Re: <nettime> nettime as idea

[brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>]

  i don't know, i find it confusing after a period of years in trying  
to engages ideas on nettime as a supposedly public forum, consisting  
of 'intellectuals' if not 'the intelligentsia' to have found so many  
problems with ideas themselves, in dealing with ideas beyond ideologies.

  some may call this abuse, though after years of having facts,  
reasoning, truth, empirical reasoning, 'proof', refutation of  
'theory', simply ignored as the status quo of the existing academic  
paradigm churns on, is, to me, frustrating, insulting, and without  
integrity in terms of ideas, and philosophies which purport to serve  
ideas, yet rather seem to be serving the people serving themselves  
instead.

this lack of integrity of ideas should not be respected, it should be  
rejected and it is only accepted as the status quo because it is how  
people are making their living, however meagerly. yet in terms of  
ideas related to 'truth' or 'reality' this very compromise makes  
distortions and bias that lead up to hypocrisy at the level of ideas,  
reasoning, and the inability to engage things as they more actually  
are, not as they are wished or fantasized or believed by faith of  
consensus.

this is not a personal issue, it is a fact of living in this era,  
which is itself totally failing, systematically. and to deal with  
this failure also necessitates taking account of how it is made to  
occur. education being quite 'critical' to how ideas are made into  
actions which, oddly enough, is in a mode of mass production by which  
ideas unfit for the existing environment are produced anyway, in  
surfeit, making its own demands regardless of true worth, need, or  
value as to what is being sold, versus the actual goods. for  
instance, 9/11 did not happen in a vacuum, it relates to how ideas  
can or cannot deal with the dynamics related to 9/11, including in  
Universities where there are supposedly people who have some superior  
sense about all this - yet remain totally and absolutely silent with  
regard to insight as to what is now going on. in any practical sense,  
including their own role in creating this situation.

thus, the issue of 'objectivism' grounded in empirical knowledge with  
peer review-- that is, checks and balances on the reasoning of an  
argument, with regard to facts and logic-- that is what nettime could  
function as, if it were in the tradition of philosophy and not the  
hollow fraud that is theory today, that cannot stand as an argument  
yet continues anyway, regardless, because it can-- because it is what  
is being 'professed' and institutionalized as a mode of engaging  
ideas. yet, the assumptions underneath this is detached from a  
greater reality, physical fact, experiment, and substantive peer  
review which could _disprove any ideas, based on being theses, which  
are instead more hypothetical and interesting in that, yet assume  
more dictatorial powers of making laws by thinking itself, -- i.e. i  
think it, i reason it, therefore, it is true, relatively speaking, of  
course.

yet, with this gambit of the pyramid-scheming the thinking self, it  
has in effect created an environment where ideas have turned into a  
game, and the ruling ideology is the theory regime, as it now stands,  
which is _beyond any tangible critical review, which would ground  
ideas in a shared space of knowledge, facts, truth, and reason-- and  
instead becomes a theology of ideas, of faith and belief in a certain  
set of ideas with boundaries, limits, etc. in other words, closed  
ideas, boundaries (borders) which, while one may speak against these  
things in rhetoric, are actually the things which sustain the current  
inauthentic, disingenuous, and uncritical extension of ideology that  
is based in ideas that were once answered and never to be questioned  
again-- because of some deal with the devil (institutions,  
educational systems) which enable the shell game to continue, because  
poking at that beast would hurt one's self, no?

abuse, then, maybe, to have to consider that there may be natural  
conflicts in the individuals who profess themselves cool thinkers  
about things, while slinging constant epithets at ideas, from what  
amounts to ideological positions that remain unquestioned and part of  
a massive group think that is the status-quo. even this is  
understandable, and can be accommodated, yet what this is is also a  
fundamental corruption of ideas, in academia, in the 'professional'  
thinking class, (sic) which is unable to actively engage ideas  
outside of the particular ideological constructs that protect and  
defend the mindset-- which cannot be placed under review. that is,  
the observer cannot become the observation, which is a pre-scientific  
point of view, which is seen in the lack of material proof for ideas,  
which can wax on about anything, without much regard to substantive  
views which add up to more than one person's point of view alone.  
that is, empirical knowledge which builds and spans people and ideas,  
connects and does not simply divide, conquer, and monopolize ideas in  
the form of ideologies which are institutionalized by peers,  
'professed' and extended as 'the system' which is what it is today: a  
failure which is incapable of dealing with the existing situation.  
while the psychological aspect may be delusional if not self- 
delusional, schizophrenic even, this is not to be considered in terms  
of those doing the observations, only 'others' outside of this view.  
the abuse hurled at these others, from such points on high (in the  
networked pantheon) is truly annoying, yet moreso, banal, boring,  
tedious, and without merit in terms of ideas themselves and only  
personas, peer pressure, cliques, and the herd mentality that is more  
scared than anything. because the ideas cannot stand - and some know  
it. and this cannot be defended. and thus it calls into question the  
grand sweeping claims of theorists and 'intellectuals' who say this  
and that about big things and ideas, which really exists without any  
accountability whatsoever. what is the price of being wrong today?  
nothing. not at thing. you get promoted or go on to become an expert  
at it. as long as you can pay to play. power, not truth, defining  
what is supposedly the more real reality, etc. even if it is only  
virtual, hyped, a bubble culture and bubble intellectualism that is  
ungrounded. and as such, the slightest disturbance threatens the  
whole of this overarching ideology which is itself the problem of why  
things are the way they are, and the status quo in the educational  
system has something significant to do with this, not the least being  
its philosophy is completely devoid of common sense, truth, logic,  
reasoning, debate, peer review, outside of a controlled environment.

this in effect 'privatizes' ideas, in a marketplace which can be  
cornered, in academics. it is to say that much if not most of what is  
going on, online and in states, today, is based in this inherited  
privatization of ideas, which is now the base operation (status quo  
of ideology) -- and that private language (theory, say), private  
identities, private reasoning and logic are all the basis for what is  
next to occur: capitalizing on this situation for one's own benefit,  
fuck the truth and fuck the others.

so, whatever delusional utopia one may believe themselves pursing is  
by and large happening in a context of private thinkers who are doing  
all the things they rail against, in large-scale economic systems-  
except it is happening in ideas, in educational systems-- and it is  
abysmal and without soul, merit, or insight into the actual issues  
and actual responses required, outside the narrow and limiting  
approach -- yet, like true believers, none of this can be brought  
under question -- no matter if one's flag is anarchism or  
libertarian, social democrat or whatnot, (queer, atheist, etc) that  
this is part of the private capitalism of the individual, as governed  
as a state of affairs, in terms of thinking because it brings with it  
direct contradiction between the facts and truth and what is being  
said and 'represented' and 'believed' within such an environment  
which, as stated, is without consequence for saying one thing and  
doing another.

this is a consequence of larger issues having to do with relativism  
in ideas, and this privatization as being a devolution of a once- 
public system that could not adapt, and instead disintegrated over  
the last 200 years (in the .US, for example, in the constitution) by  
which definitions can mutate from representing a higher ideal (where  
mankind is presumed equated with humankind) to one where this dynamic  
is replaced by a lesser version (this vagueness leading corporations  
on the path to citizenship, and representation, in what has evolved  
into a corporate dictatorship today).

so, while one may call into question the points of view which  
'profess' universalism via 'the magic of theory', it is without  
greater empirical truth, in the sense of a sharing of facts and  
reasoning that goes beyond this privatization of ideas, which instead  
functions as ideology. it is pyramid building because, if there is a  
peer group (of like minded theorists, privatized thinkers) there is a  
private empire/empricism which can grow, while it excludes actual  
'difference' and all the other keyword 'big ideas' that go into its  
own justification, as if this is universal representation, when  
instead it is a bill of goods that are not actually what is being  
sold, it is a knock-off, rip-off, a cheat lie and steal.

so, what about this theft, robbery, in terms of ideas, in a public  
forum, and dealing with it? it does not exist, so far as it seems in  
this nettime. it is unnecessary to engage, because it is optional  
(ah, relativism, 'options', the market, etc).  if based in public  
debate, facts, truth, *accountability* for the theses (ur, theory)  
and accepting that the basic situation in ideas is that they can be  
disproved (!!), that this is not necessarily simply abuse-- and  
instead, squaring ideas with the truth of what exists.

if this is not necessary, then nettime as it now seems, is also  
unnecessary for this is a private list of people who have private  
ideas who are unable to have public debates and only talk past one  
another in terms of ideas, which do not build up to anything more  
than markets of limited views which are fundamentally opposed to a  
sharing of views, of ideas, and reasoning in an open forum- because  
it does not function in terms of ideas, and instead, in terms of  
extending ruling ideology.

to question the ideology and reason complex ideas has no effect -- it  
is out of place if it is to question the underlying assumptions which  
drive this mechanism, which is itself unintelligent in the larger  
scales, if not allowing partial knowledge, partial worth, of the  
relative points of view, yet if they do not share a common structure,  
it negates the truth of all arguments in a zero sum game. which is  
what constantly happens. and instead, cultivates only the delusions  
of egos, which is its own problem in terms of philosophy, because  
this also acts as a mirror of the limits of viewpoints, where they  
cannot get beyond, including personal points of view, which may have  
more to do with social groups and being on the 'inside' (else being  
ignored, invisible, suspect, conspirator!) -- it is incredulous and  
pandering to the weakness of this existing social system which is so  
goddamn hypocritical as to be obscene, intellectually, and it is  
expected one is just supposed to go along with this flow of things?  
because that is the way it is, that the strategy is itself not  
totally fucked up?

no words will change this, on this list. no facts, no argument. it is  
ideology. it is being able to be wrong, partially wrong, partially  
right. yet words have not been able to accomplish the heavy lifting  
because the ideology is so complete and the deep-freeze of ideas, so  
stuck in another age. abuse is ignoring these facts, these dynamics,  
this absolutely decrepit situation and the total lack of any  
accountability for being wrong, for having ideas being disproven and  
ideologies detonated, on list, and yet go on as if living in  
oblivion, which pretty much accurately describes the situation today.

that means, yes, maybe we all are included and each can realize our  
own limitations, yet there are issues that go beyond ourselves, our  
egos, our private ideas and agendas, and this is the realm in which  
philosophies change, where the basic assumptions are tested and  
transformed, based on reasoning, debate, new views, etc. and  
attempting such 'rigor' on nettime has been and is futile, because  
instead it is seen as insulting to the aristocratic system of  
representation that now reigns. that is, it is a total system, and if  
this cannot be accounted for in the ideas here, the ideas have little  
or no merit when claiming to deal with such dimensions, it is only  
playing around in fictions. and without risk. and without true  
ability to deal with what is going on, outside of pure ideology which  
is more complex, demands more, is more humbling, and might crush a  
good portion of those who profess to not be ideologues and have  
capitalism also hidden within their genes.

this is not to continue to speak past 'nettime as an idea' as if  
politically uncorrect. it would be to have integrity about ideas, as  
ideas, and instead, this is nettime as ideology -- moderate it.



  brian thomas carroll: research-design-development
  architecture, education, electromagnetism
  http://www.mnartists.org/brian_carroll
  http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/


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