What are Gears and Sprockets?
The Sprockets
The Gears
Sprockets and Gears…
Gears and sprockets are kinds of concepts that invent their own meaning. A single word or a phrase is then pitched across a mind hooking up disparate ideas and forming a bag a or orientating or dizzyingly thoughts or beliefs. This technique is a way we manage modernity, in two of its most virulent aspects: Firstly it is a way to extend the old to manage the one; And secondly, and often more importantly it is a way to make sure a very simple idea or bundle of belief or prejudices triumph over all others, in a world of babble voices; The Gear o Sprocket triumph in this latter regard be providing an index system or automatic buzz word within which numerous, often distinct voices, belies, observation and thoughts can be hooked and made to resonate one into the other. The Gear or Sprocket is the lazy thought of the politician or the Hack or the Guy in the stream, who wants nice simple terms than appear to make thought both enjoyable and not too difficult.
A good gear or sprocket will the work by allowing it user to talk of many levels at once, and as if they where the one level. On sets up a reassuring contamination between things that are rather distinct, and allow oneself both to say what would otherwise be unsay able (o could not be said politely), but also to ‘solve problems that might appear intractable This move is not necessarily malevolent or even daffy: A good Sprocket like energy, really doe describe something real about not just the physical world, but also human relations (this group has a real energy) or the body (the Body energy), and also the deity of stone circles and the batty of music. All these elements are real enough, and quite possibly can b best grasped by metaphor. Energy in itself I the a fine tool to such understanding. And yet, the problem comes of course when on the one hand the metaphoric element is lost here. And on the other it is lost in the name of something that far more real if intangible), physical energy itself. To borrow the mysterious side of physical energy (its invisible presence, it eternity, and power to transmute), is well and good, but then to mistake this metaphor or a reality, an start to really believing in body energy or emotional energy as I it were akin to the physical variety is another. The problem here is not not that this is an error as such. It might not be (the factor such as this is rather improvable when all is said and done). The problem is rather that it creates a membrane or wrapping of utter laziness – an illusion of solution, that the simply allows on to assume these elements are linked or looped into each other. One stars then to create thoughts that appeal or empty a looping together in the name of energy, these very separate elements. At which point (to follow my own analogy here) the sprocket starts to spin, and gather a power of its own. To talk of energy is to be talking in many levels, and hop around between them, It becomes no longer entirely straight forward or at all simple, and modern language is born.
Moreover this language is all to frequently born to fit a specific task o role. Take the current whirling sprocket of property. We are currently being sold a pup in relation to property. The old model which tied individuals to portion of land and matter has one great advantage – it was easy to monitor and control. Individuals could see and label what was there, and he state could agree or disagree as it saw fit. What was more the model cold be extended (via patents) to include ideas and works of art. Property as everything or anything: It stakes out a way of asserting individuality win the whirling term of matter. The problem comes when this model is extended into the internet. The internet actually buggers up this model, it becomes no longer clear exactly who owns (or originates) what. The become caught then in a globalization of what be won. We are all pirates together, owning tunes or ideas en mass, and asserting our right in the name of a greater whole.
The problem is that modern sates and capitalism gave define themselves in relation to property and the power over it they claim. There response is to desperately and at all levels try to extend the notion of property into the internet (where I is not native). They do this by manufacturing endless paranoia about identity theft, so we are cautious about sharing; though a few high status scalps and trials; via buggerin up he software, so that it reinvents property but imposing false limits on what can be achieved, and through small scale monitoring of individuals and their actions. In short they counter by creating a sprocket of identity which demands that we protect ourselves by asserting our rights, and so our property in a world beyond either. But also in creating the gear of Property a gear which takes the idea of a portion of something some world real or imagine that needs to be protected, and then takes any and every measure necessary t protect it. This process then gathering its own power. Once the measures to enforce property have been imposed and the inter net warped (just as sure as China is warping its internet world), the property feeds of the result, using the information it gathers and the protests to bolster its own position as part of the explication of things. Language is then born in the blood and fire of conflict; It is born to create ideas be to embody themselves within the battle to extend meaning, to world which might something quit different from what we would like.
The sprocket or Gear operate as the modern unit for language. The create words that in confidently parcelling up a portion of reality in a single conjunction, become useful and real. The become something to be looked for in the world, something experience ought to connive with, something in whose presence one is. The sprocket or gear does not then merely create a fixed reality, a one of conjunction: But also once fixed that conjoining goes of to shove for itself and through itself; becomes a reality in its own and of its own.
Sprocket and Gear differ then n the approach. Te Gear is an idea with legs. A single spinning disc, an initial phrase or image in then spun into whatever happens, and finds a meaning in that spinning. The game is then to create a phrase that demands meanings of itself own, and more than that I quite capable of going out and finding them, Take that awful phrase used by the current Gear merchants, the UK Conservative party. They talk in relation to the electorate of not ‘sealing the deal’. This is a metaphor for the fact that actually no one wants Cameron to win the election. He has very little trapping of a leader and all the hallmarks of a slick school bully, able to use marketing expertise to become over promoted. And yet unpopular as he is, he is more popular than brown. It is simply unimaginable that Brown and his various cronies win the next election. Cameron is then ahead in the polls, and yet without this conveying any enthusiasm or desire that he should govern. This apathy is then spun in the idea of ‘sealing the deal’. A short hand that effectively transmutes the way this situating is understood, It becomes up to the Tories to make themselves genuinely popular (or not), and up to Labour to undo that popularity. The phrase then carries within it a political program, for each party to follow. The media (being also party to the awful phrase)are offered a cheap and easy way to understand the affair, and bingo, we are away in the ‘sealing the deal all comers’ takes.
A Sprocket by contrast in a patchwork of different idea which a single word, or phrase hooks together. Take the Sprocket Teenager. Immediately it said very different images flit into does mind, and are present. To talk of teenagers becomes to talk of many things, and o speak of then at the same time, and through the same word: It is to talk of fun and misery, threat and jealousy, alcohol ad marketing, a stage we are all suck at, and ye also fear… A Powerful sprocket uses the wizardry of language to create an alchemy of way to say things, and an index of new possibilities of things to say.
Both Gears and Sprockets might very easily be characterized as lazy thoughts of an illiterate age used to the constant babble of the media and the pap it gives to the world. This philosophical prejudice s no doubt true. And yet it is even true that it this worlds with its is shifting thoughts and shattered ideas tat is currently the one that is ours to inhabit. It makes then no sense simply withdraw into the elite haze of philosophical concept and smugness. It is better by far to go into things, and thoughts, deconstructing here, reposition there in the hope (perhaps the vain one) that it can alleviate the problems mental laziness forge. And I would hope that such a to be might allow those caught in the maze of gears and sprockets some understanding f how the are thinking and why; and so give them new ways to think, and through that, who knows? Other ways to be.
A pious dream perhaps but what else ought philosophy to be?
