“Art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.”
-Angela Davis
July 13th, 2022 - Anchorage, AK - Issue 13
In the coming year, the newsletter will exist in a slightly different way. As of this issue, WWADWWAD will have existed for a whole year, and in the coming months readers should anticipate a season of rhetoric that more purely asks, incorporates artistic complexity, and meaningfully engages readers.
Sincerest of gratitude to all who have read this newsletter in its formative stages and what has been this first year of a trial run newsletter,
Bailey D.
“A very attractive conjecture has been put forward by Goblot [1896, 289 f.], suggested, no doubt, by the riddle of Maury’s guillotine dream [p.60]. He seeks to show that a dream occupies no more than the transition period between sleeping and waking. The process of awakening takes a certain amount of time, and during that time the dream occurs. We imagine that the final dream-image was so powerful that it compelled us to wake; whereas in fact it was only so powerful because at that moment we were already on the point of waking. ‘Un rêve c’est un réveil qui commence.’ ”
-Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams. VII. Psychology of the Dream-Processes, D. The Function of Dreams (p. 614)
“A dream dreamt by Maury (1878, 161) has become famous. He was ill and lying in his room in bed, with his mother sitting beside him, and dreamt that it was during the Reign of Terror. After witnessing a number of frightful scenes of murder, he was finally himself brought before the revolutionary tribunal. There he saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville and the rest of the grim heroes of those terrible days. He was questioned by them and, after a number of incidents which were not retained in his memory, was condemned, and led to the place of execution surrounded by an immense mob. He climbed on to the scaffold and was bound to the plank by the executioner. It was tipped up. The blade of the guillotine fell. He felt his head being separated from his body, woke up in extreme anxiety—and found that the top of the bed had fallen down and had struck his cervical vertebrae just in the way in which the blade of the guillotine would have actually struck them.”
-Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams. I. The Scientific Literature on Dreams, C. The Stimuli and Sources of Dreams (p. 60)
~~~
In thinking about nightmares it has begun to seem that modern politics exist as a kind of the collective nightmare of the time, an ongoing nightmare experienced along side a desperation for awakening. If humans were to experience the impossible and find themselves in a starkly different life it would be a sort of waking up from a collective nightmare.
But in the alternate awake version this would not necessarily be reversion to a superficial standard of taste. This different life version would be thoughtfully planned and tirelessly motivated by the desire to improve the experience for the greatest amount of people, as opposed to the smallest amount of them. (referring yes, to billionaires) There would be decreasing remnant carry overs from patriarchal, white supremacist, ableist, ageist, queerphobic, classist hierarchies because the systems would be structured to solve for public good instead of any kind of bigotry. Every system would need to prove its utility to the majority and provision for the minority. This calculation would be done at a wide variety of different scales.
Capitalism would become an option but not a mandate and resultantly wealth hoarding would be systematically disincentivized. Inhabitants of this alternate reality would rest easy knowing their systems allowed those who did want to work to do so (through leaving them their structures they thrive in) but also allowed those who did not want to work to access the benefits of involvement in community organization (which would negate the necessity to work a full time job for capitalism). Organization on behalf of the public good would become a competitive resource for survival. Organized groups would decide what they want to provide as a community and to what level they want to depend on others.
This now would be the nightmare before the wakefulness. Humans have been made wise to their folly and are watching it play out as if from above, as if not all personally and collectively involved. Humans must wake up by noticing the potential value of being awake.
ANONYMOUS RESPONSE SECTION
Respond anonymously at via Vevox at
https://vevox.app/#/m/118144723
Previous Anonymous Response Inquiry:
What is the worst thing you’ve done in a dream?
Featured Responses:
“I feel like I've murdered a lot of people? I've definitely murdered my father at least twice that I can remember.. I've been murdered too if that helps! I think about that a lot it seems.”
“I’ve had a lot of sex”
Thank you dreamers, this does help. It gets at how wild dreams are. (Something this newsletter attempts to really drive home)
This month’s inquiries: (Respond to any of these over the course of the next month via the WWADWWAD Vevox link above)
How do you feel that your presence on the internet affects you?
Do you have rules for yourself with regard to internet use? Would you recommend them?
What would someone say in a roast dedicated to the topic of your internet presence?
How do you think the internet has impacted sex for heterosexuals? Has this been similar or different same sex couples?
How do you think the generations of people born prior to the internet differ from those who were born after it?
What is the ratio of fucked-up to comedy gold to interesting to torturous is the internet? (Ex. 20% fucked up, 5% comedy gold, 50% interesting, 25% torturous)
What do you view as the internet’s most dangerous side effect? What do you view as its most greatest benefit?
Upcoming Events
(both National/Worldwide
and Local Anchorage)
National/Worldwide/Online:
Liberation Day- July 19th - On this day in 1961 the Sandinista National Liberation Front began its first phase of opposition against the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua
First Day of the Detroit Rebellion - July 23rd, 1967
Local, AKST Time:
Public Transit Advisory Board Meeting- July 14th, 2022 at 5:30PM, for details see the Anchorage Municipality’s Virtual Meeting Participation page. Submit inquiry regarding participation by July 14th at 2PM.
Community Action Meetup - July 16th, 2022 at 1PM see below invite, DM Bailey anywhere for location details
~~~
Podcast Episode Recommendations
(Spotify Links)
Episode 130: Jessica Tizzard discusses weakness of the will - Elucidations
Ocean Vuong- A Life Worthy of Our Breath - On Being
Fear of Black Consciousness - Freedom Dreams
~~~
“We're going to have to learn that we've been lied to since we were children about how the world works, how our government works, how our political and economic systems work. We're going to have to learn that the very building blocks of our culture are mostly just made-up stories from people who want to control us and from long-dead people who wanted to control our ancestors. We're going to have to learn that all the metrics by which we measure our personal success and failure and the frameworks we use to decide what our lives are about are fictions implanted in our minds by the powerful. We're going to have to learn that even our most absolutely fundamental ideas about who and what we are have been built on faulty assumptions.
You can't rewrite a rule if you still believe it's written in stone. You can't rewrite a story if you don't know that you are its author. We can't rewrite the structure of human civilization if we haven't yet learned that none of the old rules are real. We can't collectively withdraw our consent for status quo systems until we collectively understand that our consent is actually required. We can't bend the spoon until we realize that there is no spoon.
And we are collectively moving toward that realization. We are learning as a collective and as individuals that we don't have to be what we've been told we are, that things don't have to be how we've been told they must be, that all the how-it-is narratives and how-it-should-be narratives we've been indoctrinated with are just fairy tales for adults made up by highly confused people whose only qualifications were that they got here before us.
So don't worry when you see the old rigid boundaries start to blur and wobble. Don't panic when you see the old stories being met with incredulity. It might look awkward and sloppy right now, but that's just what it looks like when a thinking species begins moving into a conscious relationship with thought.”
-Caitlin Johnstone, Humanity Is Learning That The Rules Are All Made Up And Can Be Re-Written At Any Time