Probably why I value Alec's book on Bucky, the latest biography to more fully exploit the hindsight that comes from having an archive to explore, is it provides a lot of graphs, in the sense of connect-the-dots networks, but without conceding that Bucky's disciples hold the high ground, at least not in a moral sense. They're in no position to virtue signal, in other words.
I kind of like that as a premise, as I don't like sanctimonious rants seeking to guilt trip or otherwise shame the blameworthy.
Rants like that require lots of skill, and a first rung on that ladder is usually to blame mental constructs, not specific sets of people, although schools of thought are fair game.
If you find yourself blaming "the Jews" or "the Americans" or "the Russians" or "the Iranians" then it's highly likely your sloppy broad brush stroking habits carry over into other aspects of your mental life. You know how to slap it on, thick and heavy, but you've risked missing the mark in my book, unless you have a way to switch gears. Perhaps you were being self mocking or otherwise self adversarial.
On the other hand, Bucky's corpus is not about urging people to exude moral virtue. He's not endlessly exhorting followers to stick to this or that code of conduct. He'll describe his personal self disciplines in terms of rethinking his perceptions and getting free of mental ruts.
His passion for the success of humanity is not without affection for metal, the metallic, the mechanical. That's why he's written off as an engineer, by those who tend to write off engineering (I'm quite the opposite). I'd concede he's using a different brand of alchemy than say the Romantic poets. He uses "technology" in a different way.
Per my recent lecture to School of Tomorrow types, we have not been stoking any sense of repulsion towards industrialization or even globalism in principle. Specific projects may be shortsighted and ill-advised, no question. He was not sentimentally a partisan nationalist, so much as a realist, which doesn't mean the same thing as realpolitik. He took a stand regarding nuclear energy, against those who'd cut corners, but his World Game was all about energy options, and furnishing prop inventory.
The Bucky corpus is about Euler's and Avogadro's Law, the Gibbs Phase Rule, while finding a baseline set of visualizations for perturbations vs uniformity. He's very STEM but right brained and happy to use metaphor to make gravity a bigger deal.
Regarding uniformity, we need an "at rest" (an RIP) and then for contrast we need "ripples" or other kinetic oscillations that serve as a programming foreground against a motionless background.
Motionless in the sense that, even as we move through it, we sense it remains unmoved, inertial, unborn. This is Buddhist country, as many will have detected. I live in a Buddhist ghetto.
His "at rest" is the "isotropic vector matrix", a mattress, a springy space of repose. Vs-a-vs the IVM we have the ripples. There's the Jitterbug scenario with its equilibrious background state providing for polarized behaviors, electronic pushing and pulling within electronic and/or positronic brains (thinking of Isaac Asimov).
The sweet spot on the proverbial cocktail party circuit is when you're mingling with the need to be seen (the celebrities of whatever world), the "who's with who now" crowd, thereby feeding a recommendations algorithm that expresses itself in gossiping, journaling, blogging even.
We learn the talk of the town. Pick up on the latest criticism. Sample savvy opinion. We feel inner circle at this party, whereas at others it's maybe more about fomo (fear of missing out) i.e. wishing to be somewhere else.
Coming full circle, I've probably soured on Quakerism to the extent I associate rants with sanctimonious virtue signaling among the managerials especially. They live pretty comfortably and so want to not rock the boat too radically.
Comfort and conformity go together, which includes colluding on what to talk about (e.g. Jesus), not just how. That's where the squeeze comes in, when one's talking point agenda results in the "right" invitations to what could nevertheless be considered "left" organizations (AFSC gets that rep).
But then I resurrect my brand of Quakerism, as I get to set my own tone. I'm my own jukebox with my own set of topics. We're clearly rubbing shoulders. We're not all that fawning towards superheroes and we're not so wedded to broad brush strokes that we can't appreciate one another as individuals.
Quakerism was always about being Friends, not about being a good doobie. Indeed, Friends are well known for being badass and obstructive, when it comes to putting some next god on a pedestal.
