• Zen fascism
  • californication
  • self as erotic savior-slave in crisis settlerism
  • there are constitutive contradictions in liberalism
    • i.e. universalism and individualism
    • stress (i.e. crisis, Collapse) exposes them
  • this creates the Liberalism Legitimacy Crisis:
    • as these contradictions intensify, liberalism loses credibility|validity as an ideological system.
      • it can’t produce the resolutions it promises
      • so it shifts to promising regulation
      • see Foucault
  • California as projection zone: California Gold Rush, Misiones Californianas (the Patronato Real of California), psychedelic revolution, Hollywood, Esalen Institute, techno-utopianism
  • californication is a process of responding to systemic contradictions by performing personal coherence?
    • doesn’t address structural tension
    • processes it as a material to be commodified
      • aesthetic, affect
      • Brian Wilson (and the Barenaked Ladies song)
      • Valley of the Dolls
      • On the Road
    • californication as genre scripting: genre structures expectation (Lauren Berlant)
    • platformal liberalism induces californication as the dominant genre of contradiction management
      • crisis is trauma, mood, healing
      • MASH television show, Red Hot Chili Peppers, skateboarding
    • cybernetic settlerism, cybernetic subject
      • you change the world by how you route events into mood, not with your beliefs or action (which come from mood)
        • Calm app, Burning Man, lifehacking, microdosing
  • Zen
    • don’t fear Collapse: be serene
    • detachmenet
      • nonreactivity
      • Apple advertisement (1984 novel)
      • Starfleet and San Fransisco (Misiones Fransiscanas?)
      • ayahuasca entrepreneurism
      • stoicism, in late-season MASH
      • eroticization of detachment
        • crisis is desireable:
      • source of good affect, source of good life
      • crisis is the source of healing, spiritual growth, betterment of self
      • liberalism is legitimate /because/ it produces crisis
      • trauma aesthetic and aesthetic trauma
      • vagus nerve, self-regulation
  • savior-slave subject
    • californicational subject is:
      • savior
        • personally responsible for managing global crises
      • slave
        • governed by external systems (and crises)
      • Collapse as performable norm:
        • collapse is not hidden or denied, it’s:
      • narrativized (healing arc)
      • monetized (survivalism, resilience, adaptation)
        • collapse becomes sustained because it is wanted
      • this makes wanting to resolve it incommensurable
        • more structures and incentive and power-force to sustain it than end it
  • RAND Institute, Summer of Love
  • shift from Trapper to BJ: critiquing to affecting
    • therapeutic
  • Disneyland
  • Watts Rebellion
  • The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
  • California Über Alles
  • Reaganonimics
  • The Day After
  • Rodney King Uprising
  • doomscrolling, rageposting