Project.
As we continue to move through time and space in what has come to be defined as “late” capitalism, I have come to find my question: what comes next? Post-capitalism is a concept first defined by Paul Mason, but explored by countless thinkers and writers in a quest to determine what might come after this period.
Me? I have my own ideas. I think if we are searching for a conceivable transition to what might follow this period of time marked by extreme economic instability and divergence, we should turn to human-scaled, community-focused, technologically-appropriate solutions to ensure the basic needs of all are met in dignified and equitable ways. I think this means that we should focus our efforts on building out new infrastructure that becomes to naturally inclusive that we render the forces of the capitalist system useless.
How might this happen? Honestly, I don’t know. I have more questions that answers. But as I continue to move through these questions, possible pathways emerge that converge on a few different foci.
- We need to reprogram and reorient our internal understanding of what it means to live in reciprocal community with each other and the natural world.
- We need to dream together to find localized solutions to complex problems to ensure that everyone has their basic needs met.
- We need to formalize pathways that work so that they can be extended and expanded upon by others.
So many people are doing this work right now, but even more are fighting to hold the systems in place. Those who are dreaming of something new and better will find themselves constantly swimming upstream, and so we need spaces to come together, to learn together, and to build together. My hope is to provide a space to do this work.
Lore.
Sometimes around 2001, I created the online handle subsomatic. At the time, I was in the early days of my career as a web designer and I wanted to have a space online to be creative. I had been blogging for a few years under different names so I shifted the blog to a new domain name and created new layouts every few months. The creative expression of web design is something that I’ve lost through corporatization and web standards – I remember many nights staying up too late (too early?) after having been struck with a new layout idea to create. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. (If you’re so inclined, the wayback machine has a partial catalog of designs and posts from subsomatic.com dating back to 2002).
Of course, all this was long before “somatic” was a common term. I had pulled the word from a Prodigy song and just wondered what the word meant:
somatic
sō-măt′ĭk
adjective
- Of, relating to, or affecting the body, especially as distinguished from a body part, the mind, or the environment; corporeal or physical.
- Of or relating to the wall of the body cavity, especially as distinguished from the head, limbs, or viscera.
- Of or relating to the portion of the vertebrate nervous system that regulates voluntary movement.
Based off this definition then, I believed “subsomatic” to be something that was beneath or below the idea of the somatic self. It was the invisible pieces that affected the body in a less corporeal but nonetheless distinguishable and noticeable way. The term felt spiritual, not in a religious sense but more in a philosophical sense; or that might just have been the way that I felt when I adopted the handle.
While I’m not building new layouts these days, this space continues to be a creative outlet through making, writing, and imagining.