brian carroll on Sat, 16 Apr 2005 06:24:03 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> The New Middle Ages |
> i think you point at a crux, this is the ongoing bet and from my point > of view it seems like even more disciplining eating away even more > personal space, but from the prisoners point of view there is always a > finger you can move and if they immobilize that, well you can still > click your tongue....althussers 'hey you' is now commodified in the > dutch smokingpole [...] it is so strange to me that these two > structural lines are so visible, one towards this selfdisciplining, > and one towards this selfrealization, as if the default has become the > schizophrenic. i wonder about the choices of perspective available in observing these issues and effects, as to me it seems generate something fundamental about a given outcome, or conclusion. the smoking pole thing made me laugh, actually, as i was thinking in terms of revolutionaries and political prisoners and assassinations and such. about the issue of perspective, i had a great teacher once who changed my view of perception/observation as a result of making the case that 'scientific' observation not only means counting, but also being counted, and in including this perspective in one's own analyses. that is, the perceiver is perceived, and thus grounded in the observation by an outside accounting, to an extent. therefore, it is not just 'look over there' at event X, but that the looker at place Y is part of that event X in perceiving it, e.g. from a place and point of view Z. and this is where the universal is more readily sensed about local and particular events, more universal subject. X ---> Y ^ Z the philosophy it is from is part of the nettime archive: http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0104/msg00140.html 'The objective plane is the space of science. It is, above all, a public space, but existentially apart and quite literally Over There. When a person can perceive the world in that plane, (s)he has become a scientist. When a person can perceive him(her)self in that plane, (s)he has become self consciously public, perfectly anonymous and truly modern; -- the voyeur and the scientist's dream. A state constituted about the objective plane is rationalized around anonymity rather than belief. This defines the dilemma of education.' (it would seem to be common sense and yet few arguments get beyond X, usually by editing out points of Y that may challenge thinking, and never even accessing Z... to me it has to do with a question of scale in which logical approaches can effectively limit possibilities, which is reflected in assumptions and contingent reason. there is a paradox of observation, it would seem, that needs to at least be recognized if not accommodated...) as such the 'anonymous' point of view (POV) would be able to be assumed, it could be a smoking pole or executions, in the same questioning, and both have relevance if it is in the realm of Z, where interpretations can co-exist...* it is the basis for the smoking pole, it would seem if it is to include social behaviorism and pressures, by way of some Pavlovian dog-training exercise to humiliate smokers and treat them like dogs, and while this may seem to be a prison it may be considered also of one's own making, at a certain point, that the absurdity is more than just an abstract event, but that it is purposeful to produce some desired outcome. like, lung disease and controlling the environment from events and those who produce them, from another perspective it prisoners make prisoners of others (non-smokers, etc.). whether or not one smokes, in either case there seems to be something shared about the aspect of behavioral manipulation (of a state, say) and its right to pursue this, for its own good, up to a point (ethics, law, morality). it may be for its long- term survival, at one scale, and yet may make some very miserable and uncomfortable and oppressed at another. maybe this is okay, though, actually, at some line in the cosmic sand, in order to change and adapt to change. such as, smoking kills people and costs enormous sums of money in lives, lost productivity, and problems. if the smoking pole is the worst persecution for smokers, they'd be glad they're not committing crimes in Rome, where i recently read they'd throw people in sacks with an angry dog, snake, or ape, and toss them in the sea. standing by a smoking pole may not be the worst option, and subsequent fears are more to do with passive killing neighbors, 'slow motion suicide' of cigarette death-tax. paranoia, fear, persecution may be real for a smoker, or trouble-makers, and to what extent is it based on promotion of fears and issues of security, in certain contexts, or upon taking risks and then getting burned because you lose the bet and have to face the situation. i tend to think it is more likely the latter, and wonder if it is also a sensibility of certain configurations of states of mind, that always 'being safe' is prerequisite to certain activities, that is, they are condoned or even supported by the state, so are sanctioned and in effect, safe to pursue, with some societal insurance against any risk, as guaranteed by the state, e.g., social welfare. one may not drop to the bottom of society if they fail. i wonder if this is a difference between the .EU view and the .US view, as may be reflected in the issue of massive homelessless in relation to societal structures. i.e., fear and security versus risk and reward/failure. my personal sense is that there is something the same in the experience of 'fear' and issues of 'security' yet different philosophies about how risk-taking operates based on different types of cultural configurations. then again, there is something built-into the .US as it operates that basically functions as a mechanism for entrapment- a la the movie Brazil, where a bureaucratic error may set into motion some bug which sets something into motion which can basically terrify people daily, from phone bills to credit cards to taxes to anything, there is a footnote on any event that could be used as a leverage to cause serious consequences for any action. imagine arguing with a telemarketer who files that into a database used by other institutions, and this type of citizen dossier floats about for employment, health, etc. and then one meets the risk-reward bet, and this always is the hidden hand of the state, useful if manipulating. the public state, the private state, whoever has access. or permissions to edit. or become a sales representative. this situation, scenography, seems more towards a scale of general fear and security, tying together identities, travel, background, assessments, histories, employments, allegiances, and how that all jives with... anything in a perceivable or conceivable past/present/future universe. i don't know how real this is to others, though it could be real to some extent where the fear is justified, and the threat even acted upon. though how to measure 'risks' in relation to risking safety of anonymity by going along with systems as they exist, enough not to cause any blips? it may not be possible to avoid this demographic entrapment of data dossiers and extra-legal agendas that may be the norm for how things function, as is, in technobureaucracy. at some level (of scale) it goes from being understandable if absurd to an abstraction inducing fear and insecurities, where changing the behavior of a smoker by manipulations is different in kind from that of thinking in a free society, and legal if uncomfortable actions in some public universe that uses these same observations to ensure that a person's actions fall within the realm of the protected risk-taker, that can be defended against, in the bet. say with a CAE defense, which is more serious than a case of risk-taking that may be more benign, because it is not by default with- out some risk, and the possibility of failing as a result. that is the wager, it is not unwarranted to have to deal with this type of risk if one places themselves in a realm of risk-- everything cannot be protected, made accessible, guaranteed, unless it is basically the same argument being used for security through fear. of changing the way people do things so that they do not do them anymore. now if the (see: pavlov, above, as model for 'training' as education). CAE defense is able to contextualize the 'science' of the events beyond politics, there is a clear reason for doing such experiments. except that science today is not outside or beyond politics (Z place), it is literally 'political science' as with 'political art' and in that arena, it is bloodsport and if you're on the wrong side, you will lose, of course, if that is the scale of affairs- which if it is about ideas that transcend politics, that go into a more public realm of representation, it is at least in the Y- place above, of perceivers and their perceptions, and yet today this may still be where 'science' is ideologically, and its electromagnetic ceiling of subjective universals, though one more jump in scale between this particular and the next more universal general condition would go beyond the paradox of individual perception and allow for views that counter perceivers of the event from all sides, and still distill the principles which could be shown to be the universals, sans the limits of the particular people and politics involved, to protect universal human rights, if muddy, unclear, though against unusual state cruelty. this is a problem with theory that is without consequence for its reality and deference to truth, it is false-risk with insured results, or was. unless the bet is lost to another version or view of things or wholly new sense. language can become the enemy of truth rather easily, unless it is audited, has real costs, and involves risk. the tower of babel was a digital network too, apparently. with all the theory in the world, why is it inexplicable how there are these horrendous situations with events, that if understood with logic and reason and purpose, could not be fairly explained and secure the freedoms and protections based on some common understanding of how things are, how they operate, their limits, truth? i think this is a condition masked by approaches to ideas (and representatives who continue the sophistry) that needs to get real, true, actual, and be able to communicate in shared language that is in a structure that is not limited by individual perspectives and of psychological dispositions that otherwise reign in every media channel and atmosphere, but are not at all 'critical' in observing or acting in the realms conjured, as they are largely shared fictions which offer security through obscurity, and safety from any critical review of the ideas beyond that of the view of the observer or observation that is the event. that is, the drudgery of politics, its own economy. with monopolies of thought, perception, oligarchs and tithing systems, and indoctrination: training. training how to behave, operate, function, succeed, in some metaphysical interaction within abstraction that is largely untrue, unreal, distorted, subjective. one might read this as an indictment against some individual, it is not. it is an environment of a way of interacting as individuals and with systems created by individuals, just as governments, yet it is this more 'self' government that is also part of the problem that is stated: risk and reward, fear and security. there should be more risk allowed and encouraged, actual risk not feigned attempts at institutional radicalism but actual losses as a result, as a goal: that is, in search of more real realities, more true truths, etc. it may be the idea but for all the insularity of sectors of society, it is an inside-job, these issues are not standing at the walls of an artful-society, a last bastion in the stand against tyranny. the tyranny is the institutionalization of an ineffective and dangerous point of view (paradigm) that needs to be 'upgraded' because it is eating its own alive; it is cannibalizing and murdering itself to try to evolve, instead partly imploding sectors in which conflicts are too complex to be dealt with by existing, outdated, insufficient language, logic, reality, and as a result either systems change or there's going to be sacrifices until they are changed. institutions are required to change for this to happen. does anyone hear of any calls for institutional change, or are they largely secure and fearless in their status-quo normality, and are just going to weather this cultural anomaly and steam-ship on towards even bigger and better icebergs? it is not just 'over there' - it is 'over here' that is under equal indictment of criminality, fraud, greed, evil. though is it individuals, people, what 'agency' is really pursuing dangerous ignorance in a ruse for power sharing and institutionalized longevity? if everyone shared the same assumptions, it would not need to be spelled out though it is frequently never spelled out, but exists as an assumption that it does consist only of individuals and groups in some kind of interaction, survival of the fittest technocrats and technocratic systems of operation. the difference being that, outside of the standard interpretation - political-economy and all that - lurks a different leviathan that is not just market, capital, surveillance, bureaucracy, or any number of other things, but a societal machine that is composed of individuals yet the basic 'autonomy' becomes not one of being a human, but of being a robot, the status quo protecting idealized types. alphas, betas, a brave new world of Aldous Huxley which loses agency of humanity in its state of affairs, and replaces 'human goals' with goals of a 'machine state' that, through training or brute force, melds the world in its own utopic image, as it is self-designed. the bureaucrat, even citizen, can become closer in proximity to this state through interactions on a daily level and this vast abstract enigma does not even exist as there are so many other churches to attend to, if christian, if new media, if modern, if web. over there, not here, if it is distant then the mirage and simulations can do their scenographic work on the physiology, making believe, truman- show stageset of the daily life as lived, anon- ymously, autonomously, yet fully jacked-in and making the larger organism function, run, work, adapt, adopt, crush, ... individuals, groups, other states until there is only one such state. Lewis Mumford's view, which this is taken from, was supremely more grounded and objective in the universal sense than anything that arose in the 1990s to do battle with the same events, and it was decades earlier and still ignored for it is conceptual clarification, not further abstraction, of core experiences that are the basis for ideas, and establishing a perspective or philosophy that can address this more universal scale of time, of place, of humans and of the unwieldy abstractions that arose with science, technology, and culture. babel on, like rock on, may someday emblemize the ineffectuality of language-based thinking today, in relation to the sense experiences encountered daily, that there is a gap between rhetoric and reality, and the inability to do things, to get things done that need doing, are evidence of the rift, and the need to shift, to change, so to get another perspective of events, not another view just like any other (infinite, bounded) vantages, but instead a more universal, logical, reasoned vantage, a base from which to then argue ideas in a place of shared assumptions, facts, truth. it is flatland otherwise, in 4D, needing a 5th. the poets are there, the musicians are there, the metaphysicians are there, though what is a necessary solidification of philosophy, a base or groundwork, has yet to be established so to realize that it is not empire but empiricism, that is key to such questions, and possibility. that is, it is not just an individual author or person writing this, but an open authorship, a shared critique that does not cancel out the truth of another with a new views of things, to start everything over from scratch every time. instead it is of a scale and disposition that allows difference, and similarity, that is able to handle paradox, complexity, and what is now lacking: open questioning and risk of failure. i.e. in education, 'institutionalized' learning that transcends training the brain like a dog. the crux would be to place a morality on the systems which are machines, this bureaucracy of technology/technique/techne (Ellul/Mumford). this is why accurate 'science' and objectivity beyond politics is necessary to address these more complex situations, as the machinations will always win in the realm of dodgy dossiers if the issue is an individual versus such an automatic state of affairs (megamachine). who are its individuals who compose this beast? citizens, workers, all contribute to its feeding, clothing, housing, entertainment, and immorality. to function within the bureaucracy is to be- come a representative of it, the Matrix is a good enough conceptualization, where peoples exist both as humans and partly machines, to become more fully one with it and its ideals and goals. that is, robots. at a certain point, to go on autopilot, in some way shape or form. for some percentage of society, on some issue, in some way, we are all eachother's enemies in ways infinite and immediate. that perspective, locally and globally, goes fractal with scales of complex interactions. any choice is a bug elsewhere in the source code of the world- machine as it exists. so much so that sectors of society, constituent machines, may go to war to reprogram the other parts so to better integrate with the overriding ideal of how it should all function, and will continue to be fighting itself, killing humans, until they are in conformance with this agency, which is well beyond human intention and morality, though these function as myths to continue the quest of mysteries in a time where to look 'over there' is to be virtually-real, so much so that fictions can be sustained in virtual representations, the myths are then reconstituted, reestablished, and can continue to function yet human energy is now harnessed for objectives other than humanity. the outcome is not a godless science, but a scienceless science, political of base needs and desires of an unconscious machine driven by a lust for its own growth and domination: machines need oil, more and more and more oil, and a human initiative such as the sustainable energies would bring human control back to it, yet it is resisted, in competition with itself, wars, many future wars will be fought for it, full nuclear arsenals, without human agency. without human judgment, morality, decision- making. bureaucrats are making the decisions, choices, but they are as autonomous as robots in such a culture and environment, they are dependent upon the success of this organism to themselves succeed, and by giving up the autonomy one can gain power, influence, and purposefulness of such a machine of state, by extending it. or, by hacking it, back to a state of human agency. though such events require a different scale to interact with the machine code and take appropriate risks, weather failures, and manage the paranoia. we are the robots, some parts of each of us. we are the problem, as a condition. the idea of 'science' beyond politics still offers a way to get beyond language games and interact with this machine state in a way that enters into cosmic battle with it, for human agency, to reprogram it and ourselves, and break free of the inaccuracies and retain that which is to be broken, crushed, and destroyed by the mindlessness of automated states of madness. brian * d i a g r a m s - 3-valued paradoxical logic http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=42267 architecture, education, electromagnetism http://www.mnartists.org/brian_carroll http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/ electronetwork.org // electromagnetism and culture investigating and interrogating electromagnetic reality http://www.electronetwork.org/ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net