Zero Squared

This month both C Derick Varn and Nicholas Pell are missing and instead there is a special guest. John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author.  He's fairly well known, especially in the Pacific Northwest where I am, and his books about Green Anarchism have been influential.  But we don't really talk about the environment, agriculture, or civilization, but rather I try to explain what I think is Zerzan's conceptual or philosophical mistake. For Zerzan civilized life is a mediated or alienated life that isn't worth living and his solution is to return to directly lived experience. What I try to point out in my conversation with him is that his solution is a part of the problem.  That is, while he wants to overcome the problem of reification his solution doesn't manage to avoid that mistake. The word reification means to mistake an abstraction for a physical or empirical object. A reification is not when we see an example of an abstraction in the world, it's not when we take a rubber ball and think of it as an example of roundness, but rather when we take an abstraction to be its own example.  That is, when we think that an abstraction can exist on its own without an example. There are many ideas that are founded on this mistake.  God, for instance, is the kind of idea that is a good example of a reification. Nature is, similarly, the same kind of idea. Again, my conversation with John Zerzan wasn't about prehistory or hunters and gatherers or the current ecological problems that are facing us, but was aimed at his concepts.  It was aimed at his idea that we might be able to escape concepts, which I think is his fundamental mistake.

The guest this week is David Blacker. A professor in the school of education at the University of Delaware, Blacker is the the author of several books including Dying to Teach and, most recently, the Falling Rate of Learning. The abstract of the book reads, in part: "As profits fall and finance rises, capitalism has at this point shifted into a mode of elimination, where human beings—and all life—are now precariously positioned as waste material undergoing managed disposal. The education system is caught in the throes of this eliminationism across a number of fronts: crushing student debt, impatience with student expression, the looting of vestigial public institutions and, finally, as coup de grâce, an abandonment of the historic ideal of universal education." This week I want to thank my regular subscribers for their continuing donations to the podcast, and to thank Babafemi M for his donation. If you're thinking about donating you can find the button at douglaslain.com or at the podomatic page for Diet Soap. In the next few months I hope to start a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund a Diet Soap Tour. My novel entitled Billy Moon will be coming out in late August and I'm organizing three events in three cities. I'll be headed to San Francisco, Chicago, and New York for the Think the Impossible Diet Soap tour, and each even will be a live version of the Diet Soap podcast. Guests will include the pop philosopher Daniel Coffeen, the journalist Margaret Kimberley from the Black Agenda Report, Christ Cutrone from the Platypus Affiliated Society, McKenzie Wark author of The Beach Beneath the Street and the Hacker Manifesto, and the economist Andrew Kliman from the Marxist Humanist Initiative. As I say, I'll be raising funds on Kickstarter in order to pay for the trip and accommodations. The idea is that, once I raise enough to cover the initial cost of the trip, donors to the tour will set my itinerary, creating additional stops as I traverse the country by rail. The music you're listening to right now is Different Trains by Steve Reich, but in just a moment you'll be listening to David Blacker and I discuss the Falling Rate of Learning.

There is no guest this week. Instead my son Benjamin and I discuss Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. The section on The Realisation of Rational Self-Consciousness through its Own Activity is seen through the television program Lost. For those of you who haven't watched the show, Lost is, per wikipedia "an American television series that was originally aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series containing elements of science fiction and the supernatural that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean." We also discussed the XKCD comic entitled Lego. This week I want to thank my regular subscribers for their continuing donations to the podcast, and I want to urge everyone listening to donate, to follow me on Facebook, and join the new Diet Soap International Facebook group. Upcoming episodes of Diet Soap will include conversations with David Blacker and Michael Karman from Asymmetry Music Magazine. The music you're listening to right now is Locke's Theme from the television show Lost. In just a moment you'll be listening to Benjamin and I discuss Rational Self-Consciousness through our Own Activity.

C Derick Varn and Douglas Lain return for the third episode of Pop the Left, a podcast dedicated to moving beyond the impasse in Left politics. This week we take a look at conspiracy theories, the psychology behind them, and the Left's inability to cope with the prevalence of this approach to politics. Does the bourgeois left benefit from conspiracy thinking? Can we get beyond our own tendency to blame conspiracies for our ideological and political failures? Was 9/11 an inside Job? Did we ever land on the moon? What about entryism? Three years out of the Zero years and the attendant Bush administration, are we finally ready to face up to the how the Left turned over radical politics to the likes of Alex Jones and David Icke? Next time on Pop the Left Nicholas Pell will return. Possible subjects to mull over: What is Historical Materialism? What should we make of the Arab Spring? Marxist Humanism and the Self Thinking Idea. Do you have a suggestion or topic you'd like to hear us discuss? Leave a comment. Special thanks to the North Star blog for helping to promote Popping the Left.

The guest this week is the author and professor Jodi Dean. Professor Jodi Dean teaches political theory at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, and she recently blogged about a chapter from Gilles Dauve and Francois Martin's book The Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement. We discuss her blog entry and the book in this week's episode. It's Wednesday, February 13th, 2013 and I'm Douglas Lain, the host of the Diet Soap podcast. This week I want to thank Michael T and Brandon F for their one time donations to the podcast, and I want to urge everyone listening to follow me on Facebook and join the new Diet Soap International Facebook group. I also want to tell Shane and Michael P that I haven't forgotten about sending copies of my dusty memoir Pick Your Battle your way. Upcoming episodes of Diet Soap will include conversations with Jason Horsley, David Blacker, and my son Benjamin. Also a conversation with the primitivist John Zerzan is brewing for a future episode of Pop the Left. The music you're listening to is the Beethoven's Ode to Joy played in tribute to the Late James DePreist, who was the music director for the Oregon Symphony from 1980 to 2003. James DePreist was a student of Leonard Bernstein's and a Portland icon, and he died on February 8th this year. In just a moment you'll be listening to Jodi Dean and I discuss The Subject of Capitalism.

The guest this week is TJ Clark. TJ Clark is an art historian and a former member of the Situationist International. His paper For a Left with No Future has gotten quite a bit of attention over the last six months, and this essay is the subject of our discussion this week. My hero Slavoj Zizek has supported this essay saying "We have to admit the grain of truth in this simplified bleak vision which seems to sap the very possibility of a proper political Event: perhaps, we should effectively renounce the myth of a Great Awakening—the moment when (if not the old working class then) a new alliance of the dispossessed, multitude or whatever, will gather its forces and master a decisive intervention." In my conversation with TJ Clark he contradicts this interpretation, saying that he does believe in the ability of the people to make a spontaneous revolution, and yet he continues to advocate a tragic vision. It's Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 (well past the Eschaton) and I'm Douglas Lain, the host of the Diet Soap podcast. Okay. So the Podomatic feed is up and running again and I'm slowly uploading the back catalog for the podcast. So you can subscribe to the podcast through my website douglaslain.com or through podomatic, and you might get email alerts as I upload old podcasts. I also want to urge you donate to Diet Soap and to tell your friends about the podcast. While I'm aware of how dreadfully Marxist the podcast has become I also believe that I haven't wandered away from real human concerns here. My goal for 2013 is to continue on, to hold tight to the direction the podcast has found, while also returning to the sense of desperate improvisation that founded this thing. The strange moment that I'm in is this: I believe more firmly than ever in Value theory and Marx's critique of Capital while I'm simultaneously convinced that we are as far away from resolving the deadlock of Capitalism as we've ever been. In any case you can find the donate button at douglaslain.com and at dietsoap.podomatic.com. In this episode you'll here clips from older episodes of this podcast and of Talking Art. My son Benjamin and I discussed the Arab Spring and Manet's painting Luncheon in the Grass for Diet Soap and the now defunct One Thousand Words podcast. (I'd love to revive that second effort, although editing an art podcast was very time consuming.) This conversation with TJ Clark represents a culmination or conclusion for Diet Soap. Without meaning to I think we've reached a turning point here.

This week on the Diet Soap channel: Pop the Left #2 Pop the Left is currently a special program done irregularly with C Derick Varn (a University Lecturer living in Jeonju) and Nicholas Pell (a freelancer writer and cynic living in LA) and this episode features a conversation with Varn as we dissect just why Anarchists are so different, so appealing, while Marxists look like they've spent the evening coughing into their overgrown beards and forgetting to clip their fingernails. The other question we ask is why is it that Anarchists and Marxists alike can't really think past Capitalism. However, the weird thing is that by the end of this second episode we've stumbled into our unconscious and end up in a seemingly never ending stream of penises...I mean Freudian slips. Enjoy!

The guest this week is the podcaster Tom O'Brien. O'Brien grew up in Athboy, Ireland and is now living in London and his From Alpha to Omega podcast was apparently partially inspired by this one. Being a regular listener to his show I'm glad to have had some claim to it. Tom O'Brien and I discuss Kliman's value theory and the monetary theory of Mathew Forstater. The next Talkshoe after party will occur this Sunday the 27th at 1pm PST or 4pm EST and I encourage everyone who is listening to participate. If you don't want to talk you could just listen to the live stream and use the chat function to interject questions. This week Andrew M made a generous donation and I've rebooted the original podomatic page for the podcast. So you can now find Diet Soap at douglaslain.com and dietsoap.podomatic.com. The podcast is also available via iTunes and I urge you to subscribe there and to consider donating to the podcast if you can. In this episode O'Brien and I focus on a fairly narrow point about value and money, but I believe it is a question that has fairly far reaching implications. If one believes, as Forstater does, that the current economic crisis could be mitigated or even solved if we were to allow ourselves to live with ballooning deficits then a political project to unshackled the wallet of Washington, one demanding more social spending and job creation, would be adequate. If, on the other hand, you believe that the realm of production has to be changed if we're to avoid recessions and depressions and that there are limits on what government intervention can accomplish then something more radical, even unthinkable, is required. The music you're listening to right now is a George Antheil's Jazz Symphony, but in just a moment you'll be listening to Tom O'Brien and I discuss money and value.

The guest this week is the author and professor McKenzie Wark. Wark is the author of the books the Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, Virtual Geography: Living With Global Media Events, and most recently The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International. This is McKenzie Wark's second visit to the Diet Soap podcast and this time we discuss the late great Karl Marx and how one should properly worship him…I mean understand his work. The next Talkshoe after party will occur on Sunday the 27th at noon PST or 3pm EST and I encourage everyone who is listening to participate. On the 13th we had Brendan Cooney participate and in the future I will try to get podcast guests involved with the Talkshoe conversation whenever possible. I also want to thank Caytlin G and Michael P for donating to the podcast and encourage everyone who likes the podcast to donate or become a monthly subscriber. I'll be reinstating the Podomatic page soon, probably in February, and donations help to speed the reappearance of the Podomatic page along. I should also point out that I recently discovered that the Marxist Humanist Initiative has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013 entitled the "Impasse in Movements for Social Change and the Need for the 'Organization of Thought'." I mention the meeting because the MHI has suggested that participants listen to episode 165 of Diet Soap as preparation for the teleconference. Number 165 was the episode wherein C Derick Varn and I discussed Adorno's essay "Resignation." I'm quite pleased to have influenced people to think about the questions posed on Diet Soap.

The guest this week is the youtube star and Marxist Brendan Cooney and we discuss Marx and Hegel. This is the second half of our conversation, slightly edited. You can find more from Cooney on his Kapitalism101 blog. I am still planning on canceling the Podomatic feed for Diet Soap and moving the podcast to douglaslain.com. If you subscribe to podcast through podomatic you'll need to change over to the new feed by the end of the month, that means that this podcast will be the last podcast on the podomatic website and next week you'll find instructions on how to switch the feeds instead. When I make the switch I'm also going to restart the Diet Soap philosophy workshop and that workshop will continue weekly, or at least it will be a part of every episode. That means that while I'll continue on discussing Hegel once a month, I've decided to expand the workshop to a weekly format. After each Diet Soap episode subscribers to the podcast will get a chance to participate in a conversation about that episode. So, yes, there will be regular Hegel episodes, but subscribers will also get a chance to discuss all the different subjects that we cover or bring up their own ideas. Finally, I am also going to start a monthly podcast with C. Derick Varn called Pop the Left. We'll take a critical look at the politics of the Left from a Leftist perspective and, at first, that'll be hosted through the same RSS feed as Diet Soap, but if a few more people donate or subscribe I'll start a second feed for Pop the Left on its own. So, you can help me start a new podcast by donating today.

The guest this week is Brendan Cooney and we discuss his Law of Value youtube video series (I play the soundtrack for his second video), and discuss real abstractions as explained in Marx's bestselling book Capital. We start off discussing whether Data from the television show Star Trek the Next Generation would generate value if he time traveled to this current Capitalist economy. I am still planning on canceling the Podomatic feed for Diet Soap and moving the podcast to douglaslain.com. If you subscribe to podcast through podomatic you'll need to change over to the new feed by the end of the month, that means that the next podcast will be the last podcast on the podomatic website. In that episode I'll try to explain just how to find the Diet Soap RSS feed from Blubrry. When I make the switch I'm also going to restart the Diet Soap philosophy workshop and that workshop will continue weekly, or at least it will be a part of every episode. That means that while I'll continue on discussing Hegel once a month, I've decided to expand the workshop to a weekly format. After each Diet Soap episode subscribers to the podcast will get a chance to participate in a conversation about that episode. So, yes, there will be regular Hegel episodes, but subscribers will also get a chance to discuss all the different subjects that we cover or bring up their own ideas. Finally, I am also going to start a monthly podcast with C. Derick Varn called Pop the Left. We'll take a critical look at the politics of the Left from a Leftist perspective and, at first, that'll be hosted through the same RSS feed as Diet Soap, but if a few more people donate or subscribe I'll start a second feed for Pop the Left on its own. So, you can help me start a new podcast by donating today.

There are two guests this week: the University Student Zanda Knight and my son Benjamin Lain. We talk about Karl Marx's Capital and try to answer the question "Why can't a robot make value?" We discuss Data, Cherry 2000, and Marx's notion of abstract labor time and exchange value. After this conversation you'll hear the soundtrack for Brendan Cooney's latest video from his Law of Value series. Brendan Cooney will be the guest next week. Couple of announcements. First, I'm going to cancel the Podomatic feed for Diet Soap. Instead I'll be hosting Diet Soap at douglaslain.com and using Blubrry. If you subscribe to podcast through Podomatic you'll need to change over to the new feed by the end of the month and I'll be posting instructions and talking about how to do that in the weeks to come. Second, I'm going to restart the Diet Soap Philosophy Workshop and add a new twist. While we'll continue on discussing Hegel once a month, I've decided to open expand the workshop to a weekly format. That is, after each Diet Soap episode subscribers to the podcast will get a chance to participate in a conversation about it. So, yes, once a month there will be a Hegel episode, but subscribers will also get a chance to discuss all the different subjects that we cover or bring up their own ideas. The people at the Partially Examined Life are doing something similar for each of their podcasts and I thought it would be a good idea for Diet Soap. Finally, this month is when I'll be starting a second podcast with C. Derick Varn called Pop the Left. That'll be a monthly podcast that takes a critical look at the politics of the Left from a Leftist perspective. You've probably noticed that Diet Soap has slipped into a biweekly schedule. I will be rectifying that and returning to a regular weekly schedule this month. Diet Soap should come out on Thursday, every Thursday. I should also mention that I've started blogging for the Partially Examined Life, and that I'm continuing to blog for the Right Where You're Sitting Now site and for Tor.com. I hope to include collaged readings of those blog entries in future episodes. The music you're listening to is Hindemith's Kammermusik No. 5, but in just a moment you'll be listening to Zanda, Ben, and we discuss Marx and the Robots.

The guest this week is the filmmaker Andrew Fillipone. Andrew Filippone Jr. is the filmmaker in New York City made the short film 'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett. Some of Andrew's other works include: The Status Films, an all-text, 4-part, 80-minute documentary film cycle made from real-time searches of public Facebook status updates; Happy Monday, a film-sculpture hybrid that he describes as a "documentary film object;" and The Auroras of Autumn, a silent, abstract short that screened at the 8th Berlin International Director’s Lounge, but in this episode we discuss two other films the first being his mock conspiracy film No! Gabba, Gabba and the other an experimental film entitled 999. In this episode there is a point where I explain the idea of a concrete abstraction, and I thought it would be worthwhile to explain that idea here at the outset. The other day I was asked to define the idea of a concrete abstraction and I said that this was the idea that reality is inexorably both conceptual and sensual. One can’t separate out the idea of what it is to be something from the sensual qualities one encounters upon meeting that something. An apple is both an idea and an experience. Once you’ve grasped this the question isn’t “What is a concrete abstraction?” but rather “What isn’t a concrete abstraction?” Couple of announcements. First, the Philosophy Workshop has been on hiatus over the summer I will be restarting that project in September and I want to encourage people to join up. Subscribing to the workshop is really a way to support the podcast and if you enjoy Diet Soap you should consider subscribing or making a one time donation. So, in September we'll pick up with Hegel's phenomenology, and I think I'll try to use Google Plus to host the online conversations. Another announcement is that soon I'll be launching a second, monthly, podcast called Pop the Left. C Derick Varn and I have been recording conversations for this and this coming podcast will be an examination and critique of the left from the left. Along those lines I recently received an email from TJ Clark accepting an invitation to come onto Diet Soap. Clark is an art historian and former member of the Situationist International and his latest essay "For a Left with No Future," for all it's flaws, is a valiant effort and really required reading.

The guest this week is the author and environmentalist Jim Brumm. Jim Brumm was the staff writer at an environmental firm in Sebastopol, California and his new book is an in-depth study of the ills facing societies the need for long-term thinking. That book is titled Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World. As you listen to the conversation you'll probably hear a bit of a push and pull as I try to come to some understanding of how long term thinking might, on its own, be a solution for our problems. By the end of our talk I have to agree with Jim that thinking ahead and considering the ramifications of actions on the future is certainly necessary, but I still ultimately felt that something was missing from that conclusion. We have to have a reason or aim behind our thinking, whether its in the short or the long term. Changing the reasons behind our actions is, from my perspective, just as important as changing the range or complexity of our thought. If the reasons behind our actions are contradictory then no amount of complexity or thinking into the future will resolve the trouble. So, that's my critique of Jim's thesis in a nutshell, but despite this critique I think the conversation is one worth having and I fundamentally agree that long term thinking is necessary…it's just not enough. I want to thank everyone who is a regular subscriber and participant in the Philosophy Workshop. If you'd like to donate or subscribe to the podcast and Philosophy workshop the buttons are at dietsoap.podomatic.com and at douglaslain.com. Donors of $6 or more in the US or $15 internationally will receive a copy of my book "Pick Your Battle." Also, if you'd rather not receive a copy of "Pick Your Battle" you can get on the list for a copy of "The Doom that Came to LOLcats" which is a novella due out from Eraserhead press later this year. I should tell you all to follow me on twitter and friend me on Facebook. Also you can send me email through my webpage. That's douglaslain.com. I've got some big news this week. It looks like the Diet Soap podcast will start being listed on the Right Where You Are Sitting Now website. RWYASN explores the weirder side of the world. Ken Eakins and Kim Monaghan are the editors and the other podcasts listed include the Coincidence Control Network, Behind Closed Doors, and Sitting Now Radio. I'm very pleased to be included.

The guest this week is the author and mystic Jason Horsley. Jason Horsley is probably most well known for his podcast Stormy Weather a show that focused on the subjects of "paranoid awareness" the concept of a second Matrix, and a striving after enlightenment . Jason released "Stormy Weather" under the pseudonym Aeolus Kephas. Now, according to wikipedia Aeolus is a name shared by three characters from Greek mythology. An Aeolus was the son of Poseidon (the god of the sea), the son of Hellen who himself was the son of Zeus and as such the progenitor of the Hellenic or Greek people, and also the son of King Hippotes. This Aeolus was known as the keeper of the winds and he gives Odysseus a bag of wind so the King could be sure to get back to Ithaca on a gentle West Wind. In contrast, on Horsley's podcast Stormy Weather the winds were stronger and there was a sense that the listener might never get home again. Jason Horsley is the son of Northern Food's chairman Nicholas Horsley and the brother of the late Sebastian Horsley, an artist and writer whose most well known for having staged his own crucifixion in the year 2000, but unlike his brother, Horsley disinherited his family's fortune in 1991 and traveled to Morocco where he roamed the streets and scrounged. Aiming at becoming a late 20th century Buddha, Horsley followed the prescription or recipe for sainthood available to him at the time. He imbedded in psychedelic drugs, participated in shamanic rituals of various sorts, and wrote about the cinema. His first book, the Blood Poets, was published in 1999. Since then he's written, various books including a book written under the pseudonym Aeolus Kephas entitled the Lucid View. Since Horsley's first visit to the Diet Soap podcast he and I have been opposed allies. That is, whether we're discussing Osho Rajneesh, the movie Close Encounters, William Blake, or debating epistemology we managed to find common ground to squabble over. This week we discuss his dream of enlightenment and what it might take for him to get there. I want to thank everyone who is a regular subscriber and participant in the Philosophy Workshop. And I want to especially thank Mark M who emailed to let me know he's going to send me a gift. Some paperback science fiction novels including one by the great New Wave author John Sladeck. If you'd like to donate or subscribe to the podcast and Philosophy workshop the buttons are at dietsoap.podomatic.com and at douglaslain.com. Donors of $6 or more in the US or $15 internationally will receive a copy of my book "Pick Your Battle." Also, if you'd rather not receive a copy of "Pick Your Battle" you can get on the list for a copy of "The Doom that Came to LOLcats" which is a novella due out from Eraserhead press later this year. I should tell you all to follow me on twitter and friend me on Facebook. Also you can send me email through my webpage. That's douglaslain.com. I've got some big news this week. It looks like the Diet Soap podcast will start being listed on the Right Where You Are Sitting Now online magazine. RWYASN explores the weirder side of the world. Ken Eakins and Kim Monaghan are the editors and the other podcasts listed include the Coincidence Control Network, Behind Closed Doors, and Sitting Now Radio. I'm very pleased to be included on this website.