TransAtlantis

February 15, 2022February 15, 2022

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse: Notes and Theories to 10,000 Years by Adalbert Arcane

Adalbert Arcane’s expanded Notes & Theories to Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse (by Tom Kaczynski, Fantagraphics, 2022). This ongoing series of posts started here.

Slumbering Towards the Future

On the surface, 10,000 Years (10K YRS, originally published in MOME 8, 2007) resembles science fiction classics like HG Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes, or Edward Bellamy’s utopian magnum opus, Looking Backward. It follows the familiar trope of a sleeping man, who awakens far in the future through some unexplained time fluke. Most variants of this trope, depict the future as something concrete: something we fear or desire. The future tends to be either positive or negative, utopia or dystopia.

The main protagonist is probably named after Edgar Cayce, the famous Sleeping Prophet. Cayce is best known for predicting that Atlantis would be found in the ’60s in the vicinity of the Bahama Islands. Atlantean lore is an ongoing concern for the Author. A genealogy of this ancient lost world was explored in Trans Atlantis. Edgar Cayce also figures prominently in the notorious and unreleased “lost” chapter to Trans Terra [ 1 ] cycle of stories.

The one thing our modern imagination cannot fathom is a future that remains fundamentally the same. And yet, this was the state of humanity for millennia. Imagine a caveman troglodyte living during the paleolithic 40-50 thousand years ago. Was there a future for such a creature? Did he imagine a world of tomorrow? Was he imagining new super-Neolithic technologies? Judging by the scant evidence left to archaeologists, not much progress or change happened for tens of thousands of years. It seems impossible, yet it DID happen at some point. How? When? (See Music For Neanderthals). The gap between them and us is vast and difficult to bridge.

The Eternal Present

We see the eternal present as the provenance of non-human animals. Can we look at our ancient ancestors as less human? Modern humans have a glitch (or a gift, depending on your POV). We have an internal mirroring process (aka self-consciousness) that enables us to become stuck “out of time.” This glitch/gift is what makes us human.

At some point, we began to transform the environment around us. That transformation required more significant and fantastic planning (i.e., awareness of the future; more on this in future notes). Future awareness scales with human numbers. When humans began to congregate in large settlements, the gap between the future and the present decreased.

Paradoxically the past conditions the future. Depending on the success or failure of a community, the future imagination becomes influenced by past events. It becomes constrained by previous events. The community can develop a sense of helplessness and anticipate a future apocalypse. Or, a series of successes can instill visions of a brighter future and perpetual progress (of some sort).

End of History

We, the moderns, are split. We imagine either utopian possibilities or dire catastrophes. The one thing many of us cannot conceive is an unchanging present extending infinitely into the future. And yet, this is the predicament we find ourselves in. Since the mid-1970s, progress (technological, etc.) has stalled in many ways. The future imagined by our ancestors from the first half of the 20th century has stalled. No flying cars, no moon bases, etc. The technologies which have progressed since then: computers, digital communication, virtual reality, etc., are primarily cybernetic in the realm of personal augmentation. In fact, most of these technologies can be seen as elaborations on the mirror.

10,000 Years, Page 3, panels 9-11 (patent pending)

10K YRS story is remarkable for being written and published years before Peter Thiel’s Zero To One business screed. In this book, Thiel (did Thiel read this comic?) posits that the economic development of atoms (machines, devices, physical items, energy) has not kept up with the growth of bits (programmatic computer products like VR, big data, etc.) The power and speed of computers have increased, but we have not made much progress in the physical realm. Much of the world relies on the infrastructure invented, built, and developed in the 20th century. 10K YRS anticipated this analysis and stretched this idea into the far future. 10K YRS is a concise and prophetic elaboration of Fukuyama’s End of History thesis. We are forever suspended in this world like a dead fetus floating in embalming fluid unless something or someone can get us out.

Mars Attacks

The protagonist learns that he is a Martian or potentially Martian in the final sequence. It represents the author’s intuitive understanding that the current static social and political consensus can only be shaken loose by something external to capitalism, communism, civilization, humanity, and the planet.

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra

Mars in our present is a distant anchor of possibility. A tether stretches between Earth & Mars; Zarathustra’s rope upon which man/superman must learn to walk. The only other option: the slow entropic death of the last man flattened by the oppressive gravity of mother earth.

The external event alluded to is the colonization of Mars. (see Utopia Dividend) This event, in theory, would accelerate [ 2 ] technological development in the material sphere, exploit vast new energy sources, and generate a vast quantity of new economic opportunities in the off-world colonies (see Blade Runner).

Haunted or Haunting?

The vision of Marxist zombies on Mars is a nod to the specter that has haunted history: Marx and Marxism and the idea of progress itself. At one point, a Marxist revolution begins unfolding on Mars. The Marxists are depicted as zombies, an explicit call-out to George Romero’s later zombie films, which identify the proletariat with zombies. In his earlier films, zombies were bourgeois consumers wreaking havoc in shopping malls. Now zombies are the proletariat, forever hated, reduced to a zombie-like state; empathy withdrawn.

The Zombie is a figure that acquires new abilities and meanings during different epochs.

The author (Tom Kaczynski) melds those two interpretations via zombie Marx’s detourned speech: “A specter is haunting Mars – the specter of consumerism. […] Consumers of the solar system, save your receipts.” It is a haunting passage that both reaffirms that the revolutionary class is dead and permanently subsumed by the consumertariat.

The revolutionary potential of Marxism has been drained of all energy by the grey vampires [ 3 ]. Zombie Marx embodies the current form of late-capitalist-socialist activism: specifically, the “I’ve got the receipts” [ 4 ] brand of cancel culture that haunts social(ist) media. [ 5 ] The communism—the engine of the events of the 20thcentury—that haunted Marx’s 19th century is now a rotting husk of flesh shambling, decomposing, and liquefying into toxic sludge. Can anything grow in its wake?

Of the twin towers of the 20th century: capitalism & communism, one has already fallen. How long can the other stand?

Notes:

[ 1 ] The collected edition of Trans Terra has yet to be released.

[ 2 ] This is distinct from accelerationism.

[ 3 ] See Mark Fisher’s Exiting the Vampire Castle.

[ 4 ] Sometimes also manifested as complaints to managers or bosses in order to cause economic damage to the “canceled” person.

[ 5 ] It should be mentioned that the term “cancel culture” is controversial. It’s ontological status is generally questioned by the agents that perform the “cancelling.”

Social Media is a Web2 technology, and as such, it is seen by many as something new and unprecedented and by others as a simple, linear intensification of Web1 (the original internet). Initially, Social Media was hailed for its potential as a tool against authoritarian regimes. Who remembers that the Arab Spring was hailed as a beautifu Twitter Revolution? Today, Twitter Revolution bring connotations of “dark internet,” or “misinformation.” It is now viewed with more suspicion. Why is that? A case has been made (and more on this in future posts) that Social Media (as instantiated in the Web2 context) has achieved its true form. In form, it most resembles the Stasi citizen spying program developed by the East German Communist regime. It weaponized daily social interactions and created incentives for citizens to “keep tab”s on each other.

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Adalbert Arcane

February 8, 2022February 8, 2022

Doctor Zero 1-5 (1988)

By DG Chichester, Margaret Clark. Art by Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz.

Art by Bill Sienkiewicz (left), Kevin Nowlan (right)

Manufacturing Superheroes

Doctor Zero [ 1 ] is just one series in an interlocked line of comics, called Shadowline. It’s a bit difficult to understand what’s going on in the first issue. The story follows several disparate events, a US bombing raid in Libya, nuclear terrorists on the Empire State Building, a missile attack on World Economic Forum in Davos. The common thread is Doctor Zero, who seems to be orchestrating the events from behind the scenes. He sets the wheels in motion, only to show up—last minute—and save the day. In a way, this is the most obvious way to be a superhero in the world. The idea of ‘patrolling’ the streets seems impossible. How do you patrol the streets of a city of millions? Even the police can’t keep up! By manufacturing events in advance, Doctor Zero can easily ‘superhero’ them. He knows what’s coming, and he prepares, not only for the event but the media frenzy that follows.

Mysterious Doctor

He’s got all the trappings of a superhero: costume and powers; but Doc Zero seems to have an agenda all his own. Being a superhero seems to be part of some kind of nefarious plan he’s been concocting from the ‘shadows.’ Apparently, he, and ones like him, have been living in the shadows for a long time. They appear to be a parallel race of humans that have a variety of powers; sort of like Marvel’s mutants or Inhumans. Anyway, as Doc Zero is engineering another superhero event in Africa, he is ambushed by St. George—another one of these shadow beings. Doc Zero kills St. George and appears to suck out her energy. Maybe he’s an energy vampire? Hard to tell. We’ll have to find out in the next issue.

Divine Intervention

As the series continues, Doc Zero is revealed to be an immortal (or at least very ancient) roaming the planet since before humanity evolved. In fact, in one caption, he says he walked on Gondwana, which would make him several hundred million years old(!!!). Maybe ‘zero’ means he’s the oldest of the Shadowline beings? Are his Machiavellian machinations some kind of god-like need to intervene in human affairs? Humans need saving, for they know not what we do. These kinds of ruminations are frequent with Doc Zero. He clearly has a god complex.

Occasionally there are hints of something else. For example, Doc Zero also swims with dolphins. He seems to be a good friend of dolphin-kind, who, according to him, “flaunt their abilities openly.” What does that mean? No explanation. Of the dolphins, he says, “I’ve reminded them of my offer to take them with me when I go…” Go where? Is Doc Zero, and by extension, all Shadowline characters, alien? Or is this just another way to play with his godhood? It’s never explained in the five issues I read.

Questions

Art by Denys Cowan is awesome. These pages look a bit like his work in The Question, on which he was working at the same time. In fact, Doc Zero is a dead ringer for Vic Sage. The whole package seems to be lifted from DC Comics. DC had a number of titles packaged in a similar way: premium paper, painted covers by Bill Sienkiewicz, and mature content inside. The Question, The Shadow, etc. [ 2 ] In other words, The Shadowline books appear to be conceptualized around the successes DC was having with anti-heroes and ‘real-world’ superheroes. In a way, this is also a more mature-readers parallel to Marvel’s New Universe, which strived towards more “realistic” stories. New Universe was a conscious effort to start a “new” Marvel superhero universe, but with one extra constraint: everything that happened in New Universe became ‘real, and unchanging history.’ It was a new Marvel universe, but with consistency and constrained by ‘reality’ in a way that the main Marvel Universe never was. [ 3 ]

Dream Team

All issues (except #5) are drawn by Denys Cowan and inked by Bill Sienkiewicz. Each issue has a different cover artist. Apparently, Shadowline used the same cover artist across the line each month. It gave the titles a nice visual unity on the stands.

As mentioned above, Cowan and Sienkiewicz were also working together on The Question at the same time. Through this ongoing collaboration, they developed a strong rapport. The finishes on Cowan’s art are really remarkable. Sienkiewicz zeroes in on the strongest parts of the image unerringly. His black spotting is key. Once the basic blacks are spotted, and composition is secure, the rest can be whatever flights of fancy he deems right for the moment. He just goes balls out using all kinds of tools and techniques with occasional odd choices. A messy perfection that never disrespects Cowan’s pencils.

Just look at that weird white-out mustache on the last panel of the left side of the spread!

NOTES:

[ 1 ] A version of this post originally appeared on the Ink Slingers Tumblr. It has been re-edited and slightly expanded.

[ 2 ] Eventually these various mature readers-oriented efforts would coalesce into DC’s Vertigo imprint in 1993.

[ 3 ] It’s not a coincidence that New Universe began during the time of narrative “crisis” in both Marvel & DC fictional Universes. The “white event” that instantiates the New Universe can be seen as an emanation from the Crisis of Infinite Earths or Secret Wars. It was a spark that reboots reality and sets a new consistent Universe consistent with rules first outlined in Omniverse magazine. Big event series like Crisis of Infinite Earths attempted to reboot the massive inconsistent superhero histories that accrued over decades. New Universe was doing the same thing but from scratch.

February 5, 2022February 5, 2022

Frank Santoro on Beta Testing The Ongoing Apocalypse

This is a blast from the past. I was organizing some old links and this jumped out immediately! It’s an old ComicComics (who also misses ComicsComics?) post written by Frank Santoro. My comics at the time were appearing in the MOME anthology published by Fantagraphics. Frank’s take on my comics was an important and eye-opening moment for me. As I’m posting Adalbert Arcane’s notes to the new edition, it was fun to revisit this take. The post predates (by a few years) the first collected edition of Beta Testing the Apocalypse.

Frank has a fun no-nonsense writing style. A few snippets:

“This isn’t a review or anything that attempts to cast a truly critical eye on the comics work of Tom Kaczynski. It’s more of an appreciation. For me, Tom’s work is an oasis in the desert. And the desert is contemporary alternative comics. I find 80% of today’s alt-comics poorly constructed — a veritable colony of lean-to shacks that could be blown over in a strong wind. In contrast, Tom K builds comics that could be likened to a brick house. These are solid comics. Is it any surprise that many of his stories have to do with architecture or that he went to architecture school?”

[…]

I feel firmly rooted in Tom’s stories. I understand where the characters are, where I am as a reader. Never a bottle-necked area of the page or spread. It’s all very clear and airy, like walking through some Beaux-Arts 19th century library building. There are clear sight lines and strong centers on every page.

On 100,000 Miles:

The “Highway Story” (100,000 miles) is interesting because it balances a certain sense of movement along with a realistic, believable sense of scale. Cars packed on a highway in slow motion, car crashes, cars lined up in a parking lot. Close-ups of the protagonist in his car and long shots of endless highway ribbons. It’s a short story, maybe only 8 or 9 pages—yet within the first couple pages a world is defined by the landscape itself.

On 976 sq ft:

The “Condo Story” (976 sq ft) in contrast is less about balancing movement & scale as it is about scale itself. It opens with a couple on a rooftop looking down on to the street where a woman is walking a dog. So immediately here is the set-up: Seeing the world, or more specifically a neighborhood as a scale model. There is also a wonderful transition where the condo in real life fades into an architectural scale model of the same building.

On Million Year Boom:

The “Corporation Story” (Million Year Boom). I can clearly see in my mind how perspectives & sightlines carry the reader across panels and the spreads of this story. There are very strong “horizontals” in this story (almost in counterpoint to the strong “verticals” present in the “condo story”). The corporate headquarters is low & wide, and the page compositions are tailored to convey the sense of open yet contained space. There’s a great scene when the protagonist dives into a long rectangular pool that spans two panels.

On Influences:

I really enjoy his writing and drawing. He definitely owes a debt to the works of J.G. Ballard and Daniel Clowes. This is not a bad thing. Ballard was a surgeon with his words and the same could be said for Clowes with his drawing. Kaczynski has incorporated both masters’ approaches into his own work in a way that I find inspirational. He went through his influences and came out on the other side with something new, something his own. Like some hauntingly familiar “house style,” the approach fits the subject matter like a glove.

Read the full post by Frank Santoro

I can’t overemphasize how personally important this post was back when I was working on these stories for MOME. It’s rare when you find a reader that looks at your works this closely and just groks the vibe. Frank zeroes in on several sequences and moments that I agonized over. To have a reader unpack the structure of the comics with such precision was (and still is) personally very gratifying and gave me the oxygen to keep working on this material. I don’t know if I ever said thank you? Thank you, Frank!

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January 31, 2022January 31, 2022

36th Chamber of Commerce in A Batalha

I should’ve posted this ages ago. My 36th Chamber of Commerce story was translated into Portuguese and featured in the A Batalha newspaper. A Batalha is Portugal’s oldest anarchist newspaper (the original version was established in 1919) and a fitting place for the story. It was an honor to be included and very cool to see my work translated into Portuguese for the first time.

36th Chamber of Commerce originally ran as an 8-page story in World War III (B&W), and in Cartoon Dialectics #1 (with spot color). The A Batalha version had to be reformatted into a larger newspaper format and ended up with three oversized pages.

A Batalha was nicely put together. There were other comics in there and they had nice illustrations. You don’t know how much you miss illustrations from magazines and newspapers until you open one up with lots of them inside.

Here are some pics of 36ª Câmara do Comércio in A Batalha. Special thanks to Chili Com Carne for making this possible!

January 30, 2022February 15, 2022

Adalbert Arcane’s Notes and Theories: 100,000 MILES

Introduction

We begin a new series of guest posts from Adalbert Arcane, the writer of Notes & Theories section of the new edition of Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse (BTTOA). The story covered is the first in the BTTOA cycle. This is the story that launched this project in the first place.

Who is Adalbert Arcane? Adalbert Arcane is a noted psychogeographer and the co-founder (with Tom Kaczynski) of Omniversity. He has an honorary fellow at OPA (Office for Psycho-Architecture).

Notes & Theories: 100,000 MILES

100,000 Miles by Tom Kaczynski page 1 — **100,000 Miles**, page 1

AOL / TW

The author (Tom Kaczynski) claims personal events inspired this story. The details are sketchy, but some information can be pieced together from various infrequent interviews. The author did live in the Washington, DC area at the time of the creation of this story. He claims his commute to his job (when he was employed on a secret prototyping division of AOL/TimeWarner (AOL/TW) headquartered near the Dulles airport) was approximately 45 minutes each way. This is plausible as traffic in the DC/Virginia tech corridor is notorious.

The imagery of the comic resembles the freeway edgelands of the Herndon/Reston/Sterling suburban sprawl one would have to traverse to reach the AOL/TW HQ.

100,000 Miles, page 6, panel 1 by Tom Kaczynski — **100,000 Miles**, page 6, panel 1

Ballard

J.G. Ballard’s car novels influenced 100,000 Miles [1]. The author makes this explicit on the page (see p. 14, panel 1). This author wears his influences on the sleeve.

Ballard’s Crash! and Concrete Island explore the psycho-sexual relationship between vehicles and drivers. Cars’ sleek chassis and leather barely conceal their latent deep pathology and violence. Drivers enter into a primitive hypnotic state as they begin to physically merge and identify with their vehicles. Violent collisions are moments of truth. The moment of the crash results in an erotic merger of steel, leather, and flesh [2].

In 100,000 Miles, the car is ubiquitous, commonplace, and tame. The Ballardian charge has already dissipated [3].

The protagonist drives aimlessly, trying to avoid work. The drive is a tedious and uneventful background that serves as a blank canvas for rumination and reverie. Is it a deliberate counterpoint to Debord’s Derivé, where a flaneur traverses the city in rapid succession of ambiances? The car is a sensory deprivation chamber—a theme that the author returns to repeatedly (see Hotel Silencio, Million Year Boom, and Music for Neanderthals)—floating through a generic suburban wasteland. Occasionally the Real bursts through accidents and traffic jams. Like in Goddard’s Weekend, the traffic jam and the accident reveal the occulted meaning beneath the freeway concrete.

Break With the Past

This story distinctly breaks with the author’s other work (to be collected as Trans Terra, which attempts a sharp social critique in comics form) both formally and narratively. The Beta Testing The Apocalypse (BTTA) project seeds already appear here: obsession with numbered titles, easter eggs that connect each story, sly references to the source material, absurd fictional scenarios, etc.

100,000 Miles, page 7, panel 3 by Tom Kaczynski — **100,000 Miles**, page 7, panel 3

Traffic Jam / Hyperobject

At what point is the traffic jam real, a real object, an entity that has existential status? The author complicates the ontological status of the traffic jam. Sometimes we drive, and traffic seems to flow without delays, but another traffic jam is already forming somewhere ahead of us. Is each traffic jam a distinct entity? Or is the entirety of the automobile fleet simply in various states of the same continuous global traffic jam in various states of territorialization and deterritorialization?

These ideas parallel Timothy Morton’s work on hyperobjects and the contemporaneous work of the Object-Oriented Philosophical clique. OOP proposes novel metaphysics, reevaluates the ontological status of objects, and posits a positive flat ontology (more on this in notes on Million Year Boom).

The now-famous denouement of the infinite traffic jam sets the stage for the ongoing questioning of the ontological status of everyday reality throughout the book. This sequence is likely the genesis of the whole BTTA project.

[1] Originally appeared in Backwards City Review, 2006. First appearance in color: MOME 7, 2007.

[2] Though not explicitly based on Ballard, the Tetsuo, the Iron Man film best visualizes the flesh-machine hybrid.

[3] Ballard himself (as a writer at least) moved on to other libidinal-liminal zones, shopping malls, resorts, etc.

Adalbert Arcane

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January 20, 2022January 28, 2022

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse Update

The dates keep moving on the release of Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse. The release shifted from February to March 15th, 2022.

A few folks asked what will be different about the new edition. Besides being a hardcover, the new edition has a number of differences from the first edition:

A brand new cover (see above).
Three more stories. One previously unpublished.
An introduction by Christopher Brown.
Several pages of notes and theories by Adalbert Arcane.
Expanded Index.

You can order signed copies directly from me on this site:

Preorder Signed Copy Directly From Me

or via Uncivilized Books here:

Preorder From Uncivilized Books

Order the book directly from Fantagraphics here:

Preorder From Fantagraphics

Also available from Amazon, etc.

Amazon.com | bn.com | Bookshop.org

Tom K

December 9, 2021January 10, 2022

What’s So Interesting About Bitcoin Anyway?

I live in the United States of America, but I am not from here. Americans use the Dollar as Money. The Dollar has been a relatively stable currency during the post-WWII world, so most American citizens (myself included) are used to this stability. In many other countries around the world, this is not the case.

Crisis

I grew up in the 70s and 80s Communist Poland. It was a different world. During the early 70s, the country was relatively prosperous due to foreign debt-fueled “New Development Strategy.” This ground to a halt during the 1973-74 Oil Crisis, which led to massive inflation, spiking the prices of consumer goods in Poland. The Government softened some of the impacts through additional borrowing and food price controls. Economic growth tanked by the end of the decade.

The 80s began with an ongoing economic crisis. Eventually, the Government could no longer keep food prices low. The price hikes resulted in strikes and factory occupations and then erupted into the massive Solidarity movement. A tense struggle and negotiations between the workers and the Government took place under the shadow of possible Soviet intervention. On 13th December 1981, General Jaruzelski declared Martial Law which lasted until July 1983. The economic situation continued to deteriorate. Massive debts incurred in Western currencies and artificially low exchange rates wreaked havoc. Shortages, rationing, brownouts, empty store shelves were common. By 1985 my family had left the country.

Magic Dollar

All this is only a short simplification, of course. I was very young. But I spent much of my time standing in long lines (multiple times in a row) to purchase rare goods like bananas or coffee. I played by candlelight during brownouts, wandered through vast supermarkets with empty shelves, and laughed at frequent sightings of toilet paper armor. One of the most vivid experiences for me was visiting foreign currency stores: a chain of stores known as Pewex carried western goods. It was used by the Government to earn hard western currency. The shelves here were overflowing with candy bars, chewing gum, Coca-cola, Legos, etc. Stepping inside transported me to the threshold of a parallel world. To enter, one only needed the correct currency.

When I first stumbled on Bitcoin[1] during its early days, I didn’t make much of it. I tried mining some on my computer and promptly forgot about it. I stumbled on it again last year while looking for some examples of micropayments. At first, all the negative stories and excessive hype surrounding it put me off. But, a nagging feeling kept bringing me back. It was a portal reminiscent of Pewex. Inside the Bitcoin network, you enter a zone that slips between borders.

When we lived in Germany, my uncle was allowed to visit us in Hamburg. On this trip, he smuggled a gold coin in the heel of his shoe. He exchanged it into German Marks (this was the pre-Euro era). He took the money back to Poland, where it was worth much more due to the debased Polish currency.

When the Soviet system finally collapsed, Poland underwent an economic “shock therapy.” All price controls were lifted resulting in massive devaluation of most assets. When I visited in 1991 the country was shell shocked. Crime was rampant. Everything appeared to be crumbling. US Dollar had a frightening purchasing power relative to the local currency. Most people opted for the Dollar when offered a choice. Money changers were on every corner.

Looking back at my time in Poland, I was obsessed with money. Not money as something to accumulate or spend, but in a more abstract sense. I collected coins and stamps from around the world, and of course, comics. All of these objects acquired a patina of valuable means of exchange. You could trade a duplicate stamp for one you didn’t have, or trade a rarer more valuable one for several other of lesser value to gain a broader more comprehensive collection. It was a form of barter. It was something that the adults around me were doing as well. Trading valuable hard-to-obtain items like western cigarettes, or bottles of vodka for essential goods and services. I sometimes drew fake treasure maps. I rarely imagined gold as the treasure. Most of the time I imagined a cache of US Dollars where treasure should be found. With the Dollars, I’d have the keys to the Pewex universe.

This is a long-winded way to say that we take our money for granted. We rarely think about how it comes into being, how much it is worth, and how it circulates. Bitcoin is different from our everyday Money. It is open-source Money issued outside the purview of governments. In the past, gold played a similar role. Most Money derived its value from gold or silver. Today many believe Bitcoin is the new gold. But, it is Bitcoin’s ‘outsideness’ quality that attracts me the most.

Many economists proposed similar monetary ‘outsider’ systems. For example, Friedrich Hayek thought Money should exist outside the direct control of the state. Another well-known economist, Karl Marx, wanted to demolish the state to ensure that ‘the government of men gives way to the administration of things.’ Another Marxist philosopher Althusser elaborated on this insight:

the only way to save communism was to entirely reject the ‘metaphysics of the subject’ by embracing the idea that history administers itself without any help from humans, that it is a ‘subjectless process.’
Mark Alizart’s Cryptocommunism (Theory Redux) (p. 19). Wiley.

Althusser is said to have been inspired by feedback loops in cybernetic systems. All these ideas begin to look a lot like Bitcoin with its decentralized network, self-adjustable hash rate, and stable monetary issuance.

What about all the negative stories surrounding Bitcoin?

excessive power usage
it’s a Ponzi scheme
it’s worthless
only criminals use it
it’s a speculative gambling casino
etc.

These concerns are valid, and I will explore them in future posts and comics. But, I hope I am getting closer to showing that Bitcoin is more interesting than that. I see it as an avatar—imperfect to be sure—a prefiguration of something else: a global synthetic store of economic value. Something like it has never existed before. What kind of a world does something like that bring about? What happens to Fiat Money in that kind of world? What happens to traditional investment instruments like land or stocks? Like in my native Poland in the 80s, what happens to countries where the currency loses all value? What happens in times of social and economic turmoil? What if these people now have access to this global synthetic economic store of value?

I plan to regularly release essays and comics that deal with all the different ideas and philosophies that emanate from Bitcoin. I want to examine the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Bitcoin network. From the utopian promises to the seamy underbelly. If that sounds interesting, sign up for my newsletter. The form on the top right of this blog >>>

NOTES:

[1] I view “Bitcoin” as a larger ecosystem that includes various Bitcoin forks. I will mostly focus on the three best-known ones: BTC, BSV, BCH.

March 26, 2021March 26, 2021

Uncivilized Territories

Gabrielle Bell and I started a podcast, Uncivilized Territories. Comics are the core subject, but we will often detour into broader cultural territories. This one is about comics, what comics can do for philosophy and the dangers of nostalgia. Future episodes will be on magick, domestication of dogs and humans, comics of Olivier Schrauwen, astral projection, and much more. Two cartoonists exploring uncivilized territories… episode one below.

Magical Devices – Uncivilized Territories

Gabrielle and Tom K are enchanted by magic. The discussion begins with a reading of S.S.O.T.B.M.E. by Ramsey Dukes. Through the alchemical power of conversation, the topic spawns a multifaceted hydra of detours and blind alleys. The theory of star seeds, magic vs. science vs. art, the internet police state, the magic of NFTs and Bitcoin. Comics are in there too… and so much more! Gabrielle Bell's Patreon | Gabrielle's Books Tom's blog TransAtlantis I Tom's Books | Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse Uncivilized Books.

Stay tuned for more episodes every two weeks!

November 9, 2020November 9, 2020

Man / God | Aesthetic Education

Aesthetic Education | 002 | Man / God

November 8, 2020November 8, 2020

Tom Kaczynski in Conversation with Noah Van Sciver

A couple of days ago I had the pleasure of chatting with Noah Van Sciver. We hit lots of topics, Uncivilized Books, publishing, comics, reminiscences, etc. I also get to hype some upcoming projects including Cartoon Dialectics, I Nina by Daniel Chmielewski & Olga Tokarczuk, and a new edition of Beta Testing the Apocalypse!

Artist, illustrator, and publisher of Uncivilized Books, Tom Kaczynski, and I have a conversation about drawing and publishing comics during these weird times. Tom’s newly reinvigorated series Cartoon Dialectics has been sweeping the small comics scene like a wildfire.

Also discussed: science fiction as the literary fiction of today, Polish comics, the Critical Cartoon series, Bruno Schulz, and much more!

Most importantly the video features my first haircut since the onset of COVID… a small 2020 victory. Enjoy!

October 10, 2020October 10, 2020

Cartoon Dialectics 2: Apocalypse Is The Suburb Of Utopia

The new issue of Cartoon Dialectics is almost here! We were able to score a leftover batch of Pantone 804 fluorescent ink for the cover! It should be the perfect radioactive glow for the nihilistic content inside!

Table of contents:

Cover
Your Mind is a Vast Landscape by Adalbert Arcane. New spatial analysis of the mind and the comics medium. Co-presented by Omniversity. Illustrated Mind-Scape by Tom Kaczynski.
Trans Terra Continues: The End of the World and the Typical Post Apocalyptic Scenario
Eschatological Book Club with Ransom Strange
Trans Terra Continues: The Ignoble End of Igloo City
Extinction Level Events: We Are Elementals
Trans Terra Continues: Continent Wrecked on a Mysterious Island
Aesthetic Education: Man / God
Indicia: Language as World
Uncivilized Books Paid Advertising + Mechanics of Enjoyment
Back Cover Motto: Apocalypse Is The Suburb of Utopia and A New Logos For The Anthropocene

Preorder Cartoon Dialectics 2

The first 200 orders get a signed print. The first 50 get print + sticker!

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020

Holy Ressentiment

Starting new regular comic strip feature: Aesthetic Education. It’s loosely inspired by recent readings of Schiller and Nietzsche. Serious, but funny.