Pilgrim

I have become privately obsessed with this photo. I return to it often. At first it made me sad, but only because I viewed it with human eyes. Now it seduces me toward alien worlds.

I didn't have the courage to be born in this child's village, so here I am instead, gazing upon him from a safe distance on the eve of his departure along a dark trajectory disappearing over the horizon and promising greater vistas than can be conceived by any human being. It's little wonder to me that the photographer has fled this world in pursuit.

LIS Superstition

Here's an idea: library and information science (LIS) is not a science. It's more like a business model for advancing an ideology. This is most evident in the way LIS educators advocate so-called information literacy. While they recognize information as irreducibly diverse, they are only concerned with textual information and its derivatives.

The American Library Association (ALA) defines information literacy as "the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information." By this definition, anyone with the skills to survive in the wilderness should count as information literate, even if he can't read text. He can still read his surroundings. But no LIS educator teaches how to spot and decipher cloud formations or animal tracks.

In the wilderness, there is no reason for what is called collection development. Any information that would satisfy the survivalist's needs is too volatile to be stored for future use. The optimal collection is always already present. It is the wilderness itself, subject to auto-revision.

Now the analogy between the library and the wilderness threatens to collapse in relation to intent. In the wilderness, the collection has no intent behind it. But if the survivalist is superstitious, he still might pray to a deity to supply him with the right information, a sign for good weather, perhaps, or game.

By the same token, a library user might appeal to a collection developer to stock the shelves with a particular book. But it's mere superstition that the collection developer responds to his needs. His needs are submerged beneath all that happens between making the appeal and such time that a copy of the book finally becomes available for checkout.

The collection developer only looks at aggregates when deciding what to collect. The user might be a part of that aggregate, or he might not. It's really not up to him - unless he's a crony.

Friends of Carlos

PREAMBLE

We, the undersigned, in order to seal our friendship with Carlos Brocatto for all eternity, raise the forenamed to the status of Demon Incarnate, and shall be known henceforth as the Friends of Carlos, or Carlotic Enthusiasts, or Carlomancers, or any variation thereof. The articles of affirmation here set forth describe our constitution.

ARTICLE I - NATURE OF THE BEAST

From the soundless depths of the bottomless pit, in the midst of ontological anarchy, we affirm against all hope that the Demon Carlos, or the Carlos, exists everywhere at all times, past, present, and future; that he is, was, and always shall be sovereign; and that, knowingly or unknowingly, the purpose of all other beings throughout history, named and unnamed, terminates in the fruition of his demonic will.

ARTICLE II - HUMAN PARTS

We affirm that Carlos Brocatto, born into this world as flesh and blood, is the living idol of the Carlos; that we, the Friends of Carlos, are his lesser avatars; and that, wherever we may find ourselves on the face of the earth, we act in concert to manifest his demonic will.

ARTICLE III - NO-ESCAPE CLAUSE

We affirm that, in sequel to the pledge of friendship, there is absolutely no going back; that the appearance of conflict between any human parts signals nothing more than a demonic shift in posture; and that the vector of demonic will shall always prevail as the summation of any conflict whatsoever.

ARTICLE IV - INVOCATION

We affirm that the invocation of the Carlos is justified in proportion to its recurrence, and that invocation strengthens his presence among us.

The Smell of Solipsism

Over at The Splintered Mind, Eric Schwitzgebel has posted an interesting sketch of what he calls idealist pantheism. And when I say "interesting," I mean to congratulate myself for having sketched out a similar idea many years prior as an undergrad, but under a different nomenclature more consonant with solipsism. Many thanks to Carlos Brocatto for instigating that idea, at once utterly ridiculous and compelling, one sultry night in Riverside as we sat outside of an inexplicably trendy hookah lounge.

But whereas Eric works out his idea from the outside in, starting with God as the universal postulate, the supreme cosmic unity or highest species of being, and then parsing out individual human subjects as modules of divine cognition, circumstances dictated that I work out my own idea from the inside out, starting with the individual human subject and expanding outward to infinity. First, supernatural agents affecting the subject's conduct, angels and demons and so forth, are interiorized as so many parts of his unconscious. Then, having thus abolished the utility of exorcism, the utility of defending personal space is also abolished by interiorizing other people. Thenceforth, the subject continues his outward expansion to include all the nations of the earth, all the stars and planets, and all the galaxies and beyond. In the end, the subject is all there is, and he is a solipsist, that is to say, God.

Except there is no end, and there are any number of starting points for expansion. So if there is a God, he is neither unitary nor singular, but unbound and multiple, an endless expanse of overlapping solipsists.