<nettime> the merchant the warrior the wiseman in Seattle

[lop1912@iperbole.bologna.it]

I beg your pardon for the obscurities of my netpidginenglish.


The wiseman, the merchant, the warrior
Considerations on the globalriots of N30
franco berardi bifo

The wiseman, the warrior and the merchant are engaged in the Game.
The wiseman is the heir of the history of human work, the heir of intelligence
accumulated through the infinite succession of productive actions, through the
infinite succession of acts of refusal of work. Reducing the hardness of work
is the evolutive source of knowledge. 
Knowledge is refusal of work in its socially useful form.
Modern science has always been conscious of this aim. Galileo wrote, in Il
Saggiatore, that the scope of his science was enhancing the potency of the
artisan’s work, and reducing its hardness.
Francis Bacon says “knowledge is power”. You can see the ambivalence of words.
The wiseman knows that knowledge is a potency.
The marchant and the warrior want to make it a tool of power, and this is why
they want to dominate over the wiseman. 

You know the story of the capture of the wiseman by the warrior, during World
War2. The history of the Manhattan Project is an instructive one. A group of
wisemen,  like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, were convinced to
collaboration in the production of the atomic bomb, because Hitler was
supposed
to be able to get the bomb first. Using this blackmail, the US government
subjugated the wiseman, and Hiroshima was the proof of this subjugation.




Since then the process of liberation of knowledge from military power begins.
1968 was essentially the declaration of indipendence of knowledge from that
power, the decision of putting knowledge at the service of all the society.

At this point the merchant enters the scene. He says the wiseman: give me your
knowledge and we will make people happy. During the last twenty years, in the
Age of Paneconomic Thought, knowledge has been transformed in a force of
production, under the capital rule. Science is embedded in the technical
automatism, and losses the ability of reflecting on its scopes and its social
effects. Through the creation of a digital Technosphere, Knowledge becomes the
leading force of production, but its potency is codified by money power.
Subdued to the profit, Technics becomes a multiplier of penury.

When I was a child of ten years, in 1960, I was told that in 2000 Mankind was
going to be ok. Technichs and science were going to give everybody peace,
freedom and abundance. But now I am 50, and 2000 is here. In the world
there is
no peace, but war everywhere, and the nuclear bomb is proliferating in the
hands of ethnic dictators. In place of freedom we see the unquestionable
dominatio of economic laws. Instead of abundance we se slavery, labouring
children 25millions, and people starving in large part of the world.
So I say that we have to stop the folly proceeding from tha fanatic execution
of market rules, stop the run, untile we have not decided what direction
has to
be chosen.

The direction cannot be chosen by the warrior and by the merchant. Only the
wiseman can do it.
Only the human knowledge, following its own rules, its priorities and its
lines
of possibility, has the right of redefining production, and exchange. Only the
women and the men, as actors of knowledge on their own life, their techincal
needs and their possibilities, can decide the direction the world must take.

This is the big news coming from Seattle. The merchants have not the right to
decide about life of billions of people on the basis of their profit
priorities. Those who preach the good of wired technology generally forget
that
this good is enjoyed by 10% of mankind.. But we cannot expect progressive
rebellion and emancipation coming from the remaining 90%.
Fanon and Sartre believed that hope comes from those who are hopeless. It’s
not
true. The emancipation of knowledge from the power of money and of war will
not
come from the exploited, the poor and maeginalized. If we want to think
effectively we should forget this populist rethorics. Only a movement of the
searchers, a movement of high tech proletarians (cognitarians) will be able to
stop the infamous dicatorship of the financial corporations.
In Seattle we have seen farmers defending traditional agriculture, and workers
defending the job. They are absolutely right to do so, and it is very
important
that it happens. But it’s not them who will open a new way towards the future.

The effective nucleus of global revolt is the collective intelligence. The
Netculture has rallied the high tech cognitariat, has created the
conditions of
a schocking deflagration in the heart of the world media system.
This is not a struggle against globalization, aiming to go back to the age of
national sovereignity, to the idiot identity of nations.
The key of this rebellion is its globality, the ability of using global media,
the sudden ripolarization of global imagination.
This movement shows a direction: globalization has to be led by knowledge and
ethics. Globalization has to be a potency of all women and men, not a power of
social minority.


























































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