Systems theory, semiotics, and deconstructing post-modernist bull: a rambling exposition on the misapplication of seminal academic theory as interpreted by Baby Boomers.

I really planned to write about birth, sex and death this morning, but demography just isn't doing it for me today. Eventually I will write about cohorts, and complete that first paragraph that is hanging out pretending to be article 2. But for now let's get surreal. It's a Gigery day.

Anyway, putting this site together in the last few days has made me reopen files of neat stuff I'd put away, bookmarked, and referenced for this site if it ever came together. The stuff runs the gamet from mainstream to perverse, from stuff labeled to include, want to include, to probably shouldn't include (the best stuff is in that last file). So, for a total mind warp, I'm digging through Dead Kennedy files (Jello Biafra's birthday is in a couple days you know...) and my kid asks me about the arbitrary nature of language, "Mom, what if the first people who gave words meaning a really long time ago chose totally different words instead of what they did choose? I mean like flower could mean screwdriver." (I am NOT making this up!) And all this before I'd even had a cuppa coffee. Then within an hour I find myself having to explain to her what a mosh pit is. I pop open my email to find a randy semi-erotic electronic discourse flying between some old high school buddies and I get sucked in. I knew at that point that it would be a sort of a surreal day, filled with juxtapositions of an interesting sort, so I uttered, "why fight it?" I'm going with the flow

Now hang on, all of this IS related. Today I'm expounding on some of the meta-thematic elements of Late Boomer psychic formation and what it means to the world. (So there!) It was fed by combining thoughts about jello biafra, Giger, reading Interzones, the Walker Art Center, group cyber fliration, and conversations about the arbitrary nature of language with a kid that isn't even in junior high yet, and all of synchronic coalescing occurs within the space of an hour - made me realize that I live in the FUTURE. This is not your father's Oldsmobile. We are here. This is THE future. It's starting as we speak. Everyone is pretending like they know what is going on, and no one has a clue!

As I was surfing through hip sites filled with vulgar cynicism, flash-y graphics, dark colors, lots of two dimensional metallic shine and/or minimalist influence, I realized that all the seminal, thought-provoking post-modernist theory of the 80s has come home to roost in mainstream culture. People have accepted the concept that we all create our own realities. They've accepted the concept of disorder. Well now it is nice to know that we all create our own realities and in fact are damn lucky if bits and pieces of them even overlap enough with anyone else's to be able to communicate. But in my personal way of knowing, I've found that most people simply cannot hold the type of suspended disbelief about their own reality in their heads for the lengthy time period that is required to speak in a somewhat intelligent and cogent fashion about the construction materials of reality. And most people can't figure out the difference between seminal and semen-spewing philosophical constructs (I mean really, what person in their right mind actually wants to spend years and years studying and using words like indexicality and Umwelt?) so people who haven't been trained in the minutiea of philosophy and science are referencing really bad stuff as well as really good stuff.

So what does this mean to you? Run way - do not walk away - as fast as you can, at the slightest hint that someone has internalized deconstructive uber-semiotics. (ooh... see how easy it is to slip into meta-vacuous talk) about post-modernist deconstruction of anything! This is the semiotic stuff I was attempting to decipher in the early-mid 80s. Laurie Anderson did a pretty good job with Let X = X". But now everyone seems to think that dismembering pop culture while metaphoric life blood spills all over the place is child's play. And maybe it is, but it is fairly Chucky-esque child's play, if I do say so myself. All you get is disconnected lifeless bits of flesh. Reality is a process not a thing. Were we listening in college when those academics were telling us that whole is much greater than the sum of it's parts, the map is not the territory, and information is any difference that makes a difference?