Re: <nettime> Forget who owns the truth. Just talk about the weather.

[Christian Swertz via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear Brian,

Am 07.09.23 um 15:05 schrieb Brian Holmes via nettime-l:
> I don't think the old question about the economic ownership of the truth is
> the right one.

I fully agree. Probably because I'm a scientist. From a scientific point 
of view, truth can not be owned since truth does not require the 
existence of ownership, while ownership requires the existence of truth 
(like in the theory of law by Kelsen). Since the Austrian constitution 
is based on the theory of Kelsen and includes the freedom of research 
and teaching sciences, the universities in Austria (and probably in some 
other nations as well) are places where "they" don't rule (if "they" are 
market radical capitalists, religious fanatics, data religion fanatics 
or any other ideology). Of course there are attempts to rule 
universities. Many colleagues just observe this with some interest, do 
critical papers occaionally, and do not really care for these attempts 
(some do other things - but that's their decision).

This might be one of the rare places in institutions where critical 
knowledge can be produced (including some theories about "critic"). As 
far as I see, the basic assumptions behind these places like the 
autonomy of the subject also allow to answer the question how ordinary 
people - or just: people - can "own" the truth: Do it yourself. If you 
create truth yourself, it's yours. And everybody can do that (and decide 
against it). Imagine a world were everybody enjoys the privileges of a 
full (tenured) professor: safe job, well paid, free to create truth, 
little obligations. Would be great IMHO - but it's not really a new 
idea. As far as I see, authors like Marx and Keynes made similar 
suggestions. And of course there are much older traces too (Graeber 
created an impressive collection of examples). But still a nice idea.

As "truth" and "ownership", "truth" and "live up to what you believe" 
are obviously two different things. For believe, you have to make 
compromises as soon as you join any community. Fortunately, it's no 
problem to be convinced of one believe (and truth) and still do 
something else. For truth, it's certainly a good idea to consider the 
difference between public and private use of reason made by Kant: you 
can think capitalism is stupid, say that in public - and still work as 
an employee.

But I assume that you focused on the public sphere with this one:

> Shared belief in a secular truth has become almost impossible.

Obviously, "shared belief" can not mean that everybody beliefs the same, 
but that the beliefe that everybody can choose what to beliefe is 
accepted by everybody (this dialectic is not a beliefe, but based on 
logic, so in the sphere of "truth"). I recently made a suggestion to 
shape a public sphere to contribute to this problem from an educational 
point of view (I do research in media education). The basic assumption 
is that people can move between languages, ideas of truth and so on. 
Moving between languages, ideas of truth and so on is what is called 
bildung in German (development of the person is probably a good 
translation). So - you develop yourself as a person including your idea 
of truth and your believes while moving between truths. Humboldt created 
this idea. An that's why schools offer arts, sciences, humanities, sport 
and so on - these are all different "truth" spheres. The students move 
between them while attending different lesson and develop themself as 
persons in this movement.

I recently suggested to transfer this idea to the public sphere 
(https://doi.org/10.21243/mi-01-23-08). An important step is to create a 
range of public spheres that allows everybody to move between them and 
build an own opinion this way. As far as a see, five institutions would 
be good starter: Capitalistic media, civic media, public broadcasting 
(fee funded), state media and scientific media (open access only). Of 
course, the institutions need to be clearly separated. So: No tax money 
whatsoever for capitalistic media, no ads in public broadcasting and so on.

Do you think a structure like that would support groups in growing 
inward and support the circulation of truths that are owned by small groups?

All the best,

Christian.
--
# 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: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org