In light of the internet, one can better appreciate the prophetic nature of Deleuze and Guattarri’s rhizomatic model (one I think fuses into Layotard’s (described in The Postmodern Condition (model: the matrix of communicative displacement (especially as concerns the relationships we tend to form on the boards. It’s like an endless forward flight of relationships formed and soon moved beyond. We connect and, with a kind of ease, move beyond the connection. Connect and forget as Deleuze implores us to do. And after a while of this kind of training, it becomes (perhaps frighteningly so (even easier. And this is because no matter who moves on themselves or what board we get rejected by, there is always somewhere else to go (someone else to interact with (another step forward in our individual process. And I know this sounds cold. But it is this coldness (almost psychopathic in nature (and that in which we are trained on the boards (that allows us to carry on with the sense of self worth needed to carry on.
It’s certainly changed me. When I first started on the boards and anyone attacked me, I retreated into my paranoid/fascist center, re-gathered, and attacked. This has gotten me kicked off of or suspended from many boards. But as I was discovering then, there was always somewhere else to go. Getting kicked off or suspended was little more than a speed-bump. “What was that?” Still, there was the problem of how I reacted: the guilt of having lost my cool. And it was the training of the boards (that is as they developed (that brought me to understand that I have no commitment to anyone whatsoever, not to mention someone I consider to be an asshole, and that the only real solution to such an asshole was to simply ignore them thereby making clear to them the one reality of the boards that they seem to forget: that there is nothing they have to say that is so important to us that we would put up with the disrespect and abuse to get it. Such people are clearly suffering from a pretention based on the fancy one might develop getting too deeply into and becoming a true believer of the TV series House.
But the boards have taught me to let go. Now it has come to a point where I will let an individual go simply because they threaten to turn it into a pissing contest. I just don’t need it. And this is my process! Now my training has brought me to point where I will shut someone out of MY PROCESS well before the point that they have become intolerable, but rather at the point I recognize that it is not a matter of whether they are an asshole, of whether it is THEIR entire fault or mine, but that we simply cannot get along. And FaceBook accommodates me in that when I block this individual they become lacunae, a nothingness, at the same time I become lacunae to them: a part of our individual forward flights that are no longer part of our individual forward flights.
I see the same dynamic at work with those I actually like –only less hostile. In that case, people just move on. And that coldness that the boards have trained me in tells me to just let go, that there is no reason to stalk them down and force them to be your friend forever. Once again:
Connect and forget
:the very motto of the rhizomatic model and manifesto. I mainly bring this up because I noticed today how this sensibility has bled into my real world life. I (a man who has his Einstein’s wardrobes (do the same thing every day –that is while the world around me changes constantly. People (pretty much like they do on the boards (come and go. I have come to a point where I forget their names if they have been gone too long.
This is because their names become buried in the vast rhizomatic network I have built for myself: forgotten words in an always evolving language. I love, but always love based on what furthers my process. I am always with you while clearly being alone.