mp on Sat, 26 Feb 2022 13:04:21 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Almost zero




On 26/02/2022 06:24, Brian Holmes wrote:
Does anyone remember Vladislav Surkov, "managed democracy," "non-linear
war"?

Yes.

This was also included in a "documentary" by Adam Curtis called 'HyperNormalisation'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

"....“HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, know that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew that they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase “HyperNormalisation” to describe that feeling....".

--from: https://www.adbusters.org/articles-coded/what-is-hypernormalization

In Curtis's vision (which is itself expressed in an art form of dubious style, easily labelled as manipulative) and with Surkov's contributions derived from theatre studies and industry, it becomes a sort of virtual quantum mechanical reality where everything is and isn't at the same, is here, there and everywhere, so multilayered with truths, non-truths, true revelations of fake actions, fake revelation of true actions and so on, indefinitely, to the point where nothing really makes sense, except paranoia.

As the composer and artist Martin Hall wrote in the 1990s, quoting from memory, "...The Third World War has already commenced, it's a war for our consciousness..."

Hence perfect paranoia becomes perfect awareness, another sound byte in the random tapestry of reality.

Although back then still relatively primitive by today's standards, advertising and what Chomsky/Herman called 'Manufacturing Consent' all fed into that. Now of course updated with neurological science facts and algorithmic targeting. No wonder that Ioan Culiano called advertising a contemporary dimension for magic action in his 'Eros and Magic in the Renaissance' - and his bizarre 1991 assassination, possibly by Romanian Intelligence Service, in a University of Chicago toilet only feeds the fire.

As Freud simplified alchemy to a profession focused on shaping individual subjects, and his family helped found the PR industry, God given rule through feudal hierarchies gave way to informational control and religious-like references to "follow the science".

So now, for instance, we generally accept - in our own best interest - that pharmaceutical corporations filter and edit out misinformation about their own products and if we don't like what whoever is saying there is a digital filter, so that our individual sphere remains untouched.

Heading for ultimate fragmentation, where individual atomisation into 8 billion echo chambers is the logical conclusion, it is at once terrifying and hilarious that the attack on Ukraine has revived the use of "western" in corporate media. We the western!

To the barricades....


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