[Nettime-bold] camouflaging desire

["ryan griffis" <ryang@spiritone.com>]

Camouflaging Desire

Ecological catastrophes are only terrifying for civilians.
Paul Virilio, Popular Defense & Ecological Struggles, 1978 (1990 trans.
Semiotext(e))

You¹re going to feel the impact no matter what, you¹re going to have to
adapt.
Michael MacCracken, ex Director of the US Committee on Climate Change, quote
in the Oregonian
2/19/01.

The second statement above, made by a US official recently, is in reference
to the inevitability, in
the minds of most accredited scientists, of global warming and the
far-reaching implications it will
have on human life. Reading Mr. MacCracken¹s warning together with the
statement by Paul Virilio,
regarding the difference in perception of environmental danger between the
military and the civilian
public, brings up some interesting, indeed important, questions regarding
the current ecological
crisis and the manner in which it has been addressed by different groups
within the US. Anyone
who is the least bit aware of the environmental movement, as it has existed
in this country since
the late 1960s, must be aware of the heated controversy surrounding just
what the crisis is and
how to address it.

One way of interpreting the cautionary assertion by Mr. MacCracken is to
read it as speaking to not
just the subjective individual that will undoubtedly have to endure massive
environmental changes,
but also to the current political economy within the US, one quickly moving
towards the dissolution
of state/nationalist government in favor of economic imperative. A situation
that is becoming
increasingly intolerant of civic discourse about the ecological, political,
and economic control of
natural resources.

The words can be taken as a warning to all of humanity from prophetic
scientists, but they can also
be read as a threat from oppressed peoples to the dominant power system ­ a
structural system
that is no less fragile under the weight of the disorder environmental
catastrophe can bring. It can
also be said that such a demand sounds like the dominating authority of
management issuing
orders of compliance to the slow, fleshy bodies of labor ­ a demand made
necessary by the need
for increased human productivity in the face of hyper-speed information
technologies. This reading
is indeed possible and relevant, and the ideology behind such demands needs
to be visualized and
spoken, as do their consequences.

The power to communicate is all too often not empowering to ³the worker.²
The e-conomy, the so
called information age, is not completely virtual, nor can it ever be. Human
destruction is
inextricably linked to environmental destruction, as Marx and Engels
asserted over a century ago.

Crises always drive adaptation and innovation, the alternative is usually
annihilation. Capitalism has
proven extremely resilient, surviving democratic ideals, isolationism,
economic depression, and the
most blatant contradictions. The old adage about what doesn¹t kill you, only
makes you stronger,
could have been written in specific reference to capitalism.

With the rise of technology, especially in the realm of information
communications and
management, many have made utopic claims of inevitably growing freedom due
to the ease of
access to information. So far, this democratization of information has
fallen far short of such
claims, rather living up to its moniker as the ³information superhighway,²
complete with broken
down vehicles, hitchhikers, roadside debris, and the overbearing presence of
massive commercial
vehicles transporting market commodities. And much like its analog
counterpart, little real
development of mass transit.

Brutality is still tolerated in the extreme, even though we have ³real-time²
digital images and
reports. There is something resistant to resistance in our mundane,
seemingly inconsequential,
daily lives. We resist the uncertainty of democracy for the safety of a
militarized domestic sphere,
despite (or because of) the brutality inflicted upon those who oppose the
repressive order, or are
simply ³other² to that order. We resist the change required to end the
degradation of the ecological
sphere, a sphere that includes ourselves, for the (perceived) ease and
comfort of conspicuous
consumption, despite our knowledge of the probable dire consequences. What
is it that all these
battles are about; what will determine society¹s strategy of adaptation ?
The answer is as complex
as it is inescapable. Somewhere, barely perceptible upon that facade of
order and comfort is a
small, but unavoidable blemish, a hole really, that is covered by a shiny,
translucent patch. Living
just underneath the thick, yet unraveling, patch of rationality is a
microscopic, virus-like organism
that lives off of the undone threads ­ Desire.
artofficial construction media
http://www.artofficial-online.com


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