Sidewalks: friends of humanity. But what do they want?

Everywhere there are sidewalks-- and they are beloved. But what are the ideas behind sidewalks, what do they desire? This is not a joke this is a very serious philosophical essay, sit-up straight.

Having written a book on dialectical egoism and because I spend lots of time being a fucking genius philosopher I have spent much time thinking about the force of will within inanimate objects and institutions, and the way that will creates force prior to our reflection upon it. Objectively present egoic force in the world is present before we reflect on that force consciously, which is to say, before it is in what would be called the conscious ego. Ego thus must be looked at as a force, and something which is not simply our reflection upon reality. Husserl describes the Ego as something which is created upon reflection of lived experience, a second movement, much like Hegel’s idea of will being turned on itself to form the subject.

I want to invite you into the ego journey of imperfect accuracy, imperfect in that what is created can be repurposed, and often functions differently than the creator intended, but is none the less an objectively present force. The force is always ambiguous due to its surplus of reasons for existence, its funtions, and its ability to be repurposed. Objects have forces of ideas within them before we reflect on them due to the intent of their creation.

There is an egoic force in the world which exists prior to your reflection on the world, there is the cumulative creation of all of humanity. This force is imperfect as it can be radically challenged and deterritorialized. In a Palestinian warzone, the street is no longer a street when there is conflict; it is a death zone, as the Israeli Defense Forces trained on Deleuze and Guattari know. It doesn’t matter much a street used to be a street when it has been repurposed, which is to say deterritorialized and reterritorialized into killing zone.

After the fighting, the organization or government who originally wanted a street may look at what is left, and see that there has in fact, been a material sidewalk created, more so than it was a killing zone. It was reflected upon as a killing zone, but there is more so, imperfectly, material there for a street. The philosophical posit of the street still lives on materially!

So what is a sidewalk? Let’s get to the sexy topic of the day: sidewalks; what they want, and what gets them going.

Objective egoic force in the world exists as territory-for-the-idea, and there is a lot of territory dedicated to sidewalks. In any given city, there seems to be more territory dedicated to sidewalks than to any particular political party. How much physical territory which is designed to bring the public together is also dedicated to buying commodities? These are the questions we can ask when we look at material as egoic force, as a philosophical posit to regulate the negative force of human will. Got that? Will is negative, the creation is positive. The will can challenge the posit on a sidewalk and make it a space to blow balloon animals. But ultimately, there is a lot more objectively sidewalk space dedicated to walking, created for the purpose of walking. But what is walking? Sidewalks don’t walk themselves.

When we see what sidewalks can and can’t do, the object of human creativity comes fully into view. The sidewalk does not desire, but rather lays a groundwork for what can happen next. Husserl still lives, reflection still plays a significant role. Thus we gain unknown treasures when we investigate the dimension of material ego in the world, not necessarily to see the ego, but to see what the remainders exist.

Sidewalks, or pavement areas, posit the idea of walking. Dialectically, their absence by a road suggests there is nothing to see on foot in an area, which is to say a de facto forbidden zone is created in the world. If you are thinking of an activity to do, despite your lack of integration of walking with your identity, might go out of your door and walk on one of these philosophical posits.

How much do you identify with eating? There is certainly a lot of territory dedicated to that in the world, restaurants and grocery stores. Why do you identify as an anarchist or socialist, there is only on bookshop in town. There is only one section on the shelf. There was only one slip of paper on that ballot that said “Bernie.”

Ok, this is where interpersonal interactions come in. You can use a church to hold an International Workers of the World meeting. You can organize in places not meant for it. Sidewalks are all to happy to function this way. No one will die for the purity of walking on the sidewalk (although a woman did jump in front of me to stop me from using one of those electric scooters on one once, but I just went around her, she was upset, but entirely to idealistic about my will to deterritorialize the sidewalk).

Through egoism we see that a church is never only a church. A church is also a place for organizational seriousness, potentially. We can register that upon reflection and extend that dimension of church with human creativity.

Back to sidewalks, you can see the problem with trying to do such a thing with a sidewalk. There are much more sidewalks than churches. Much more of the world is dedicated to walking than to God or the organizational seriousness of religion.

Sidewalks want nothing, and yet they rule us quantitatively with their presence. Curious— makes us all look kind of sad with all our efforts to actualize ideas in the world, doesn’t it?

A good capitalist psyop would be to associate your product with a sidewalk subliminally maybe, but the sidewalk would always take over I imagine. Could your product really be that great to make a dent in the idea of connecting your home to the rest of your town via bipedal moving action adapter ports, which is to say, to influence and associate itself with the glory of walking?

I think it probably would be very difficult to overcome the quantitative largess of the state-backed, “big walking” sidewalk lobby. That’s silly isn’t it. Why? Because it needs no lobby, it is just universally agreed upon, like oxygen.

Just try to be anti-walking. One, you are up against the necessity of exercise, but secondly, you are up against the quantitative power of sidewalks. They are everywhere, exerting their material influence.

Sidewalks don’t want anything, yet they egoically dominate anyway. Something to consider when trying to psychologically analyze someone or some organization?

I’d say, “yes.”