#michael becker

[forbidden-sorcery]

Many critics of industrial civilization use the metaphor of a speeding train heading for a wreck. By [John] Zerzan's account we might say that civilization is like a vast hole, with the living participants being consigned, collectively, to the inescapable role of "digger. The rule is that salvation can be found only through more efficient and relentless means of digging; the participants experience the mute horror of watching natural light recede while engineers design artificial lighting and air conditioning systems. An increasingly powerful legal-bureaucratic-managerial authority promises a vast array of material pleasure as the reward for digging, poverty and insecurity for those who refuse to dig, and severe repression for those who sabotage the digging apparatus. When the workers dig deeply enough they will discover an underground river called Styx (hatred) and its confluence with other rivers, including Lethe (forgetfulness and oblivion), and these will mark their crossing over from life to death. And the shovels will be taken from their hands and replaced with oars, and their training in digging will suit them perfectly for rowing with metronomic precision. And they will pull endlessly along this dark river, forgetting there was ever even a world of sun, green earth, and air. And with these metaphors civilization will think that it is indicting the dark, prehistoric world. But really it is only indicting its own efforts at constructing an entirely man-made environment where "misery is the river of the world" and everybody rows.

Michael Becker

[atariforce]

Retro Game Spotlight 069: Cosmic Ark (1982)

Publisher: Imagic Platform: Atari 2600 Designer: Rob Fulop Box Art: Michael Becker, Wilfredo Aguilar

Trivia: Ostensibly a sequel to Imagic's Atlantis, Cosmic Ark had two versions released, one of which allowed the player to toggle the starfield display with the B&W/Color switch.

[rainingmusic]

Red 7 - Heartbeat

[forbidden-sorcery]

Civilization threatens us, not just in terms of its technological gigantism and the global effects of technical failure, but more so in the way that it robs us, daily and ever more intensively, of a fundamental kinship with the natural world and with one another. Evolution is generally thought of in terms of a species adaptation to the environment. Civilization develops by fundamentally altering the environment. If this is to be called an adaptation then human beings (though agents of civilization) must adapt to the adaptation. Becoming civilized is a matter of compulsion. It entails the loss, not the attainment of freedom. It denies life; it does not fulfill it. Civilization alters the environment mainly through the acquisition of energy resources, in earlier phases through deforestation, and now through the use of fossil fuels. But intensive energy use is necessitated by large-scale agriculture and the development of cities. Agriculture rests on the domestication of plants and animals, a process that developed only very gradually and probably in the context of climate change occurring 12 thousand years ago. [John] Zerzan merely notes the obvious: humans, too, become domesticated, ruthlessly. Now the experience of being human must be subjected to the total control of a system bent on the total control of being itself. In this sense contemporary civilization is a difference in degree but of such an extent that it becomes a difference in kind.

Michael Becker

[forbidden-sorcery]

Civilization creates complexity and pits it against nature. The more civilized a culture, the more complexity it entails; the more complexity, the greater the danger. In the end, civilization always loses because civilizations run up against natural limits, and "nature bats last." We can say that civilizations have have life spans, and various indicators suggest that modem Western civilization (now global in scope) may be reaching its senescence. Efforts to save civilization become increasingly desperate and far-fetched (consider the Zeitgeist movies" Venus Project or Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline). An entire social movement to escape seemingly inevitable collapse masquerades as "environmentalism." On shopping bags and light bulb packages we are exhorted to "save the Earth." A raft of texts on the ecological crisis similarly speak of saving nature or preserving ecosystems. Really these texts are about saving civilization. Ecosystems, like individual species, have only instrumental value for the "greater good." But is civilization worth saving? In saving civilization do we sacrifice ourselves in the same way we have sacrificed Earth, nature, ecosystems, and species? Such questions are, obviously, nonsensical to anyone who is already fully committed to the project of civilization. Unfortunately, this comprises nearly all academics in the social and natural sciences, the academy, especially in its current corporatized form, being the epitome of civilization.

Michael Becker

[atariforce]

Retro Game Spotlight 042: Atlantis (1982)

Publisher: Imagic Platform: Atari 2600 Designer: Dennis Koble Box Art: Michael Becker

Trivia: Those with the highest scores in Imagic's Defend Atlantis contest could receive a faster and more challenging version of the game—Atlantis II—which was used to determine the final four finalists of the competition.

[atariforce]

Retro Game Spotlight 023: Demon Attack (1982)

Publisher: Imagic Platform: Atari 2600 Designer: Rob Fulop Box Art: Michael Becker

Trivia: Two different versions of Demon Attack exist. The original version ends after the 84th wave, as programmer Rob Fulop did not expect anyone to "wrap" the game. Later releases changed this so that the game plays indefinitely.

[stylenewsus]

Who is that?