thin out the herd but it will not improve your life in the long run. It is a temporary solution to a much greater problem. Having a supportive network of friends is very important but taking action to improve your life is the only way to get out of your hole.

Step 4: Do things that make you happy. Think about what brings you joy and make a list of these things. Do not look for other people who are living in darkness so you can feel a sense of community. Look for people who are living happy lives and invite them to hang out. Form a new community. Read an uplifting book or listen to an uplifting song. (uplifting does not have to = vapid) Engage in a new hobby. Attend an event that will completely shift your perspective. Try something you have always been curious about. Let yourself go. This is your life and you are free to do whatever you want with it.

Step 5: Have a plan for success. Make sure that everything you do is related to this plan. Live and breathe success. Become an inspiration to other people. Do not think of yourself as a trainwreck. View yourself as someone who is getting back on track. Remember that for every 5 people in your way there are 15 people who will support your new direction. There are nice people everywhere and many of them are successful. Some have also found the light after dwelling in darkness. Some have been even worse off than you have. Consider yourself a successful person who has not yet reached your full potential. Consider this a time of healing and change.

A year ago I told myself I would quit spending so much time with online socializing and start blogging more. A few months ago my Facebook account was deleted and my private information was revealed to thousands of people. I have no idea why but for some sick reason I continued to socialize on Facebook. I’m not sure if it was my desire to show that I could live a functional life online in the midst of being a digital stalking target or if it was something more deep rooted and psychological.

Did I not have any friends in real life? Why was I relying on my social network as a support group? Was it the immediate gratification of receiving a response as opposed to the back-and-forth-texting? Whatever was going on I was obviously in some type of crisis. I had real life friends but they were spread throughout the country due to my constant traveling. They were isolated like me and plugged into the world of online socializing themselves. I felt like very few people wanted to see me in person because my digital output was easier to deal with than my physical output. Whatever was going on it was definitely not healthy and I was headed down a very lonely path. Did I have to give up socializing online to find myself again?

Absolutely. I deleted my Facebook account after a few episodes that involved my ex-husband relentlessly using my social network as a vehicle to get me back with him. I refused to sit around and watch him play these games with my community. This was the final straw in regards to deleting my Facebook and it took far too long for me to arrive here. It is often hard for me to see what is around me and I will need a drastic event to take notice of the truth. Most people in my position would have left the Internet ages ago with so much adversity. So what kept me socializing online? Why so much masochism?

I believe that it had to do with my impatience. I often had issues of burning importance and could not wait for a friend to text me back about them. Phone calls were a thing of the past. I did not have a family that I could turn to for support. In truth I did not have much of anything. I socialized online out of desperation. It was all that I felt I was capable of. Real life involved navigating a physical space that I was at constant war with. I didn’t need to worry about dropping objects online: about interrupting conversations: about breaking things: about navigating: about accidentally cutting someone in line: about not understanding my surroundings: about clearing a room. Socializing online was my defeat.

I am done being defeated. I need to accept that while living online may be easier than living in real life it is not a solution. It can become a point of no return. In deleting my Facebook account I decided to get back on my feet and give real life another try. I currently feel a bit unequipped but at least I am trying. There must be a way that I can develop a real group of friends: move past all the verbal abuse from my family: start attracting nicer people: feeling generally content. At this point I might even say that I have a better chance of making it in real life than I do on the Internet. A walk on the beach is much nicer than a digital conversation about one. Even if I trip and fall in the sand a few times.

I have always had a strong distaste for mysticism. How is mysticism any different from mainstream religion anyway? You take one person with a delusion and you call him or her a schizophrenic. You take a small group of people with a delusion and you call them a cult. You take a large group of people with a delusion and you call them a religion. Where does philosophy fall into the picture and how far can one get sucked into a reality tunnel of their own design? Is it possible to enter a wonderland or matrix and trap yourself in your own religious/mystic thinking? Spending a large portion of my life in occult social groups my answer would be yes. After attending a pagan conference I decided to escape from my alterna-wonderland once and for all. There was too much mysticism at this conference and it freaked me out in a bad way. Going to this pagan event was like going to a church or temple mixed with Burning Man and I wanted to scream. The allergic reaction began only this time I couldn’t blame the reaction on being allergic to pagans. That would have been mysticism. This was not a sign. There was no such thing as a sign. I realized I could no longer blame any of my bad luck on mysticism. All of those times I struggled? They had nothing to do with me being some powerful demon goddess. I was simply struggling.

There is an Experiment Haywire song called “Occult Casualty” which deals with the phenomena of being “stuck in your dark disneyland” and explains how many of us entered a journey we could not escape from. We became casualties of the occult and believed in various things that we couldn’t prove because we had others around us (whether online, in person, or via art/philosophy/music) to validate our delusions. It’s so easy to blame our bad luck on being goth. Let’s just be honest here. Blaming our misfortunes on being part of a cursed few is just a juvenile coping mechanism.

When we have no scientific explanation for something we look to mysticism. Can’t explain something with fact? Explain it with fiction. It’s time to accept that we can’t scientifically explain why bad things happen to some of us more than others. If you convince yourself that you are living a difficult life because you are a part of some dark mystic elite you are no better than someone who convinces themselves that they are going to heaven for condemning what is known as sin.

I don’t believe that Nietzsche was a mystic but I do believe that he encouraged mysticism. The concept of the Übermensch is related to the next step of evolution but leaves no room for scientific fact. There is no Übermensch gene. I’ve never met Nietzsche in person but I would venture to say that he was reaching out to “the others” in a way. Is it possible that Crowley was doing the same thing? How about Evola? Grant Morrison? Or were these thinkers just pranksters? Quantum physicists creating new wonderlands for us to play in? Who really believed what they were writing and who was just doing it for the lulz? Does it even matter at this point? Exactly how blurry are the lines here? As long as I get to mention Evola and Grant Morrison in the same sentence I think enough heads will turn.

I don’t see any difference between worshipping God, Santa Claus, Mother Gaia, or Cthullu. If you are a follower of Nietzsche, Crowley, Evola, Marilyn Manson, Boyd Rice, Grant Morrison, etc. you are doing it wrong. At the very least we can conclude that these thinkers found the majority of their followers to be no different from the idiotic masses they were protesting in their work. Nietzsche was a great writer who influenced me to the point of delusional mysticism. It is quite possible that he would have scoffed at me for this and I am scoffing at myself for it now. Why do industrial musicians hate their fans? It’s definitely not as complex as this but I think it touches on the same issue. Or maybe this is giving industrial musicians too much credit. In reality industrial musicians hate their fans because they hate themselves and could not imagine anyone else enjoying their output.

I am seeing way too much mysticism here. I need to be clear about how we are not a new species in a biological sense. I’m trying to come up with a term besides Übermensch. I’m trying to invent a new subculture and give a more intelligent face to music in which less than nothing has become a masturbation product. Mysticism is very consumer-based in that once someone thinks it is cool the entire bandwagon will jump on. Let’s not allow these forms of thought get in the way of quality or stunt the memetic gene pool. Let’s take a step back and see if we have become casualties of the occult. Let’s check our reality tunnels. Can we prove that they exist? If not then we probably shouldn’t convince ourselves that they do so we can deal with our daily affairs. Chaos magic is not an excuse and it will come back to kick us in the ass. Not the chaos magic but those daily affairs we are using mysticism to cope with. Those daily affairs will remain until we have fixed them in a practical manner.

Let me save you from everything that I’ve been through.