Nick's Theory of Communications

P.P.S. L. Menand, Sachs

2009-05-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

Class ends, class continues. On a strong recommendation based on my interest in Dewey, I picked up Louis Menand’s “Metaphysical Club.” In the introduction, Menand links Holmes, James, Peirce, and Dewey in their “idea about ideas”: “They all believed that ideas are not ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered, but are tools – like forks and knives and microchips – that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves. … They believed that ideas do not develop according to some inner logic of their own, but are entirely dependent, like germs, on their human carriers and the environment. … The belief that ideas should never become ideologies – either justifying the status quo, or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it – was the essence of what they taught.”

And one more (from 61): “The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence.”

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Also caught the Earth Institute’s postdoc fellows presentations last week, in part in interest of what the Institute is all about and to have a chance to hear Jeffrey Sachs in person. On the former, very impressed – important work coming out of there, and they seem quite aware of the complexity, the messiness of what they’re delving into. Encouraging work, though I’m curious why more people weren’t in attendance. Outside of myself, who stumbled on a poster for it, it seemed like an inhouse crowd. Impressed too, with Sachs’ sharpness, pretty stunning handle on a wide range of interdisciplinary things. On the flip side, was less impressed with his communication skills, used to repeatedly and apologetically berate a group of the presenters, again, for what I assumed was a public presentation. Anyhow, I’m hoping this was an aberration and perhaps a second experience – in reading or in public appearance, will offer me a better perspective on the man and the important work that he’s making possible. – N

P.S. (Latour, thanks)

2009-05-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

A few quick words to reiterate my appreciation for the discourse that transpired this semester: the readings and conversations offered focused perspectives at things I have felt strongly about and I’m finding their insights helpful to my approach, as I’m eager to dive into more. Also, it was a lot of fun (in an odd sort of way) too. As one example, for a call for papers, I reworked some of my previous work concerning creativity and incorporated specifically some notions borrowed from Latour into the mix. I’m interested to share Latour in particular with my mother, who’s always worked as a naturalist and environmental studies teacher – I think she’d find his work helpful in supporting her own passionate views. – N

Creativity has long been seen as something mythical denied to all but a few select individuals. Effectively this notion has disenfranchised people from engagement in their own lives. They ask, “Why should I care?” as it seems their actions are insignificant and of no consequence.

A new definition is required: Creativity is the conscious pause where all our experience, instinct, and imagination dance together to create a novel response to a stimulus. By putting creativity in such terms, rather than having to ascend to some other plane of existence, we can instead look inside ourselves at what’s been there all along. Creativity is therefore not an elite privilege possessed by a few, but a birthright inherent in all.

By acting creatively, engaging in the conscious pause, we take responsibility for and ownership of our actions, and as such invest our care in what we do. Creation creates ownership and ownership engenders care. Reaction, on the other hand, is to be but a link in a chain in a series of events. “Reaction” is “I Care Not,” whereas “Creation” means to put “Care Into.” By pausing, careless apathy is transformed into creative empathy, and each moment is a chance to create possibilities. Thus, there is no such thing as “just” a grilled cheese sandwich. Every action, no matter how seemingly mundane is an opportunity to bring forth our creativity. From this perspective, we are empowered to take ownership of our own thoughts, and look differently upon ourselves and our actions. By putting our care into every moment and interaction, we can transform our world and can’t help but be changed along the way.

Cave Men

2009-05-06T13:27:00.002-07:00

For this essay, I want to look at a single incident through the lens that the readings and discussion of this class have helped to formulate:

The Incident

Late night on the subway, Leah and I found ourselves the target of a verbal and near physical assault from a 16ish African-American boy accompanied by four or five friends. At first we attempted to ignore them, which seemed to work as they eventually switched cars. However, they quickly returned followed by a white man our age trying to get his just stolen phone back. Once again, the leader picked up hurling threats our way, edging ever closer towards physical confrontation. We still refused to engage him, and then this boy attacked the other man. At this, we jumped up, and they released the man and returned their attention to us. (They shouted at Leah, “What are you going to do Wonder Woman?” Out of nowhere she displayed a kick picked up from Kung Fu movies, perhaps bringing a bit of levity to this increasingly ugly exchange!) Before anything further could happen, the train stopped and they took off. It was over.

Although likely lasting less than two minutes, the incident raises questions that continue to linger and speaks on a personal, in your face level (literally) to the issues we’ve been discussing. I’m not angry at the boys, but I’m overwhelmed by the conditions that make such incidents inevitable. Frank described me as a meaning maker, and I want to use this incident to look at prevailing myths (to borrow Barthes’ usage) that shape our existence. Although we think we crawled out of the realm of myth long ago, in fact it seems we just dressed them up in new clothes – and it’s important to use our readings as a sort of x-ray vision.

Myth of Othering

The creation of a division of we/they, of an “other,” makes it easier to hate and feel justified in doing violence to another. The boys on the train didn’t see us as people like them, but as white and thus a part of the privileged, ruling class responsible for their own circumstances. Whoever we are, whatever we do, however much we might actually be able to connect to these boys in a different situation, none of this matters. With the myth of black/white, of otherness, the opportunity for dialogue, for common ground is denied.

Myth of the Power Elite

While the boys may not use C Wright Mills’s term, they definitely see us as a part of this group – the people who drive history and keep others down. This is very real to these boys and what they experience. (While we might argue our inclusion in this group, here I am at Columbia, with a brother who went to Harvard, I have a seat at tables these boys won’t. I appreciate the analogy Fran Liebowitz proposed, that being white was like being the children of celebrities, it gets us in the door, a door not open to those who don’t look like us.) That such an elite exists and that they possess the power to make decisions over a mass of people are not myths. What is a myth is that the Power Elite’s ascendancy to such a position of authority is natural. Mills writes of the notion that “they are elite because of the kind of individuals they are. The rest of the population is mass, which, according to this conception, sluggishly relaxes into uncomfortable mediocrity.” (13) But as Mills points out, this is wrong, “People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be the people with advantages.”(14) In a recent NYTimes column Bob Herbert describes William F. Buckley, champion of conservative mythology, who he says “took a scurrilous stand in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated the nation’s public schools. Whites, being superior, were well within their rights to discriminate against blacks, according to Buckley. ‘The White community is so entitled,’ he wrote, ‘because, for the time being, it is the advanced race ...’” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/opinion/05herbert.html?_r=1. The perpetuation of these myths justifies treating others as inferior and thus poorly. Understandably, our assailants are raging against that, even as they’re a part of it.

Myth of the Leisure Class

Part of being the elite includes membership in what Veblen calls the leisure class and having the means for conspicuous consumption. Again, to the boys we represent the upper echelons of this class. I might deny it, yet I work at a private tennis club in Manhattan. Although I came to tennis on cracked courts in a farm town, I know it’s seen as a sport of the privileged (the sight of a luxury car behind the courts at a pro tournament does nothing to dispel this image) – the term “serve,” in fact, comes from the fact that servants used to put the ball into play. Tennis is definitely a means of conspicuous leisure, and looking around at where I work that’s easy to see. I have one student who spends a thousand dollars or more a week on tennis (and routinely shares stories of nights out in Manhattan where he spends five times that much at posh clubs.) It’s an interesting line to walk between worlds. On the other side is our maintenance/janitorial staff who come from a different position altogether. While sketching this essay out in my head at a break at work, I end up talking to Darnell – an African American kid who’s twenty and does various menial jobs around the club – who I find crying in the hallway. It turns out his best friend was shot in the leg and the head and is now in a coma. This friend and a group of guys got in a shouting match with another bunch and it turned to shooting. Even at this intersection, we are worlds apart. And this is the world these boys on the train live in.

Myth of Need

These myths of the leisure class and conspicuous consumption are not just limited to the elite but extend to everyone else, all trying to compete. It’s on great display on a Friday night walk home in Harlem, women are objects to be acquired, (which speaks to Veblen’s theory of the origins of ownership starting with women) and the cars are loudly conspicuous. Caught up in the myth of the leisure class, it’s a contest to collect booty, have the biggest horde, rather than seeing value in taking care of one’s community. It’s harmful. Marcuse terms this the pursuit of false needs – material needs as opposed to ones we truly need for our survival. They are used as a distraction, for “The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence.” And as such stand in the way of our true freedom: “All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual’s own.” (7) Racing to keep up, get the next thing, we don’t take care of what’s needed.

Myth of Democracy and Expectations

Voting gives the appearance of democracy. Yet as Marcuse writes: “Democracy would appear to be the most efficient system of domination.” In fact, “Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. … Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” (7) Born into captivity of a system that treats people like probabilities from the day they’re born, we can begin to assume it’s natural – that’s just the way it is. I’m not sure that these boys know better, but they do know they’re supposed to have a place in this system and it’s not to be in charge, and it’s not to have a voice. Democracy isn’t extended to them as more than a meaningless token. Barbara Bush’s comments regarding Hurricane Katrina were telling of what the ruling class thought of the rest of the people: “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this [she chuckles slightly] is working very well for them.” It’s a myth of expectations, explicated well by Heath Ledger’s “Joker” in “The Dark Knight:” “Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it’s all part of the plan.” I think of the shooting of Darnell’s friend, not front page tragedy, just something that happens.

Myth of the Market

These other myths are propped up by the myth of the free market, which Polanyi describes as being essentially a religion “a crusading passion” (143), sacred and holy (139). The mythology of the market says that it would take care of people, yet Polanyi suggests that this is a “fiction,” a myth, and leaving their fate in the hands of the market “would be tantamount to annihilating them.” (137) And it has indeed destroyed people. For “under the rule of the market the people could not be prevented from starving according to the rules of the game.” (168) The myth of the market also brings to rise Social Darwinism and facilitates the myth of the natural ascendency of the elite, and the othering of the poor to keep them in their place. Obeying the myth of the market, people can be unemployed and destitute, and their constitutional liberties lost all “judged a fair price to pay for the fulfillment of the requirement of sound budgets and sound currencies, these a priori of economic liberalism.” (148) The market destroys people’s cultures (164) and few know this better than people ripped from Africa to serve as slaves under one system and now to be slaves under a more subversive system, a system where humans are reduced to parts, “commodities, as goods produced for sale.” Essentially the human can be less than human.

(I want to note that this separation between people extends to the foods we eat as well. While I travel far to pick up organic this and that, what’s available at the markets in my neighborhood is not conducive to health. I want to tie this into the myth of the market and the loss of aura of food in the culinary arts in the age of mechanical reproduction, but this sidenote will have to suffice for now.)

Myths Keep Us from Talking

Under the sway of these myths, we’re unable to talk to one another. Myths impose meaning on us rather than allowing for us to make meaning ourselves. Therein lies the value in our reading – to provide perspective to see beyond the myths that dominate our field of view – liked being trapped, as Benjamin suggested, in front of the movie screen.

Tearing Down Mythology

The arc of the term suggests that at the core of these myths is Plato’s allegory of the Cave, by which some privileged folks can step out of the cave and attain higher knowledge. It sets up the “out there/in here,” “otherness” duality and has since been a bedrock of Western thought. By following this myth, people see knowledge, power, and creativity as denied to all but a few select individuals, as is the case of Barthes’ myth of “Einstein’s Brain” – being smart is mythical and thus inaccessible. This has effectively disenfranchised people from engagement in their own lives. If your actions are insignificant and of no consequence, why should you care?

In order to establish a truly participatory democracy, Latour sets out to hack down the myth of the cave along with those other myths built upon it that have prevented us from achieving such a thing. He redefines politics: “Just as we have distinguished Science from the sciences, we are going to contrast power politics, inherited from the Cave, with politics, conceived as the progressive composition of the common world.” (18) In this “Progressive composition of the common world,” lies the potential to empower people to realize that they can have a say in matters, and that it makes a difference to become knowledgeable and educated in order to participate. In being able to have true public discourse, this vision approaches what Habermas defines as the public sphere: “a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body.” (350) Latour’s conception of democracy turns the world on its head, and puts the possibilities of people’s futures in their own hands. It resembles the path not chosen 2500 years ago when Democritus suggested: “Poverty under a democracy is as much to be preferred above what men of power call prosperity.” Marcuse describes such a state of freedom where “The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own.” (2)

How to Get There?

This new idea of freedom is difficult to imagine, old myths are powerful. It starts with as Dewey suggests, remembering that the State isn’t “Sacred.” (170) In fact, the author of the State is “nothing but singular persons, you, they, me.” (P37) We make the State, it isn’t the mysterious or holy collective – but ALL of us signing off on it. Seen for what it is – not obscured behind the curtains of myth – the State is an invention of people and can thus be dismantled and reinvented by people too.

We reinvent through education. According to Dewey: “Every care would be taken to surround the young with the physical and social conditions which best conduce, as far as freed knowledge extends, to release of personal potentialities.” (200-1) In treating people with care, we can release their possibilities, rather than the probabilities that mark a person’s life from the day they’re born. (200-1) As Marcuse wrote, “it must first enable its slaves to learn and see and think before they know what is going on and what they themselves can do to change it.” (40) The boys on the train know something is wrong, they see it all around them, but without education, what Dewey calls the “signs and symbols” they lack the means to do anything about it in a productive way. Instead, all they can do is lash out, which ultimately feeds back into the myth that they’re less capable and deserve their lot in life.

It is only through communication can change come about and only through education can the means of communication be acquired. As Dewey wrote, “Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a life of free and enriching communion. It had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.” (184) Democracy happens when people can communicate the “common interests” between us all on an equal level. “The man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied.” (207) As Frank, Kruschev-like pounded on the table – they need to be able to say in a voice others can hear “My feet hurt!” Armed with signs and symbols, in a progressive discussion as Latour proposed, voices are heard and carry the weight of their experience – no single voice of an elite can trump the rest. It’s important to remember, as Dewey stressed that there are no absolute right answers. As with continually striving for a better state, he wrote, “thinking and beliefs should be experimental, not absolutistic” (202) We need to always subject our ideas to continuous inquiry in order to prevent the myths of the ideas from becoming as harmful as the myths they displace.

Get on the Bus

I like public transit – the train, the bus. I avoid cabs, in part because I’m cheap, but more so because I like the idea of interacting with my community, even in the limited way that this is. This is different than Detroit, where I was more actively involved in the community, yet didn’t engage with the larger population – I got in my car, and safe behind steel and glass I could go to my next destination and be similarly enclosed. Not here – it’s hard to hide. And that’s our world today. If we learn something from how water and air link our planet, today our economy and technology flow like rivers linking us all. We can’t build walls high enough to keep climate change out no more than we can keep the problems of the bottom billion from being our problems. If we didn’t see it that way, the events of 9/11 shattered the myth of isolationism and showed how interconnected the world is. Security and health won’t come from separating, from othering, but through communicating and educating. I’d like to see a world where my children grow up free from fear, and that means other people’s children need to have that same sort of assurance as well. And that includes these boys on the train.

In this, there’s another particularly American myth we need to dispel, that of the rugged individual being more free. It is in fact the reverse, for the collective can bring about the personal liberty we seek, rather than constraining it. As Dewey wrote, “They may think they are clamoring for a purely personal liberty, but what they are doing is to bring into being a greater liberty to share in other associations, so that more of their individual potentialities will be released and their personal experience enriched.” (193-4) He continues, “Organization as a means to an end would reinforce individuality and enable it to be securely itself by enduring it with resources beyond its unaided reach.”(216) We can be more free together.

Think Global, Act Local

Dewey emphasized the importance of community remaining “a matter of face-to-face intercourse.” (211) it’s a dialogue between one another at the local level, that leads to a dialogue with those at larger level – keep in mind the global as we act local. In his view, peace on earth is only achievable by understanding “peoples of foreign lands.” (213) Yet to do this, we need to first understand our neighbors, remove the “otherness” about them, which in turn helps us conceive of neighbors more distant. As Maxine Greene wrote: “Is it not the imagination that allows us to encounter the other as disclosed through the image of the other’s face?” Dewey suggested that “Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator.” (219) If seeing, in this regard, stops at the surface, we need to learn to hear each other, that is truly understand “others,” person by person, day by day, to build a great community.

And so in trying to make sense of the incident on the train, I turn to action – what can I do? It has to start at community, in small ways that have the chance to become big things. For me, this means helping write a newsletter for the Tenants Association where I live to give some sort of voice to the people here. I’m now starting to think about writing on the Bartendaz – a Harlem-based group that does gymnastic-like strength training for kids and adults on playground equipment, and “Peace on the Street” a Karate/Meditation organization in Spanish Harlem also working with youths. These are encouraging means of educating, enabling people with the tools to have a voice, to follow their own curiosity. The “before” stories of the students in these organizations read like the boys on the train and Darnell’s friend – angry, ready to fight, seeing no alternatives. The “after” stories are open to possibilities.

Let’s make a final turn from the physical arts to the cultural arts. Dewey wrote “Artists have always been the real purveyors of news, for it is not the outward happening in itself which is new, but the kindling by it of emotion, perception and appreciation.” His words speak to the idea that artists are pioneers seeing things in ways that we don’t yet, and that they offer voices of continual questioning, essential to building community. Is it true what Adorno said, “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” I don’t think so. We need to make sense of things, and as Charles McGee says, “Any artist that’s worth his salt has to learn to speak the language of the day.” Which means art evolves, stays relevant, and continues to challenge how we see – and that’s what we need, and we can turn to the “Falling Man,” in Delillo’s book. This fictional performance artist is a wakeup call to look up, to look at what’s happening, to not tune it out and shut it away. I think of “Object Orange” in Detroit who painted burnt out houses in Detroit “tiggerific orange” to draw attention to the blight that is the city. After Benjamin, all art is political. And in that way, Delillo’s book and Project Rebirth is an attempt to keep us looking up, to not hide that day, those abandoned buildings away, or dismiss the boys on the train. In showing people as real, as just like us, we have a chance to rid ourselves of othering, see past myths, and join in the conversation. – Nick

Delillo and Art

2009-05-06T13:27:00.001-07:00

Revisited after the last class….

The value of art is perhaps a pause – caught up in the momentum of keeping up with our lives, it’s hard to stop and reflect on why exactly are we doing this anyway? As the Talking Heads sang, “And you may ask yourself – well … how did I get here?” And, “My god!...what have I done?” Without such interruptions, we continue on, failing to question, failing to consider, and it may take something more dramatic (Falling towers) to snap us out of the march we’re on, or we may not at all. Hence, the “falling man” (and real life version of him http://www.skarbakka.com/menuframe.html) and his actions. We have to stop and look up, as much as we may not want to. It might make us angry, but it challenges how we see. I think of Object Orange in Detroit, who painted decrepit houses “tiggerific” orange to bring attention to blight, perhaps to beautify them as well. http://www.thedetroiter.com/nov05/disneydemolition.php. In doing so, we have to look differently at ruins, and like the falling man, or DeLillo’s words on those events, or the stories of Project Rebirth – we don’t want to be reminded, we want it to go away. But there it is, hanging over a crowded street, brightly visible alongside the expressway. Shouting at us – deal with me – how can we as a society let this happen? And perhaps there’s the potential for change in being awakened. – Nick

Latour and Cell Phones

2009-05-05T16:30:00.001-07:00

Brief conversation on cell phone safety triggered thoughts of Latour’s “risk-free” vs. “risky attachments.” Experts say they’re safe (except for other experts who say they aren’t.) But where’s the discussion? What is the actual known data about them, and why do experts say they’re safe. Armed with that sort of information rather than simply “Science Says…” we can make informed decisions.

Latour Once More

2009-05-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

The key for me in our discussion of Latour was that at the core of his argument, Latour is talking about democracy and what it could really mean, and how the myth of the Cave that has dominated Western thought for 2500 years has prevented us from achieving such a thing. Latour’s definition of politics is powerful: “Just as we have distinguished Science from the sciences, we are going to contrast power politics, inherited from the Cave, with politics, conceived as the progressive composition of the common world.” (18)

“The progressive composition of the common world,” means a discussion where all have a voice. That doesn’t mean they all are equal voices in each discussion, just that no single voice can trump all the others. The words of an expert on climate research carry a certain weight on the subject of climate change in a way that someone isolated from that subject would not have. I understand the concern that such discussions would move too slow, take too long. But perhaps we can see that we’ve moved too fast – rushed headlong into things we didn’t understand at the expense of our health and safety. Latour’s asbestos example speaks to this. The miracle material turns out to not be so risk-free after all, and in having a discussion about its messiness from the beginning, perhaps we’d have never gone down that path.

“Progressive composition of the common world,” has the potential to empower people to realize that they can have a say in matters, and that it makes a difference to become knowledgeable, educated – without the possibility of contributing, why bother with the effort? Latour’s is a potentially game changing argument, and I’m rooting for it. (Though I’m still struggling to find a clear distinction between this and Wilson’s consilience, except in terminology, the spirit feels the same.) – Nick

Latour comments – short form.

2009-04-29T09:05:00.001-07:00

In letting go of nature, Latour is setting out to give political ecology stronger footing. The myths of Nature and Science have in his view, long prevent true discussion. He’s not denouncing Science, but in pulling it off its pedestal, he’s restoring it to its role as part of human society, and giving it relevance in the necessary discourse of the health of our species and our planet. The Cave set up a duality that has long set people apart, and he’s attempting to stitch the conversation back together. Nature has always been politics, Science has always been politics, in seeing things as they are, can we work towards what needs to be worked on?

Latour Comments (long form)

2009-04-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

Latour sets out to redefine political ecology as something that “has to let go of nature.” (9) In fact, he cites Nature as the chief obstacle in public discourse. As will be restated throughout, Latour wants the environmental argument to be heard, and to do so, he is stripping it of something that seems fundamental to it, yet is actually a hindrance. Part of this will mean dissociating the sciences from Science. (9) That is go from “brandishing Science” (as in “she blinded me with Science”) to “clinging to the twists and turns of sciences as they are developed.” (10) One is removed from humanity, a mythical Ideal, while the other is real, human, and messy. Latour defines Science “as the politicization of the sciences through epistemology in order to render the ordinary political life impotent through the threat of an incontestable nature.” (10) Science capitalized is derived from Plato’s allegory of the Cave, and it’s this he seeks to get us out of. He addresses “two points of rupture” of the allegory. The first being that in getting out of the cave to find truth, “There exists no possible continuity between the world of human beings and access to truths ‘not made by human hands.’ The allegory of the cave makes it possible to create in one fell swoop a certain idea of Science and a certain idea of the social world that will serve as a foil for science.” And secondly the Scientist goes back to the cave with “incontestable findings that will silence the chatter of the ignorant mob. Once again, there is no continuity between the henceforth irrefutable objective law and the human…” (This brings to mind the shift in research practices to those of a more participatory nature – rather than coming from above with Wisdom, helping people empower themselves.) Scientists can thus go back and forth between worlds like Moses carrying scientific laws “which are not open to question, for the tyranny of ignorance. Without this double interruption there can be no Science, no epistemology, no paralyzed politics, no Western conception of life.” (11) Latour argues that this has to change to redefine public life. There is the fear that if Science is open to messiness, uncertainties that (12) “Science can survive only as long as it distinguishes absolutely and not relatively between things ‘as they are’ and the ‘representation that human beings make of them.’” Latour says, if one suggests “they are dealing rather with a seamless cloth, you will be accused of relativism; you will be told that you are trying to give Science a ‘social explanation’; …” Calls this sophistry – and this connects to Pirsig’s description of Plato’s attack on Sophists in Z&tAoMM. Platonists – the West really – see relativism as a threat. It’s interesting to think of how scientists actually, had called into question perfect truths and certainty for some time. Think of Heisenberg and uncertainty, Godel and incompleteness, and even more recently fractals and the butterfly effect, the world is not “cold and austere” truth and beauty as Bertrand Russell put it – it’s messy, crinkly… Latour says “not smooth.”

Latour states the persistence of the allegory of the Cave because “It allows a Constitution that organizes public life into two houses.” (13) Ignorant folk on one, and the outside Idealized world. Thus “the myth of the Cave makes it possible to render all democracy impossible by neutralizing it; that is its only trump card.” So power is given only “those who can move back and forth between the houses.” (14) This speaks to a notion of Power Elite, how people justify their rank in society. Latour’s solution “we need not climb down into it [the cave] to begin with!” (16) This is what is “you are trying to organize civic life with two houses, one of which would have authority and not speak, while the other would have speech but no authority; do you really think this is reasonable?” (17) It’s time to get past the power of this myth. Latour sets up his argument and offers a powerful definition of politics (reminiscent to Wilson’s consilience): “Just as we have distinguished Science from the sciences, we are going to contrast power politics, inherited from the Cave, with politics, conceived as the progressive composition of the common world.” (18) Like Pirsig and Wilson, Latour is out to show the artificiality of dualities and the harm they’ve created. (19) Thus he seeks to show “political ecology has nothing to do, or rather, finally no longer has anything to do with nature, still less with its conservation, protection, or defense.” He speaks of environmental movements seeking to restore a political dimension to nature, but it’s because of the inclusion of “nature” that they can’t succeed: “Under the pretext of protecting nature, the ecology movements have also retained the conception of nature that makes their political struggle hopeless.”

“Thus we cannot characterize political ecology by way of a crisis of nature, but by way of a crisis of objectivity. The risk-free objects, the smooth objects to which we had been accustomed up to now, are giving way to risky attachments, tangled objects. Let us try to characterized the difference between the old objects and the new ones, between matters of fact and what could be called matters of concern.” (22) Furthermore, he defines matters of fact, risk-free objects as clearly defined boundaries, invisible people behind them, risks in separate universe, later consequences of object never impacted initial definition of object. Asbestos is a strong model of a risk-free object. (23) In contrast to these are risk-free objects, with matters of concern – these are not smooth but messy! They lack clear boundaries, more like rhizomes in their connections to other things, producers are visible, part of their definition from the beginning, they don’t emerge from the sky or the “cave” but are part of world from the beginning, and they are attached to their consequences from the beginning. (24) Therefore, “Political ecology does not shift attention from the human pole to the pole of nature; it shifts from certainty about the production of risk-free objects (with their clear separation between things and people) to uncertainty about the relations whose unintended consequences threaten to disrupt all orderings, all plans, all impacts.” (25) Hence, “An infinitesimal cause can have vast effects; an insignificant actor becomes central…” Things are messy and as the butterfly effect hints little things can cause big things: “a snail can block a dam” “Nothing can line up beings any longer by order of importance.” As well as “the progressive transformation of all matters of fact into disputed states of affair, … which nothing, precisely, can naturalize any longer.” If political ecology persists in sticking to modernist theory, the idea of the cave, then he suggests whenever it encounters “Beings with uncertain, unpredictable connections, it is thus going to doubt itself, believe it has been weakened, despair over its own impotence, be ashamed of its own weakness.” (27) However, Latour argues this is where it needs to be: “It is precisely in its failures, when it deploys matters of concern, with unanticipated forms that make the use of any notion of nature radically impossible, that political ecology is finally doing its own job, finally innovating politically, finally bringing us out of modernism, finally preventing the proliferation of smooth, risk-free matters of fact…” This is essential – having made this shift from the cave, we can finally talk. On (28) Latour points out that nature has been invoked by politics long before the 1960s. It’s always been there – “natural law” “natural order” etc. In fact, “Conceptions of politics and conceptions of nature have always formed a pair as firmly united as the two seats on a seesaw … There has never been any other politics than the politics of nature, and there has never been any other nature than the nature of politics.” Nature and politics have ever been set us false opposites.

Latour does a great bit of lateral thinking in replacing nature with its plural. (29) ie: “the laws of natures” “The plural is decidedly unsuited to the political notion of nature.” For “starting with the myth of the Cave, it has been the unity of nature that produces its entire political benefit, since only this assembling, this ordering, can serve as a direct rival to the other form of assembling, composing, unifying, the entire traditional form that has always been called politics in the singular.” Great debate – never solvable. But his move “Instead of two distinct arenas … political ecology proposes to convoke a single collective whose role is precisely to debate the said hierarchy – and to arrive at an acceptable solution.” Again, similar to the notion of consilience. Remaining under the myth of the Cave, “We are still expecting our salvation to come from a double assembly, only one of those houses is called politics, while the other one simply and modestly declares its determination to define matters of facts; we have no inkling that this hope of salvation is precisely what threatens our public life…” (31) But this new conception of political ecology can put an end “to the domination of the ancient infernal pairing of nature and politics, in order to substitute for it, through countless innovations, many of which remain to be introduced, the public life of a single collective.” (31) This is not a denouncement of scientific work and its importance, but a restoring of it to a human position, so that it can play a useful role, and a role desperately needed, in political ecology. – Nick

Bruno Latour (in brief)

2009-04-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

Quick thoughts

Recent readings dealing with dualities, splits in our thinking and zipping them back into something whole. Last week in regards to the split of Plato’s cave, referred to Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as dealing with Plato and his fight against sophists. (http://nstctc.blogspot.com/2009/04/zenmm-in-connection-to-plato.html This comes up early in Latour’s essay as he sets out to reverse the split that story put into place in Western thought. This also brings to mind EO Wilson’s idea of “consilience” in his book of the same name. He defines the term (an existing word he retooled for his use) as involving the integration of multiple disciplines to establish a “common groundwork of explanation.” Wilson proposes that only when the disciplines come together can the problems that affect the world be appropriately addressed, writing “Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as seen through the lens of ideologies and religious dogmas or commanded by myopic response to immediate need.”Wilson also warns that “A balanced perspective cannot be acquired by studying disciplines in pieces but through pursuit of the consilience among them.”

In my head, Latour and Wilson are talking the same thing. Latour is bringing down Science from this mythical place and making it unsmooth, messy, rhizomatic, and connected to our experience so that real conversation can happen. Wilson is talking about the danger of specialization (as initially voiced by CP Snow in “The Two Cultures”) that arose from the failure of the Enlightenment where no one knows how to talk to each other. With the idea of Consilience and Latour’s “political ecology,” a common framework is established, a means to have a dialogue and actually tackle issues that both men are passionate about – the health of our species and the health of this planet. All that said, Wilson’s use of “Science” may set Latour off, though I’m less clear what might upset Wilson. Having heard Latour I wondered why he didn’t mention Wilson, so curious to gain a better understanding of the difference in their arguments. (http://nstctc.blogspot.com/2009/02/bruno-latour-lecture.html) As someone who’s used Wilson’s work in my own work, I know I’ve gotten flack from social science folks who are angry with him about sociobiology – which personally, I don’t think they understand. Wilson rocks – a delightful, endlessly inquisitive man, as Latour also seems to be. I’d love to hear a conversation between them. Perhaps I’ll have to imagine it.

One more quick thought (longer notes and comments coming in second installment), at dinner tonight Leah was discussing long known health benefits of tai chi, yoga – and how now Science is “proving” them. It pointed out just how prevalent this split is in our culture, that we don’t even know that it’s happening. This prompted a quick discussion of Latour and her conversation with an Indian man in her class who brought up the difference between hard date and testimonials, the qualitative/quantitative split more or less. The beauty of the readings is even when they’re things we already feel we know and definitely believe in, it raises our awareness to what’s happening all around us.

Oh yeah, Latour also brought to mind Michael Pollan who I was fortunate to hear speak this term. His analogy of thinking of being a naturalist as gardening, I think is in line with Latour. It’s acknowledging the human in the natural from the ground up – there is no separate Nature in the romantic, mystical sense. Hence, Pollan is to Latour as farming is to political ecology. As with Wilson and Latour, there’s the same strong passion for ecology, but thinking of ways to do so beyond protecting Nature. All compelling arguments. – Nick

Even Quicker Plato/Prometheus

2009-04-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

For Plato, knowledge is something out there, something tangible, fixed, to be attained.

For Aeschylus, Prometheus’ knowledge, in the form of fire is never touchable (you get burned) and always changing – knowledge is a continual process. - Nick

Prometheus Plato Pirsig quick version…

2009-04-22T09:11:00.001-07:00

Let’s think about all of this in terms of education. Plato begins by saying on (208) to “compare the effect of education and that of the lack of it on our nature to an experience like this.” Which is the setup for his cave analogy, which is not really about teaching people skills, understanding, but exposing them to the Good or the True. Contrast this with Prometheus, though perhaps a bit didactic as a teacher, he shows people how to do things, and they run with it. His gift of fire became “for men a teacher in every art, their grand resource.” (24) Thus as Plato’s man was led out of the cave, and from the knowable realm to the intelligible realm (211), and gleamed truth and understanding, Prometheus gives initially “mindless” men “mind and reason” sight, “their every act was without knowledge, till I came.” (34) “All human skill and science was Prometheus’ gift.” Essentially man’s existence is due to Prometheus, particularly since Zeus, “Of wretched humans he took no account, resolved To annihilate them and create another race. This purpose there was no one to oppose but I: I dared. I saved the human race from being ground To dust, from total death.” (27) Furthermore, “I planted firmly in their hearts blind hopefulness…” (28)

Prometheus’s gift is one to all men, whereas the intelligible realm is only accessible to the few. And it is those few that Plato suggests should lead. “we have bred you to be leaders and kings in the hive, so to speak. You are better and more completely educated than the others, and better able to share in both types of life.” (214) Education is not possible for all: As he writes, “education is not what some people boastfully declare it to be. They presumably say they can put knowledge into souls that lack it, as if they could put sight into blind eyes.” (212) But this is what Prometheus does – and fire is a symbol of change, of possibility, which is in contrast to Plato’s fixed, permanent Truth. Plato needs a fixed, permanent truth for in Pirsig’s words, this is the first time in the history of the world that there is an ideal of Truth and Knowledge, (338) and “It is still a very fragile thing. It can disappear completely. … Plato damns them [the Sophists] because they threaten mankind’s first beginning grasp of the idea of truth.” “Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. … the Sophists are the enemy.” (337) In his philosophy Plato, enshrined permanence in a new way.” (336) On the other side there was Heraclitus, who “called the Immortal Principle fire and introduced change as part of the Principle.” This is in line with Prometheus, bringer of fire, bringer of change. More from Pirsig, “The difference was that Plato’s Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.” (335) And in the end, “Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of Quality…” (334) We accept that there’s a truth, something out there that we can attain, rather than the idea that all of this is our inventions, and thus can be reinvented. There’s nothing fixed that says “this is the right way,” only that this is what we’ve been doing, and it seems to work. the dialectic is supposed to take us to greater truths, but in fact it often leads to verifying what’s believed before. This is where Prometheus and fire comes in, bringing change, new thought.

It’s the purpose of education, it’s a gift of life, of freedom. And it allows us to challenge the gods, the power elite. Prometheus imagines a world where cunning wins over strength in the future. And even Zeus is eventually won over by this in his eventually pardoning of Prometheus. Change is possible. – Nick

Prometheus Plato Pirsig Points

2009-04-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

Plato begins on (208) to “compare the effect of education and that of the lack of it on our nature to an experience like this.” He then outlines his story of the cave. Essentially humans fettered in place, forced to look only one direction and see shadows projected by people unseen of the people, animals, and objects. This is all they know of reality. It is in my terminology very “flat.” The Matrix clearly borrows heavily from Plato, complete with fetters and virtual reality shadows as substance. Even after being released from bonds and able to turn around, men become puzzled and “believe that the things he saw earlier were more truly real than the ones he was being shown?” (209) How would we know what was real after, and how would we know now? This brings to mind Edwin Abbot’s Flatland (and again I’m thinking about unflattening.) Wherein “A. Square” visits lower dimensions in preparation for a visit from the higher dimensional Sphere. It’s impossible to imagine something outside of our reality, another dimension, at least in anything but the abstract. But through analogy we can. As far as going back to tell others in the cave, he would “go through any sufferings, rather than share their beliefs and live as they do?” Those who claim to “know it” are often considered madman. (210)

Here’s the key of the dialogue, (211) Socrates ties the analogy back to their lives: “The realm revealed through sight should be likened to the prison dwelling, and the light of the fire inside it to the sun’s power. And if you think of the upward journey and the seeing of things above as the upward journey of the soul to the intelligible realm, you won’t mistake my intention…” “in the knowable realm the last thing to be seen is the form of the good, and it is seen only with toil and trouble. Once one has seen it, however, one must infer that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that in the visible realm it produces both light and its source, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding; and that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it.”

Essentially he’s saying that what we see with our eyes is only a shadow on the wall (the knowable realm), and what’s beyond it is the intelligible realm, and that’s where truth is, and the good…. He’s also making it out to be something fixed and permanent. Pirsig addresses this permanence in Z&tAoMM and how Truth is turned into fixed Ideal, something to be touched, rather than something constantly changing, always invented and rediscovered. (see earlier post for quotes.)

Thus, this knowledge is something some can attain, as “for your own sakes and for that of the rest of the city, we have bred you to be leaders and kings in the hive, so to speak. You are better and more completely educated than the others, and better able to share in both types of life. So each of you in turn must go down to live in the common dwelling place of the other citizens and grow accustomed to seeing in the dark. … So the city will be awake, governed by us and by you; not dreaming like the majority of cities nowadays, governed by men who fight against one another over shadows …” (214)

Having seen the “light” so to speak of knowledge is a great power and comes with great responsibility to return to the caves and guide the people. However, doesn’t seem to indicate trying to educate them and bring them into the light. As he writes, “education is not what some people boastfully declare it to be. They presumably say they can put knowledge into souls that lack it, as if they could put sight into blind eyes.” (212) Thus, “It is our task as founders, then, to compel the best natures to learn what was said before to be the most important thing: namely, to see the good; to ascend that ascent. And when they have ascended and looked sufficiently, we must not allow them to do what they are allowed to do now.” Which is: “To stay there and refuse to go down again to the prisoners in the cave and share their labors and honors, whether the inferior ones or the more excellent ones.” Citizens must “share with each other the benefit they can confer on the community.” (213) A key in here is the “Best” natures. Not that all can attain such things. An early idea of the “Power Elite” and that knowledge is a thing, of substance. need to turn our instrument toward the light, towards the good (the brightest thing there is…) (212)

Ideas of ruling, Cautionary warning just as applicable today “in it alone the truly rich will rule – those who are rich not in gold, but in the wealth the happy must have: namely, a good and rational lie. But if beggars – people hungry for private goods of their own – go into public life, thinking that the good is there for the seizing, then such a city is impossible. For when ruling is something fought over, such civil and domestic war destroys these men and the rest of the city as well.” (214) 214) “surely it is those who are not lovers of ruling who must go do it. Otherwise, the rivaling lovers will fight over it.” And therefore, “the truth of the matter is surely this: a city in which those who are going to rule are least eager to rule is necessarily best and freest from faction, whereas a city with the opposite kind of rulers is governed in the opposite way.” (214)

Aeschylus “Prometheus Bound”

Unlike the story of the Modern Prometheus, Dr. Frankenstein, who stole the power to give life from the gods, which serves as a warning for humans attaining knowledge not meant for them and general fear of technology, in this version of the Prometheus tale, his theft of fire, is a gift of life, of freedom to humanity. And where he’s punished is that it gave people a chance to challenge gods. It’s never totally clear what Prometheus’s motivation is. He steals fire from Hephaestus and acts as champion of human race (20) But why? He says on 34, “all my gifts were guided by goodwill” and pity for mortal men (28). And since he’s a seer, did he know his fate and the anger of Zeus and do it anyway? (24)

(On a side note, I wonder in this passage: “Scorched with the sun’s flaming rays your skin will lose Its bloom of freshness…” (21) Could we think of Prometheus as another race, who’d come up with technology, science, earlier, and then punished? On (33) we learn that the races weep for Prometheus – all over the world… Is Prometheus the African people, the first people? Probably too much of a stretch….)

Prometheus’s gift, fire became “for men a teacher in every art, their grand resource.” (24) On 34 we hear all else that he brought, “At first Mindless, I gave them mind and reason. … In those days they had eyes, but sight was meaningless; Heard sounds, but could not listen; all their length of life They passed like shapes in dreams, confused and purposeless. … lived in holes, like swarms of ants, Or deep in sunless caverns…” Here we have a reference to the Cave and thus to Plato’s dialogue. Men lived in this state of no knowledge. “their every act was without knowledge, till I came.” He says he taught men about the stars, mathematics, writing “the all-remembering skill, mother of many arts” harnessed animals, gave them sailing, medicines, the means to understand prophecy (also, his means were part of his thievery from Zeus), treasures from the earth – bronze, iron, silver, gold – and we must assume the means to work them, Summarized: “All human skill and science was Prometheus’ gift.” Essentially man’s existence is due to Prometheus. Particularly since Zeus, “Of wretched humans he took no account, resolved To annihilate them and create another race. This purpose there was no one to oppose but I: I dared. I saved the human race from being ground To dust, from total death.” (27) Furthermore, “I planted firmly in their hearts blind hopefulness…” (28) In other stories, this is also attributed to Pandora, who is also seen as a burden created for man.

We learn that Prometheus stood with Zeus against the Titans, because “they despised cunning; in their pride of strength They foresaw easy victory and rule of might.” But his mother Themis, or Earth “Had many times foretold to me, that not brute strength, Not violence, but cunning must give victory To the rulers of the future.” (27) But then Zeus turned around and ruled with brute strength. For “A new master holds the helm of Olympus; These are new laws indeed By which Zeus tyrannically rules; And the great powers of the past he now destroys.” (25) And “We are ruled by one Whose harsh and sole dominion none may call to account.” (30) “Zeus, ruling by law of his own invention, Provides an example of his proud power over the gods of the past.” (32) “All tasks are burdensome – except to rule the gods, No one is free but Zeus.” (22)

In Zeus’ eventual pardoning of Prometheus (later plays/stories), we see a change, a turn in him from ruling simply out of strength, and using reason, thought, and this serves as analog for the way the Greeks thought of ruling, as different to what had gone before.

Zen/MM - in connection to Plato

2009-04-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

I thought that some of the discussion in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance shed light on Plato's writings and our overall discussion. Some excerpts presented here:

334-5) Dialectic as usurper. Seeking to contain and control the Good. Re: Plato’s condemnation of the Sophists. … “Plato’s hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which the reality of the Good, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man. Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area than in the other.”

336) philosophy … enshrined permanence in a new way.” “Heraclitus called the Immortal Principle fire and introduced change as part of the Principle.”

“Parmenides made it clear for the first time that the Immortal Principle, the One, Truth, God, is separate from appearance and from opinion, and the importance of this separation and its effect upon subsequent history cannot be overstated. It’s here that the classic mind, for the first time, took leave of its romantic origins and said, “The Good and the True are not necessarily the same,” and goes its separate ways.” …. Socrates who carried their ideas into full fruition.”

337) up to this point, “there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later.” Calls these divisions an artistic creation – not things to be discovered….

In Dialogues of Plato “Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. … the Sophists are the enemy.”

338) “Truth. Knowledge. That which is independent of what anyone thinks about it. The ideal that Socrates died for. The ideal that Greece alone possesses for the very first time in the history of the world. It is still a very fragile thing. It can disappear completely. … Plato Damns them [the Sophists] because they threaten mankind’s first beginning grasp of the idea of truth.”

342) halo around heads of Plato and Socrates is gone. He sees that they consistently are doing exactly that which they accuse the Sophists of doing – using emotionally persuasive language for the ulterior purpose of making the weaker argument, the case for the dialectic, appear the stronger….”

“Plato hadn’t tried to destroy arête. He had encapsulated it; made a permanent, fixed idea out of it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile Immortal truth. He made arête the Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that had gone before.”

>>KEY: “The difference was that Plato’s Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.”

343 – the why, Make arête subordinate to Immortal Truth.

“But in his attempt to unite the Good and the True by making the Good the highest idea of all, Plate is nevertheless usurping arete’s place with dialectically determined truth. Once the Good has been contained as a dialectical idea it is no trouble for another philosopher to come along and show by dialectical methods that arête, the Good, can be more advantageously demoted to a lower position within a “true” order of things, more compatible with the inner workings of the dialectic. … it was Aristotle.”

Links to relevant things

2009-04-22T06:37:00.001-07:00

This came up in conversation Monday night in regards to “Project Rebirth.” “After the Deluge” originally a web-comic, now (or soon) to be in print, followed the stories of six people who survived Hurricane Katrina. Thought it was relevant and some of you might be interested: http://www.smithmag.net/afterthedeluge/

Also as an extra treat, here’s a link to Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole’s version of “Prometheus Bound”: http://www.paintinghere.com/UploadPic/Thomas%20Cole/big/Prometheus%20Bound.jpg

Pappacharissi

2009-04-15T09:40:00.001-07:00

Pappacharissi addresses utopian notions of the internet bringing about true democratization. (379) But for her, it’s a debate between whether “the internet and its surrounding technologies will truly revolutionize the political sphere or whether they will be adapted to the current status quo, especially at a time when the public is demonstrating dormant political activity and developing growing cynicism towards politics.” (379-80) She makes an important distinction between public space and public sphere: “A virtual space enhances discussion; a virtual sphere enhances democracy.” (380) Which do we have?

In confronting the existence of Habermas’ public sphere, Pappacharissi then asks whether the “internet can recreate a public sphere that perhaps never was, foster several diverse public spheres, or simply become absorbed by commercial culture.” (382) Numerous factors are explored, from who has access (382) and the illusion that it’s accessible and open to all. (383) We get so much information from tv and internet, (383) so as to “supersaturate viewers with political information, and that as a result ‘this tumult creates in viewers a sense of activity rather than genuine civic involvement.” Wisely states, “Access to more information does not necessarily create more informed citizens, or lead to greater political activity….” (384) Do people really come together, or instead splinter off into tribes of like-minded folks as they do offline? And in fact, this might be more the case online as you can avoid your neighbors who might have different ideas than you. Anonymity fosters flaming and “hasty opinions rather than rational and focused discourse.” (385) Commercialization transforms it into entertainment and a means of consumption instead of discourse.

It seems we bring our offline problems to an online world. Technology is neither the problem nor our savior, as Dewey discussed. The real shift has to come in our adeptness at communication and the civic responsibility that springs from education for democracy. Without it, we never address what’s really going on. And I believe Pappacharissi’s article shows this, by outlining technology’s potential and shortcomings. The real change comes in our approach and our values. – Nick

Habermas - quick history of rise and fall of public sphere

2009-04-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

A quick look at history, as seen through Habermas’s story of the emergence and suppression of the public sphere.

There is feudal civilization, where the lords “represent their power ‘before’ the people, instead of for the people.” (351)

At some point, this power structure cannot hold. Perhaps the population is too great, printing press makes information available, ideas of the Enlightenment start to spread – and that longstanding structure collapses.

In its wake, perhaps a true public sphere emerges. (Though we must note it only extends to men of a particular dominant class to begin with.) Habermas defines it thus: “By ‘the public sphere,’ we mean first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body.” (350) It came about through debate, and he writes, “The medium of this debate – public discussion – was unique and without historical precedent.” (352) Instrumental in fomenting this debate and thus the public were newspapers, which flourished: “Newspapers changed from mere institutions for the publication of news into bearers and leaders of public opinion – weapons of party politics.” “The press remained an institution of the public itself, effective in the manner of a mediator and intensifier of public discussion, no longer a mere organ for the spreading of news but not yet the medium of a consumer culture.” (353) The media was a medium of communication and education. Allowed for the creation of an informed public.

But then….

Private, commercial interests take hold. The newspapers are subverted by consumer culture. Big private interests outweigh what the larger public wants. The public sphere is retreating. We see the rise of what Mills calls the BIG 3: “With the interweaving of the public and private realm, not only do the political authorities assume certain functions in the sphere of commodity exchange and social labor, but conversely social powers now assume political functions. This leads to a kind of ‘refeudalization’ of the public sphere.” (354)

But this time around, the feudal state is more subtly organized. For, “… at the same time the large organizations must assure themselves of at least plebiscitary support from the mass of the population through an apparent display of openness.” (354) It’s a matter of “public relations” shaping public perceptions and creating the illusion of participatory democracy and freedom. Thus that brief twinkle of a true public sphere, however mythical it might actually have been, is snuffed before it has much chance to shine. Things are back to where they were, but the forms of control are more insidious. And maybe that’s how they’d have to be. It would seem, at a certain scale, the public simply can’t be oppressed – at least directly. People will revolt, form undergrounds, resist at all costs. But if that oppression is cloaked in the guise of freedom and the public is given other things to take their minds off of it, the forms of control can hold. This isn’t to suggest conspiratorial manipulation, just that that’s the sort of choices we’ve made or failed to make, or have had made for us. In the face of disaster, unbridled oppression, the people will rise. But how do we rise in the face of comfort? It’s a matter of civic responsibility, a core of education for democracy. And we have a long ways to go. – Nick

Community and Habermas

2009-04-14T21:03:00.000-07:00

(This was originally a note sent to this week's monday night group concerning our conversation.)

For me, I find that the times when I’ve felt most connected to community as being exciting and empowering. (Hence the reason I often follow up our conversations with a note of this sort.) Whether the period Habermas describes is mythical or not, and how few people it actually extended to or not, I wonder what it might have felt like. The excitement that perhaps permeated the air – people thinking, yes, we’re a part of this, and we can steer where we’re all going. I wonder then about Amy’s time with the campaign and if that feeling, that yeah, we can make a difference existed and how we can manifest that realization of empowerment.

Thinking of Nigel’s role in his community, I think of my past role in Detroit and the web-magazine I ran (which I know I mention a lot.) In looking on that time from the lens of our discussion (and I felt this way at the time) the web-mag offered a means to connect people in the community to one another and to physical events happening in their community. They could be in the know, if they chose to do so, and thus could participate based on that knowledge, again, if they chose to do so. I can say for myself, if I hadn’t done the legwork to compile information in one place for a public, I wouldn’t have had any idea what was going on right around me either. So it served me, and I know it served others. And I see the role of such offerings, and the media in general, as education – a way to gather people around a common table. To such an end, it succeeded (and I hope continues to do so.) Where I always felt disappointed was that more people didn’t help in the efforts to grow it, extend it, strengthen it, make it an even more vital presence in the community. Again, it’s the same people who help clean up and put chairs away when the party’s over.

So to that end, I think Amy’s right on: it’s that civic responsibility that needs to be imbued in people – ala Dewey’s democracy through education. If people see their responsibility for one another, they may take action from the start, rather than waiting for the crisis. (And I think, when it is crisis time, almost all people do take action – so fundamentally, we can’t say people just don’t care about others. They just don’t think about others, or that their actions matter beforehand.) - Nick

P.S. A related link concerning the advent of hyperlocal websites: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html?_r=1&hpw

Chair – Throne

2009-04-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

I think we can think of the chair as definitely tying into Veblen’s theory of the leisure class. The following is excerpted from something I wrote some time ago, but I think is relevant to this discussion:

The idea of the chair or the throne has been equated with status from the Egyptian pharaohs to the European kings to today’s chairmen of the board. Advanced social status means you get to be the one sitting while others scurry around. … The ruler sat on his throne while the workers toiled in his fields. … The gods of ancient myth sat the most upright and in the highest thrones.

Being able to sit – and sit in a comfy chair (I inherited an aeron, which is apparently a big deal) is a show of how much leisure we can afford. At some points in history rulers are carried around in their chairs. Now we have cars with chauffeurs – servants that are great displays of wealth. To sit while others must stand is divine… - Nick

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. (Veblen)

2009-04-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

Veblen writes, “the earliest form of ownership is an ownership of the women by the able-bodied men of the community.” (15) We see this ownership present today in the diamond engagement ring. It is on one hand a show of ownership, this woman is off limits, belongs to someone. Once upon a time, it would have come with an exchange of a herd of cattle or some tremendous dowry. It’s clearly also a display of conspicuous consumption – the bigger, the more the man is worth. It “should” cost the man so many months’ salary to pay for it.

“If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it” – Beyonce

We know the myth perpetuated by the DeBeers family in South Africa, artificially created a market for diamonds. The diamond is a perfect symbol of leisure consumption. It’s of no use (at least as a stone on a ring) and it’s not actually all that rare. But by constructing a myth of its value, diamonds became a way for men to show off their wealth vicariously, and to be of good manners, good blood, have to literally buy into this, and take ownership of the ring. That isn’t to suggest, as Veblen does, that useless things can’t have other uses. In this case, the symbolism of commitment – literally engagement, but such a show of symbolism need not be achieved by a diamond, for anything agreed to by both parties as having importance should suffice. The diamond ring is however, primarily a way to show off wealth, to claim ownership of the wearer. The man is saying, I have so much, I can bejewel my property or as Veblen writes, “possession of the honorific booty” (18) and women’s “usefulness as trophies.” (16)

“That girl is feeling Trapped by that ring on her finger” – Johnny Clegg

For the women, the ring is a sense of pride, something to be showed off, and oohed and ahhed at by their friends. It’s an affiliation, perhaps of love, but certainly of connection to wealth. The connection between the engagement ring and ownership has bothered for some time in the abstract. Veblen’s ideas compound my existing feelings, as the idea of the ring is not quite so much in the abstract at this point in time. – Nick

Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class”

2009-04-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

Veblen’s work struck me hard from the first note, and he just kept building on that, example after example. I may depart a bit from summation and instead spin off this into mythologies ala Barthes somewhat. (At least that’s what I’m thinking…)

It seems to me, Veblen sets up a split, a path taken by humanity as far back as humanity could be called humanity. Whether chosen or not, what ruled the day emerged from this predatory notion, how wealth and leisure were deemed most valuable and everything of productive value – not so much. From this lens, Veblen shows how the ordering of modern society, around wealth, leisure, conspicuous consumption has come to be. It really turns things on their head – when we think of noblemen and honor, and then he conflates them with predatory behavior. It’s wonderful and horrifying all at once. On 26 he writes, “it is gain obtained by the honorable method of seizure and conversion. These occupations are of the nature of predatory, not productive, employment.” “honorable = seizure and conversion.” It’s like backwards day, and that’s what our world is.

I want to contrast this path taken with a quick parable I found in the Translator's Introduction to The Art of War:

According to an old story, a lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled in the art. The physician, whose reputation was such that his name became synonymous with medical science in China, replied, "My eldest brother sees the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house.”

"My elder brother cures sickness when it is still extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood.”

“As for me, I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords."

… The healing arts and the martial arts may be a world apart in ordinary usage, but they are parallel in several senses: in recognizing, as the story says, that the less needed the better; in the sense that both involve strategy in dealing with disharmony; and in the sense that in both knowledge of the problem is key to the solution. (found here: http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-0-87773-452-9.cfm?selectedtext=EXCERPT_CHAPTER )

Rather than seeing value in taking care of our community, it’s in having the biggest horde, the most beautiful wife – it’s collecting booty, and having others work for you. If we want to look at the Chinese example more literally, we see it reflected in the medical profession today: specialized surgeons get big bucks and are cloaked in status, whereas means of prevention are given little attention.

How can we take another path? First off, I think awareness of this. Pulling the wool of our eyes and say this is not how things have to be, and this is not “natural”, it didn’t emerge from our environment, but it emerged from people taking – predatory quite literally. Can it be taken back? In time, through education and diligence and action. A change in values to something more like the parable and less like Veblen’s powerful and bleak view of who we are. – Nick

Mythologies of the Republican Party (Barthes)

2009-04-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

Thinking on the spectacle of Wrestling and the mythology behind it, how we buy into something obviously contrived. Perhaps harmless in wrestling, the spectacle that is politics today (and perhaps always) is not so innocuous. I think of my girlfriend’s mother, and having spent the past week with her, noted that we tend to think along similar lines on most things about care for our community, our planet. However, politically, we are on opposite ends. That is we vote different – but for the most part our feeling on issues are in synch. Where’s the separation – it’s in the mythology, as I think presented particularly well by the Republican party, a compelling story that they’ve pitched that makes me people ignore all the things they actually care about, and instead by sucked in by something that’s not even sort of true. Not unlike the reality of wrestling. George Lakoff offers a strong article on such things here: http://www.alternet.org/election08/97193/lakoff:_palin_appeals_to_voter_emotions_--_dems_beware/

Barthes Comments

2009-04-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

Myth Today

Trying to unravel the complexity of Barthes’s language, a mythology in itself, finally read it backwards, and was able to pull out a few more ideas. Still plenty to grasp in this, but feel I’m making progress.

Some key ideas “Myth is a type of speech.” (109) thus myth is a system of communication, it’s a message. It’s not an object, concept or idea – it’s a mode of signification, a form, therefore anything can be transformed into myth “provided it is conveyed by a discourse.” Barthes writes, because “the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions. Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things.” Myths aren’t eternal (110) as they are attached to human history “which converts reality into speech…”

Following from Saussure, Barthes writes, “Myth is a semiological system.” (111) Defines Semiology – as science of forms – studies significations apart from their content, and postulates “a relation between two terms, a signifier and a signified.” (112) Rose example: roses (signifier); passion (signified); passionified roses (sign), in Saussure’s terms: “signifier = concept, signified = acoustic (mental) image; the relation between concept and image is the sign (the word, for instance) which is a concrete entity.” (113) Mythology is thus “a second order semiological system.” (114) And this is key“Myth is a peculiar system, in that it is constructed from a semiological chain which existed before it: it is a second-order semiological system. That which is a sign (namely the associative total of a concept and an image) in the first system, becomes a mere signifier in the second. We must here recall that the materials of mythical speech (the language itself, photography, painting, posters, rituals, objects, etc.), however different at the start, are reduced to a pure signifying function as soon as they are caught by myth” (114) Myth is staggered in relation to the linguistic system it is built, it’s a metalanguage which one speaks about the first. (115) In language plane, Signifier = meaning; signified = concept; sign. In mythological plan: Signifier = form; signified = concept; sing=signification. (117) Key phrase: “Myth has a double function – it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us.”

The point of all of this terminology is here (117) “signifier of myth presents itself in an ambiguous way: it is at the same time meaning and form, full on one side and empty on the other.” “As meaning, the signifier already postulates a reading… there is richness in it … history. … taken hold of by myth – “empty, parasitical form. The meaning is already complete, it postulates a kind of knowledge, a past, a memory, a comparative order of facts, ideas, decisions.” “When it becomes form, the meaning leaves its contingencies behind; it empties itself, it becomes impoverished, history evaporates, only the letter remains. There is here a paradoxical permutation in the reading operations, an abnormal regression from meaning to form, from the linguistic sign to the mythical signifier.” He continues on (118) “form does not suppress meaning, it only impoverishes it, it puts it at a distance, it holds it at one’s disposal. … the meaning loses its value, but keeps its life, from which the form of the myth will draw its nourishment. The meaning will be for the form like an instantaneous reserve of history, a tamed richness.” And finally on (119) the “fundamental character of the mythical concept is to be appropriated….”

For me, this connects to ideas of postmodernism, and appropriation leads to ideas of sampling. We borrow from the past (made that much more possible by means of mechanical reproduction) and use things that have recognizable meaning as part of our new mythologies. The appropriation retains some part of the signs original meaning, but only just, it’s drained of its richness, and remains as an icon. This is why Barthes suggests that “myth prefers to work with poor, incomplete images, where the meaning is already relieved of its fat, and ready for a signification, such as caricatures, pastiches, symbols, etc. Finally, the motivation is chosen among other possible ones…” (127) Che comes to mean some hipster cool idea of revolution, of out of the box, just like Apple computers, and we buy into the myth without looking into the meaning it originally was infused with. Along these lines Barthes writes: “myth is speech stolen and restored.” “only speech which is restored is no longer quite that which was stolen: when it was brought back, it was not put exactly in its place. It is this brief act of larceny, this moment taken for a surreptitious faking, which gives mythical speech its benumbed look.” (125) Che stolen, looks like Che, may even sound like Che, but is no longer quite Che. This has been the basis of ads featuring Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire dancing – the likeness is there, but meaning is gone.

Barthes defines connection between myth and meaning as a “relation of deformation.” (122) And continues: “this distortion is possible only because the form of the myth is already constituted by a linguistic meaning. In a simple system like the language, the signified cannot distort anything at all because the signifier, being empty, arbitrary, offers no resistance to it. but here, everything is different: the signifier has, so to speak, two aspects: one full, which is the meaning (history…) one empty, which is the form….” Calls myth a “double system” (123) Offers analogy of turnstile, alternating between signifier and form, a language object and metalanguage, a purely signifying and a purely imagining consciousness.” Continues with window pane example – can look beyond glass or focus on it, “glass is at once present and empty” thus “landscape unreal and full” “The same thing occurs in the mythical signifier: its form is empty but present, its meaning absent but full.” (123-4)

Final notes, in language sign is arbitrary, however, “mythical signification on the other hand, is never arbitrary: it is always in part motivated, and unavoidably contains some analogy.” (126) “Motivation is necessary to the very duplicity of myth: myth plays on the analogy between meaning and form, there is not myth without motivated form.” “Myth is a pure ideographic system, where the forms are still motivated by the concept which they represent while not yet, by a long way, covering the sum of its possibilities for representation.” (127) Returning to sampling, we can take things that once have meaning, and give them whatever meaning – or really non-meaning – more image, that we choose. This leads to his mythologies that make up the book.

In the “World of Wrestling” for instance, he opens with “Wrestling is not a sport, it’s a spectacle” (15) This speaks to a removal from reality, where “What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.” (18) Wrestling is not competition or sport, but it offers theater, and “what wrestling is above all meant to portray is a purely moral concept: that of justice. The idea of ‘paying’ is essential to wrestling…” (21) and it “…. Unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible.” (25) This makes me think of superheroes, of black and white morality in their 4-color costumes.

The Blue Blood Cruise is the height of absurdity. Kings pretending to live like commoners for a day. It thus points out how lacking our own lives are. This is the apex of advertising, demonstrate need by artifice, and how our lives are less without it. The Face of Garbo “is an idea” – mask rather than human.

In The Nautilus and the Drunken Boat, Barthes gets us to think of the ship as an enclosure, as habitat before transport (66) that is self-sufficient, and has an “egg-like fullness.” (65) With no occupant, ship becomes an eye. He contrasts this with Rimbaud’s drunken boat: The “boat which says “I” and, freed from its concavity, can make man proceed from a psycho-analysis of the cave to a genuine poetics of exploration.”

The Brain of Einstein has become myth. Barthes talks about it becoming height of thinking machine and also magical at the same time. And “Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to formula. Paradoxically, the more the genius of the man was materialized under the guise of the brain, the more the product of his inventiveness came to acquire a magical dimension, and gave a new incarnation to the old esoteric image of a science entirely contained in a few letters. There is a single secret to the world, and this secret is held in one word; the universe is a safe of which humanity seeks the combination: Einstein almost found it, this is the myth of Einstein.” (69) Calls him “at once magician and machine.”

A little more on Striptease (covered in earlier post): How most prominent display of sexuality becomes desexualized “at the very moment when she is stripped naked.” (84) Disguise and dance all distance her from sexuality, as this becomes business. All the accoutrements of the striptease become illusion, mythology, still retaining some meaning, but only just.

Striptease and Ageism

2009-04-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

In my Metropolis essay, I touched upon the idea of how bodies become objects, sex becomes a part of mechanized society. I wrote:

Our bodies aren’t a safe haven from mechanization either. As time and landscape go, bodies become objects – a sum of our parts and functions. This is demonstrated in the erotic gyrations of the mechanical Maria. Her movements and objectification are hypnotic to men who fall under the spell of the machine.

A string of events sent me to revisit this idea in more detail. First it was a conversation on a 60 year old woman having plastic surgery, just to “freshen up” her face a bit, that sort of thing. Shortly thereafter, saw a photo in an exhibition of a wonderfully wrinkled old man, and was thinking of the layers of history contained in those wrinkles, and how they could be seen as a kind of beauty. Yet our culture is seduced by a reduction to objects – that beauty is a youthful perfection – only achieved by products and manipulation. This ageism warps our vision, and we fail to appreciate who we are. I see this reflected in Barthes’s “Striptease” – where he talks of the diamond G-string, a symbol of objectification, connecting the woman to the mineral world, “the (precious) stone being here the irrefutable symbol of the absolute object, that which serves no purpose.” Barthes concludes by saying this is how the striptease becomes nationalized. Sexuality is removed, objectification is put forth. – N

Value of Critical Analysis

2009-04-01T06:18:00.000-07:00

The question came up in the review conversation whether critical analysis had any value, even if it didn’t suggest proactive solutions. I say, absolutely. We might think of it in this overly simplified way: we need someone to tell us the emperor has no clothes, a voice to pull the wool off our eyes, and begin to see things differently. I mentioned art in this context, and how the arts prepare us for new ways of seeing, enabling us with perspectives for dealing with the future. This is entirely the case with the works of Marcuse, Mills, Polanyi – through them we can see the world we take for granted in a different light. And maybe, that alerts enough people to what’s going on, that new approaches are found, new paths taken. The importance of writing, of putting ideas down, of thinking hard about who we are and how we’ve come here can’t be stressed enough. – Nick

Retrospective: Benjamin, Dewey, Marcuse, Mills, Polanyi

2009-03-24T22:53:00.000-07:00

(Extended version)
Had trouble making this short, so much in common between all of them, and so many different approaches at looking at things. In bringing together these different views, it provides us, the readers, with the tools to have a broad view at what's going on now and how we got there. - N

Overlaps: I find a common thread of between them all, a shared sense of empathy and concern for the plight of humanity. Although they may all offer slightly different names, each one delves into the causes behind modern society’s dehumanizing effects – the people are oppressed and freedoms and individuality lost. Dewey felt that “the society itself has been pulverized into an aggregate of unrelated wants and wills.” (21) He continues, “The creation of political unity has also promoted social and intellectual uniformity, a standardization favorable to mediocrity.” (115) This is society flattened out, rendered into tasteless mush, rather than a rich dish of distinct flavors. Finally, Dewey discussed loss of humanity, as men were becoming machines to tend inanimate machines. (175) Along these lines, Polanyi said that under production, man and nature must be transformed into commodities, “as goods produced for sale.” (136) This, he said, “would be tantamount to annihilating them” (137), and he detailed this “economic earthquake” and “destructive landslide” (164) produced by the Industrial Revolution where “under the rule of the market the people could not be prevented from starving according to the rules of the game.” (168) Furthermore, the destitution and loss of rights and liberties “were judged a fair price to pay for the fulfillment of the requirement of sound budgets and sound currencies, these a priori of economic liberalism.” (148) Benjamin is concerned with “mechanical reproduction,” and what’s been lost in it – the “aura,” a thing’s uniqueness or individuality destroyed by reproduction. (223) We might also think of him having to speak, as Kafka put it, the “Language of the Oppressor,” and how mechanical reproduction became the tool of Fascism. The cornerstone of Mills’s work deals with the ability to make decisions that affect people’s lives taken out of their hands (13) and made only to serve instead. (6) Subsequently, this led to the “transformation of the publics of America into a mass society.” (297) Marcuse describes “advanced industrial civilization” as leading to a “”comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom” and “the suppression of individuality in the mechanization” of society. (1) He describes “mechanized work” as “exhausting, stupefying, inhuman slavery” (25) a “pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing.” (33) This “mechanized enslavement” of people is total, “not only its body but also its mind and even its soul.” (26) Their insights into the core and causes of the troubles faced when they were writing remain painfully relevant today.

Particular Similarities: I tend to see the most overlap between Dewey’s work and the others – the broad philosophical nature of his text touches on something present in all the others. The specificity of Benjamin’s piece makes it perhaps the most difficult to reconcile with the others, though he’s as concerned with all he sees as being lost to modern life. Between them, we might connect Dewey’s idea of an “aesthetic experience” to Benjamin’s concept of the “aura.” Dewey makes the distinction “between democracy as a social idea and political democracy as a system of government,” (143) which echoes what Marcuse says: “Democracy would appear to be the most efficient system of domination.” (52) An oppression via the appearance of freedom. As Mills put it, “We do not all have equal access to the means of power that now exist, nor equal influence over their use.” (22) On another note, Marcuse (33) connects the productive establishments and military for mutual growth much as Mills defines the Big 3. Dewey sees the key to breaking the power structure through education: “Every care would be taken to surround the young with the physical and social conditions which best conduce, as far as freed knowledge extends, to release of personal potentialities.” (200-1) In treating people with care – we can release their possibilities, not probabilities. This resonates with Marcuse who wrote that in order to create a free society “it must first enable its slaves to learn and see and think before they know what is going on and what they themselves can do to change it.” (40)

Divergences: At least for me, it’s hard to see much divergence between them in terms of contradictions or disagreements. But I do see them as looking at the same thing from different vantage points. Taken together, like the coming together of two (in this case more) eyes, allows for the possibility of perspective. We might also see this as overlapping pieces, building a more complete picture. To pick one area of possible divergence of the other sort, Dewey wrote, that “The formation of states must be an experimental process. … the experiment must always be retried; the State must always be rediscovered.” (33-4) I love this sense of continual discovery he expresses, and worry when “correct” solutions are proposed, that even though I agree with much of what’s said, that in setting it in stone, we haven’t created the same sorts of problems we’re trying to break free of (revolutions eating their children and all that…) In this vein of always rediscovering – Dewey identifies not just the problem or a, “how things could be different,” but the means, a process to get to a better place – Education. Of course this raises questions, as Marcuse asked, “Who educates the educators, and where is the proof that they are in possession of ‘the good?’” (41) Each thinker raises the idea that we need to question, question, question. Why are things the way they are and do they have to stay that way? We must always keep asking. – Nick

Comments from Last Class: Necessity/Language

2009-03-16T21:42:00.000-07:00

Spirited discussion this past week. Encouraging to be with a group of people both passionate and thoughtful on such things. A few comments:

NECESSITY: Azi spoke of being an engineering student and told to "create needs for people" in the form of products that they could then build. This reminded me of some past writing and the words of George Basalla. In his book, "The Evolution of Technology," he wrote how the invention of an idea gives birth to the necessity to make use of it. In other words, it's not that necessity is the mother of invention - it's the other way around. Most inventions serve no obvious purpose when invented - afterwards, however, a need is created to ensure that invention's survival.

On that note - from a headline in The Onion from way back: "Consumer-product diversity now exceeds biodiversity."

LANGUAGE: Also in class, we talked about systems that we are a part of, systems that have been with us for so long, they seem as if natural, it's impossible to imagine being outside of them. (I go into this with my Metropolis essay on Time.) I suggested language as a trap. We'll stay clear of memetics this time around, but we can think of language as abstraction of reality, as distancing us from our reality. Magritte presented it best with his image of a pipe and the caption "this is not a pipe. (Well, actually it was in French, which is a whole other issue.) Steven Pinker states that through the use of language, "we can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision." This speaks to being forced to use the language of the oppressor - what if language itself is the oppressor? One more quote, Rollo May wrote, "It is not that language is merely a tool of communication, or that we only use language to express our ideas; it is just as true that language uses us." (The Courage to Create, 85.)

I'll round out the Language thoughts with two passages from Alan Moore. In "Big Numbers", after an episode of swearing by one passenger on a train, an elderly man across the cabin says, "There's no need for language." A slip of the tongue? Or pointing to something deeper perhaps?

In "The Birth Caul," Moore takes us back in time with his character, slowly spiralling towards childhood, and as he goes, language devolves and we get to an attempt at presenting consciousness before language. Actually, as I start recalling more, this was all presented in a book called "The Disease of Language" which is a phrase from Aleister Crowley concerning magic, which Moore explains is mostly a linguistic phenomenon and “was therefore what had been lying at the end of the path beyond mere craft all along…” The coincide-ence of the word spell – as in to spell a word and to cast a spell – language and magic – speaks to the power of language. The book is on many levels a summation of the history of Britain as leading to an age where people are fit into the assembly line of progress. The focus shifts to the individual – “How did we come to be these wraiths in treadmill corridors,” who “work and sleep, work and sleep.” The Birth Caul was an effort to as Marc Singer describes it, “use language to erase language.” (Portrait 41) Words allow us to make meaning of the world, but also lead to a loss of direct experience.

And that ties back into the piece by Magritte. All for now. - N

Class Connections

2009-03-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

From this week's issue of the Nation, an article on the Half-Forgotten Prophet, C. Wright Mills. Timely for today and our ongoing class discussion: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090330/birnbaum

And from a very different source, but equally relevant, at least to my essay on the mechanization of time, a line from Grant Morrison's "Doom Patrol" (1991) spoken by the "New, New, New Brotherhood of Dada." It reads: "It's time to stop defending a world sick with reason! Aristotle and Newton were useless farts who made a machine of this whirling, wonderful world. Let's stop all the clocks and kiss the walls goodbye!" - In the end, the Dadaists (the villains) fail, shot down by the government, as the heroes, at first resistant, try to save them. Absurd, and absurdly relevant. - N

Rage is Good?

2009-03-14T17:21:00.001-07:00

Quick post: An article from the online version of The Nation hitting on a number of issues from class - laissez faire, interconnectedness of the power elite, socialism, people being crushed by the market - and so on. Talks of the opportunity to make voices heard in this moment. Time to wake up and show our rage: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/hayden?rel=hp_currently

Written by long-time activist Tom Hayden. (my dad knew him well back in school at UM - which makes me want to ask him more questions about those times) - N

Marcuse Comments

2009-03-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

I delved into this after I’d pretty much structured my Metropolis essay. Marcuse’s thoughts hit the heart of what I was after, at least on my reading of it, and for me, tied together a lot of the things we’ve been looking at. (It is, perhaps, the “heart” connecting head and hands…)

Marcuse starts out strong right out of the gate in the opening line: “A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technological process. (1) Also on that page, he writes: “The rights and liberties which were such vital factors in the origins and earlier stages of industrial society yield to a higher stage of this society: they are losing their traditional rationale and content. … Once institutionalized, these rights and liberties shared the fate of the society of which they become an integral part. The achievement cancels the premises.” I can’t help but connect this to the “peril of perfection” and the need, as Dewey said, to constantly challenge, to keep reaching. If we think we’ve got it already, we’ve lost it.

I think he beautifully and humanely sets up how we’ve lost our freedoms, and how subtle this is, how it comes, in fact, under the guise of freedom. For “Democracy would appear to be the most efficient system of domination.” People think they’ve got what they want, we have stuff, we can vote for someone. “Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. … Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” (7) on 4 he sets up the idea of needs as distraction: “The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence.” Contrasts “true and false needs” (4-5), false being those which we’re told we need – material stuff, and true ones, being means for survival. (5) It’s pursuit of false needs, he says, that stands in the way of our true freedom: “All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual’s own.” (7) We need to wake up…

Loss of Freedom

Idea of introjections (10), and whether we still maintain “inner freedom.” I used the example of Daylight Savings Time to show how deeply ingrained ideas are that we accept as just the way things are. Marcuse writes, “Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual.” … “The result is not adjustment, but mimesis: an immediate identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the society as a whole.” (10) We accept things as they are. Why do we get up and go to work, to school? Because that’s how it is. The “apparatus imposes” its will on our “labor time and free time, on the material and intellectual culture.” (3) We are less than free in all ways. But this unfreedom is not brought upon us by force. No, he claims, “If the individuals find themselves in the things which shape their life, they do so, not by giving, but by accepting the law of things – not the law of physics but the law of their society.” (11) Echoing Polany, Marcuse (2) talks of “freedom of enterprise” as also allowing us the freedom to starve – in his words “not altogether an blessing.”

As Marcuse writes on (16), “‘Progress’ is not a neutral term.” Indeed, it’s not. We tend to see it in terms of technology, not betterment of the human condition. However, these need not be mutually exclusive, which is where Marcuse takes his argument.

Mechanization

Talked about this a lot in my Metropolis essay, I’ll leave it to that. Except to include this quote, as it’s so strong: “This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing.” (33)

Unflattening

In his discussion of ‘one dimensionality” (11) I’m finding resonance with the idea I’ve been playing with of “unflattening” – in terms of presenting information in a dimensional way (not necessarily literally). Also am connecting this to thoughts of multi-discilplinarity, and the troubles of specialization – no one can talk to one another. Realize I’m giving a flat perspective on this at this point.

Hmmmm….

Moved throughout by Marcuse’s humanity. This idea that “The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own.” (2) He defines what these new forms of freedom would mean in multiple realms: “Thus economic freedom would mean freedom from the economy – from being controlled by economic forces and relationships; freedom from the daily struggle for existence, from earning a living.” Continues to explain what political and intellectual freedom would mean. (4) He sets up the terms on how freedom could happen, “Indeed, society must first create the material prerequisites of freedom for all its members before it can be a free society; it must first create the wealth before being able to distribute it according to the freely developing needs of the individual;” AND the KEY here: “it must first enable its slaves to learn and see and think before they know what is going on and what they themselves can do to change it.” (40) He continues, 42) “slaves must be free for their liberation before they can become free…” A hope filled premise: “This is a society in which the former objects of productivity first become the human individuals who plan and use the instruments of their labor for the realization of their own humane needs and faculties. For the first time in history, men would act freely and collectively under and against the necessity which limits their freedom and their humanity.” (42-3) And finally, “If it could lead to self-determination at the very base of human existence, namely in the dimension of necessary labor, it would be the most radical and most complete revolution in history.” (44) And now I’m cheering, let’s do this.

However, that he states this can come through advanced industrialization, not so sure. Yes, I agree we have the means (power) to feed, shelter everyone and hence the responsibility to do so. But this passage on 36, “Complete automation in the realm of necessity would open the dimension of free time as the one in which man’s private and societal existence would constitute itself. This would be the historical transcendence towards a new civilization.” --- Would it really? I can’t help but think of the free people in Wall-E – are they really free? It seems to me (and I realize I need to read this more) that the humanity he sees so well, is suggesting can be restored through better technology. Something about the “pacification of existence” (16) doesn’t sit quite right.

That little bit said, Marcuse lays out the problem well, he pulls back the wool on the system we’ve been brought into, bought into, and it’s a powerful, indispensable work at making sense of what’s happened, and thinking about what might be. – Nick

Thought about including “who watches the watchmen” in my Time essay, and using this passage from 41, “Who educates the educators, and where is the proof that they are in possession of ‘the good?’” If, as I agree with, education is the key to liberation, how do we ensure it’s good stuff? Back to Dewey, this is the point, we always have to keep asking such questions, always being critical, never thinking we’ve got it all right. – N

Friedman's article

2009-03-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

It's scary how often the Onion has it more right than the "real" news media.

I particularly appreciated this passage from Friedman's article:

One of those who has been warning me of this for a long time is Paul Gilding, the Australian environmental business expert. He has a name for this moment — when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once — “The Great Disruption.”
“We are taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and harder,” he wrote me. “No matter how wonderful the system is, the laws of physics and biology still apply.” We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let’s grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks.

Need more people to start listening to the world around them...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html

Metropolis the Assignment - comments

2009-03-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, I think this is pretty cool.

However….

I’ve written my paper, I found my clips some days ago, and now it’s time to integrate them. It’s not shaping up satisfactorily (more on this later.) Worse than that, I want to confirm my clips to make sure I use exactly the right one (admittedly, I clipped more than I knew I’d need), and now I’m staring at the screen waiting for the buffer to finish. Somewhere Moloch is laughing at the irony of me writing an essay about the loss of our time to mechanized culture – losing my time to an aspect of mechanized culture. I’m not laughing.

Ok, having gotten the clips all in, I was able to watch it, and it is pretty cool after all. Clips act like punctuation marks – peppering the words with a bit of extra emphasis. As I tend to write as if with a soundtrack, the inclusion of a video track as well brings something new to it.

I wonder though, about the integration of them. We read, and then have to leave the words, and pause to see the images. That back and forth is somewhat stilting in my view. I love being able to use the clips, but I’d like to see greater synergy between them and the text. This is where I’m thinking like a comic book maker. Image and text juxtaposed together – an act of simultaneity. And I’m thinking how much fun this project could be in comic form. Easy to say for someone who makes them, but the little bit I’ve seen of Comic Life (http://plasq.com/comiclife-win) would make it an easy, fun tool, perhaps for non-comics folks to present their information. (To this end, I did a lot of research and writing last semester on comics as a means of presenting research.) Of course, the other alternative is to go all video – string together clips from various sources, webcam our own narration.

Metropolis as source material is ultimately a blast. Running through clips in my head, I think of other directions I could go with scenes and things we’ve read. The possibilities are pretty wide open – and I wonder about someone identifying a theme and passing it to another classmate to turn into an essay. Might produce interesting results. (On the note of possibilities not-traveled, I’d intended to connect Captain Hook’s replacement hand to Rotwang’s, and the crocodile who swallowed time constantly on his tracks. Seems like it should’ve worked in somewhere.) That’s it. (I decide to look over VITAL one last time, and am stuck waiting for endless buffering. Trying not to succumb to rage against the machine – that in itself is another essay…) – N

Metropolis Essay

2009-03-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

(This is posted here as well as VITAL as a means of reference for future purposes.)

Assignment: Discuss forms of control in human society using images and themes from the film “Metropolis” in conjunction with ideas from 20th century social theory.

“It’s only 60 minutes, just one hour. It’s no big deal, right?”

It’s the start of Daylight Savings Time as I’m pulling the strands of this essay together. As innocuous as this change in time seems, it points, albeit subtly, to more insidious ways in which our lives are perhaps not entirely our own. The tendency is to attribute this sense of being less than free exclusively to technology. From Frankenstein to the Matrix, technology’s dark grip on humanity has long been the stuff of science fiction, whose stories have served as commentary, caution, and forecast. As the Borg repeat on Star Trek, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” However, by focusing on technology as the sole bogeyman haunting us, we fail to see the deeper roots of what’s going on. In his 1927 text “The Eclipse of the Public,” John Dewey defined the complex nature of this problem: “It is always convenient to have a devil as well as a savior to bear the responsibilities of humanity. In reality, the trouble springs rather from the ideas and absence of ideas in connection with which technological factors operate.” (141) (Had Dewey been writing a generation or so later, he might have used the term “memes,” where according to Aaron Lynch, we no longer look at “how people acquire ideas, but how ideas acquire people.” (17)) Dewey’s words are as relevant now as they were then. It’s not so much that machines are attempting a hostile takeover, but that we have already willingly and complicitly surrendered to the idea of mechanization and allowed it influence over every aspect of our lives.

This mechanization of our mindset, of our very lives has been with us so long, it’s hard to imagine things being different from the way they are. In an attempt to challenge this notion and understand the pervasiveness of machines on our mindset, the following will draw together 20th century social theory in conjunction with scenes from the grandfather of science fiction cinema, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (which like Dewey’s book was also released in 1927.) Long before Steve Austin was rebuilt and Darth Vader’s cybernetic helm swallowed the last of his humanity, Metropolis’s mad scientist Rotwang created a mechanical hand to replace the hand he lost in the process of building his Machine-Man. Themes in the film echo the philosophical discourse presented.

“Where did the time go? Can you tell me where did my life go?” – Johnny Clegg

As alluded to in opening with Daylight Savings Time, the mechanical ordering of society has its origins in the mechanization of time. The mechanical clock was first put to use in China as a means of calculating the movements of the Chinese Emperor and served as a tool for navigation as it made its way to the west. A life once based on natural cycles within our bodies, the rhythm between day and night, and the change in seasons, was uprooted when the mechanical clock was married to industrialization. [Free running about at Club of Sons segues to clockwork life of workers.] Time was now thought of in terms of the movement of a wheeled gear. [Gear imagery] Lewis Mumford noted that “Abstract time became the new medium of existence. Organic functions themselves were regulated by it: one ate, not upon feeling hungry, but when prompted by the clock: one slept, not when one was tired, but when the clock sanctioned it.” (63) In this regard, Mumford claimed the clock was even more important to the industrial age than the steam engine, because it was “not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing the actions of men.” (60) [Synchronized worker movements.] Herbert Marcuse cites Daniel Bell who wrote that the meaning of “industrialization did not arise with the introduction of factories, it ‘arose out of the measurement of work…’” (29) The mechanical clock thus gave rise to the idea of a mechanized society.

“Workin’ 9 to 5” may be a fine way to make a living, but it represents a major change in how we live removed from things like biology, light, or seasons. With the advent of artificial lights, natural time had even less meaning. This is powerfully demonstrated in the workers’ society located entirely underground – no sun at all. In their world, they day is entirely based on the mechanical concept of “shifts.” (Commenting on the information age, Manuel Castells suggests that today the sequence of time is eliminated altogether and we live in what he calls “timeless time.”) The fitting of a life into a slot of time, extends to fitting that life into a box of space as our environment becomes increasingly mechanized as well. The workers live in a grid of “little boxes” in stark contrast to the organic world above. Our bodies aren’t a safe haven from mechanization either. As time and landscape go, bodies become objects – a sum of our parts and functions. This is demonstrated in the erotic gyrations of the mechanical Maria. Her movements and objectification are hypnotic to men who fall under the spell of the machine. This loss of time, place, and body, speaks to the dismantling of individual identity and “inner freedom” – as Marcuse wrote, “this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality.” (10)

Cogs

In this fashion, the complexity of being human is reduced to an object and assigned a number signifying interchangeability. We witness Freder trading places with the worker known only as “11811.” People serve as parts, cogs in the wheel of a great machine. Watching the workers operate in unison like the gears of the clock connects to Marcuse’s description of “mechanized work” as being “exhausting, stupefying, inhuman slavery…” (25) He goes on to characterize their state: “This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing.” (33) The workers’ lives are given up quite literally to feed the machines as is witnessed in Freder’s vision, wherein the machine transforms into the sacrifice-requiring god Moloch. An accident on the line warrants little reaction. Workers pause only to pick up the pieces (the people) and keep on working. Replacement workers fill in the gaps.

Metropolis offers multiple versions of how the human is subsumed by the machine – Maria is replaced by the machine entirely, as it takes over her life, while the workers’ lives are given up to serve the machine. In both cases subjugation to the mechanized mindset is total. As Marcuse wrote, “The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves, but they are slaves, for slavery is determined.” (32)

Clockwork God

The “meta-machine” that makes possible the mechanical ordering of society and the governing of human life has a name – it’s the free, self-regulating market. Instead of it operating to accommodate human lives, humans have to fit into it and serve its perpetuation. Within the market, humans are reduced to commodities or parts. Karl Polanyi defines production as the “interaction of man and nature; if this process is to be organized through a self-regulating mechanism of barter and exchange, then man and nature must be brought into its orbit; they must be subject to supply and demand, that is be dealt with as commodities, as goods produced for sale.” (136) Under this system, the human becomes less than human.

Given the “great and permanent evils” (Polanyi 136) that men are subjected to in the market system, from where does this mechanical ordering of things still derive justification? It’s due to what Polanyi describes as an almost a religious faith in its perceived perfection of Platonic mathematical order. It’s something “sacred and holy.” (139) The market, like the mechanical man and the Heart Machine, surpasses the human. Thus from this perspective, humans function only to serve the system. Marcuse called this “Technological rationality” and said that it “reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better domination, creating a truly totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe.” (18) This “mechanized enslavement” as Marcuse put it, of “the human instrument” is total, “not only its body but also its mind and even its soul.” (26)

Time Keepers

Despite its name, the self-regulating market is anything but. It needs people to maintain it, to wind the watch, so to speak. (Polanyi 147) Hence the emergence of what C. Wright Mills describes as the “Power Elite,” people who make decisions “that mightily affect, the everyday worlds of men and women.” (3) The elite “are able to realize their will, even if others resist it.” And do so through “access to the command of major institutions.” (9) Even living in a “free,” democratic society, Mills states that the major decisions – the pulling of the levers and pressing of the buttons – are made for us by those in the Power Elite. Fewer people thus make the decisions affecting the lives of many. (7) In Dewey’s words, the machine age made for a “Great Society” but not a “Great Community,” where the freedoms promised by democracy are bestowed upon but a minority. (126-7)

As Mills stated, the elite express the attitude that control of society needs to be “in the hands of experts. It is just that everyone knows somebody has got to run the show, and that somebody usually does. Others do not really care anyway, and besides, they do not know how. So the gap between the two types gets wider.” (294) Hence they perpetuate the myth that this is the natural order of things. They consider themselves to be “elite because of the kind of individuals they are. The rest of the population is mass, which, according to this conception, sluggishly relaxes into uncomfortable mediocrity.” (Mills 13) According to James J. Flink, Henry Ford said of his workers, “They want to be led. They want to have everything done for them and have no responsibility.” (80) Along these lines, Ford’s screen analog Joh Fredersen wants to keep the workers in their place: “Where they belong.” That there is anything natural about this is wrong, as Mills countered: “Such ideas, in fact, always arise in a society in which some people possess more than do others of what there is to possess. People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be the people with advantages.” (14) But still, such notions persist.

“We are born in captivity” – T-Bone Burnett

The plight of the workers in Metropolis both on the line and flooded out of their homes parallels the annihilation of people (Polanyi 137) exploited in the name of the free market. Polanyi writes that people being made unemployed, destitute, and their constitutional liberties all lost, are “judged a fair price to pay for the fulfillment of the requirement of sound budgets and sound currencies, these a priori of economic liberalism.” (148) The elites aren’t spared either, as even the higher ups end up being subsumed by the needs of the system. As Marcuse wrote, “The capitalist bosses and owners are losing their identity as responsible agents; they are assuming the function of bureaucrats in a corporate machine.” (32)

So why do people buy into this system, sleepwalk through their lives even when it means their own destruction and enslavement? Dewey wrote that “The instrumentality becomes a master and works fatally as if possessed of a will of its own – not because it has a will but because man has not.” (175) The machines don’t subjugate us by force, we let it happen. This resonates with Marcuse: “If the individuals find themselves in the things which shape their life, they do so, not by giving, but by accepting the law of things – not the law of physics but the law of their society.” (11) In “The Dialectic of Freedom” Maxine Greene discusses the source of this acceptance: “The persuasion is often so quiet, so seductive, so disguised that it renders young people acquiescent to power without their realizing it. The persuasion becomes most effective when the method used obscures what is happening in the learners’ minds.” (133) To that effect, Alan Moore wrote, “You’re in a prison… You were born in a prison. You’ve been in a prison so long, you no longer believe there’s a world outside.” Born behind bars, we only know them as our reality. The clock has been ticking for so long in the background, we assume it’s as natural as the sun rising.

“Sleepwalker, open your eyes. Sleepwalker, rise.” – Blue Nation

Winning freedom is not achieved by simply smashing the machines to bits. We have to get beyond “too much technology” and critically examine where we are. Dewey would remind us that the State isn’t “sacred,” (170) and that in fact, the author of the State is “nothing but singular persons, you, they, me.” (P37) If we’re submitting to it, it’s only because we all sign off on it, we all allow it. (Dewey 53) What we’ve invented, we can also dismantle and reinvent as well. But in order to do so, society, as Marcuse wrote, “must first enable its slaves to learn and see and think before they know what is going on and what they themselves can do to change it.” (40)

What’s ingrained in us from birth, can only be lifted off by means of education – empowering individuals to imagine life as something other than “as it is.” As Dewey wrote, “Every care would be taken to surround the young with the physical and social conditions which best conduce, as far as freed knowledge extends, to release of personal potentialities.” (200-1) By treating people with care – the heart uniting head and hand – we can release their possibilities, rather than the probabilities that mark a person’s life from the day they’re born. Education is the promise to see differently, to imagine in Greene’s terms “what is not and yet might be.” From such a perspective, according to Marcuse, “The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own.” (2) In seeing the mechanisms at work, we find the means to make our time and our lives are own.

References

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1935.
Castells, Manuel. “An Introduction to the Information Age.” 1997.
Dewey, John. “The Public and Its Problems.” 1927.
Flink, James J. “The Car Culture.” 1975.
Greene, Maxine. “The Dialectic of Freedom.” 1988.
Lang, Fritz. “Metropolis.” 1927.
Lynch, Aaron. “Thought Contagion.” 1996.
Marcuse, Herbert. “One Dimensional Man.” 1964.
Mills, C. Wright. “The Power Elite.” 1956.
Moore, Alan and David Lloyd. “V for Vendetta.” 1988.
Mumford, Lewis in Arthur O. Lewis, Jr., ed., “Of Men and Machines.” 1963.
Polanyi, Karl. “The Great Transformation.” 1944.

Addendum: While Walter Benjamin is not directly cited, this piece does I hope honor a part of his spirit in making use of diverse quotations throughout – what Hannah Arendt described as “thought fragments” or “pearls,” and the writer as “pearl diver” excavating “rich and strange” fragments from the depths.

Need/Want

2009-03-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about Frank’s story about his son Niko, and his never wanting or needing.

Makes me think of my own growing up, and never asking for anything. Pleased to be able to have hand-me-downs from my much older brothers. Is it perhaps that I appreciated having the connection to them with things they’d worn? That I was indecisive about what I might want, so it was easier to just have something just show up? Don’t know. Is it perhaps the influence of my mom, a naturalist/environmental studies teacher – and the fact that we were recycling everything from my earliest memories? (Not that I remember recycling then – just that I don’t remember ever not doing so…) Really can’t say. But I appreciated the story, and it makes me think. - Nick

Notes on C. Wright Mills “The Power Elite”

2009-03-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

As with all the readings thus far, despite how long ago this piece was written, it not only speaks to origins of how things got to be how they are, it speaks to how things are right now.

What is meant by the “Power Elite”

Mills defines the Power Elite in contrast to the rest, on (3) he writes, that Americans recognize the elite as “They are all that we are not.” It comes down to being able to make decisions “that mightily affect, the everyday worlds of men and women.” (3) They make positions of major consequences affecting the rest of us. Recall Dewey’s words on necessity of State to mediate consequences. It’s not an equal exchange. On 5, Mills discusses the dropping of the bomb on Japan in the name of the USA, “although they were at no time consulted about the matter. They feel that they live in a time of big decisions; they know that they are not making any.”

A key idea in all this is the Power Elite’s connection to institutions – it’s not enough to have wealth or celebrity, but it’s necessary to be linked into the means to do something with it. On 9 he writes: “By the powerful we mean, of course, those who are able to realize their will, even if others resist it. No one, accordingly, can be truly powerful unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are, in the first instance, powerful.” And continues to say, “Not all power, it is true, is anchored in and exercised by means of such institutions, but only within and through them can power be more or less continuous and important.” It’s not simply about wealth, access to power matters most.

The final aspect of Mills’s definition of the Power Elite is on (18): “By the power elite, we refer to those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them.” We’re coming to know who they are – warlords, chief executives, and top politicians – and how we are to understand them and their unification (19) via: Psychology, structure and mechanics of institutional hierarchies, and explicit co-ordination.

On (22) he lays out where we are at, at a time when only small circles decide what happens. “Yet the fact is that although we are all of us within history we do not possess equal powers to make history. To pretend that we do is sociological nonsense and political irresponsibility. … We do not all have equal access to the means of power that now exist, nor equal influence over their use.” While we may live in a society where we have a democratic right to vote, Mills’s premise is that we don’t pull the levers, press the button, on the major decisions – those are made for us by those in the Power Elite. (Also, like his reasoning for using term “power elite” rather than “ruling class” (on 277) – class being an economic term, rule a political one.)

Who They Are

This “Big Three”, triple-gods that “run the show” are from big corporations, key politicians, and military leaders. (4) These are “the leading men in each of the three domains of power – the warlords, the corporation chieftains, the political directorate – [who] tend to come together, to form the power elite of America.” (9) Throughout, I’m reminded by Military man turned President, Eisenhower’s warning against the military-industrial complex (well pointed out in Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine.” We see this in Blackwater, Haliburton, and more today. On 6 he points out how “Other institutions seem off to the side of modern history, and, on occasion, duly subordinated to these.” Religion, education, and the family institutions are put in service of the big three, their messages used to reinforce the dominating message, rather than leading the ideas.

These three have become ever more tightly intertwined, more centralized, and fewer are making decisions affecting the lives of many. (7) In establishing themselves as the decision makers, the Power Elite also create a mythology that their ascendancy is natural. On 13 Mills writes of this notion that “they are elite because of the kind of individuals they are. The rest of the population is mass, which, according to this conception, sluggishly relaxes into uncomfortable mediocrity.” Henry Ford said of his workers, “they want to be led.” But Mills points out his is wrong, (14) “People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be the people with advantages.” This brings to mind Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” that illustrates quite brilliantly the not so extraordinary circumstances that lead to success. The “self-made man” in truth had a lot going for him from generations past. Fran Liebowitz wrote an article about race once, where she compared white to being the children of celebrities. Celebrity offspring would say they still had to work hard, they only had help getting in the door. Well that’s where it all is – the hard part is access, that’s what she claimed white’s had, they looked like people they’d had.

Having dismissed this notion that the Power Elite are ordained “better”, Mills continues, “Even when we give up – as we must – the idea that the elite man or woman is born with an elite character, we need not dismiss the idea that their experiences and trainings develop in them characteristics of a specific type.” And we can think of ourselves here at Columbia, the training ground for important people. No matter our diversity, there’s something in common that’s made it possible for us to be here, and there is some commonality in psychology that unites us. This is pronounced in the Power Elite as he writes (15), “So conceived, the elite is a set of higher circles whose members are selected, trained and certified and permitted intimate access to those who command the impersonal institutional hierarchies of modern society.”

How They Came To Be

Mills expressly states that his thesis is not that an omnipotent elite has always shaped historical events. However, they are the history makers. (20) He then discusses the origins of the Power Elite, and on 12, contrasts this with Europe, which had a nobility class. Without such a thing in the US, ours emerged from the middle class and the wealth created by the industrial revolution. Lots of people got rich on the labor of others. In Chapter 12, Mills lays out 5 different epochs in American history in terms of shifts of power from the time of the revolution to the present day. In the First, Revolution through John Adams admin, we were a small country, with many-sided men who crossed easily from one institution to another. He writes the “Social and economic, political and military unified in a simple and direct way.” In the Second, “the economic and political and military orders fitted loosely into the great scatter of the American social structure.” This was very loose, a plurality of leaders. By Epoch 3, “the supremacy of corporate economic power began” as result of the 14th Amendment corporations became individual entities. At this point the military remained subordinate to political (as it had been so far) and “thus off to the side of the main driving forces of US history” Rather, the “economy was the dynamic” With the New Deal, Epoch 4 started, the economic elite, after being brought down and humbled to some degree, decided to get into the business of government. Whereas up to the 30s, “political order was still an instrument of small propertied farmers and businessmen” – (274)

WWII signaled the start of the 5th and current epoch, “the long time tendency of business and government to become more intricately and deeply involved with each other has reached a new point of explicitness.” (274) The economic, political and military leaders came together to make the war possible, and continued to become more tightly intertwined afterwards. (275) And this is a scary thought, “Not politicians, but corporate executives, sit with the military and plan the organization of the war effort.” (276) Again, this speaks to Eisenhower’s warning, and his own position at the head of the table.

Conspiracy?

With the Big Three truly in place after WWII, we ask if it’s a conspiracy. Mills argues it’s not, on 292, “The conception of the power elite, accordingly, does not rest upon the assumption that American history since the origins of WWII must be understood as a secret plot, or as a great and coordinated conspiracy of the members of this elite. The conception rests upon quite impersonal grounds.” He makes use of a wonderful statement by Richard Hofstadter along these lines on 293, “There is a great difference between locating conspiracies in history and saying that history is, in effect, a conspiracy…” On 27 Mills writes, “to accept either view – of all history as conspiracy or of all history as drift – is to relax the effort to understand the facts of power and the ways of the powerful.”

The idea that all these people know each other, work together, and have interchanging roles within each others’ circles is illustrated beautifully by Mark Lombardi and his Global Networks. These are network drawings showing how people are connected. Learn a little bit about it here: http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

Even if it’s not a conspiracy, the Power Elite are tightly interwoven. Mills writes (288), “They assume positions in one another’s domains.” There’s a back and forth between people in each organization, one minute their lobbyists, then in government, then running a company. Dick Cheney is a prime example, but just one of many. Obama’s picks for treasury were running the organizations they now oversee. Mills writes (10) that the top positions are “increasingly interchangeable.” But it’s less conspiracy than the idea that “The power elite, as we conceive it, also rests upon the similarity of its personnel, and their personal and official relations with one another, upon their social and psychological affinities.” (278) He suggests (281) “Even if their recruitment and formal training were more heterogeneous than they are, these men would still be of quite homogeneous social type.” They come though the same social circles, ‘personalities’ tend to become similar.” They know each other, intermingle. There’s a feeling that these others are “one of us” (283) even if it’s not premeditated. Mills states the interwoven nature of the power elite clearly (294) “there is nothing hidden about it, although its activities are not publicized. As an elite, it is not organized, although its members often know one another… there is nothing conspiratorial about it, although its decisions are often publicly unknown and its mode of operation manipulative rather than explicit.”

When CE Wilson was nominated for secretary of Defense by Eisenhower, the head of GM say something along the lines of “what’s good for GM is good for the US and vice versa.” (285) There’s an attitude as expressed earlier, that (294) control of society needs to be “in the hands of experts. It is just that everyone knows somebody has got to run the show, and that somebody usually does. Others do not really care anyway, and besides, they do not know how. So the gap between the two types gets wider.” This again refers to Ford’s words. We just happen to be better equipped to do this and the little people just want to live their lives without the bother...

Mills sets out key contrasts throughout. On 17, he talks about the deliberate deception that leaders follow the will of the people and are powerless to it. It’s a contrast between “Omnipotence and impotence.” The truth is leaders make decisions. On 26 he writes, “But-if events come out well, talk as though you had decided.” “If events come out badly, say that you didn’t have the real choice, and are, of course, not accountable: they, the others, had the choice and they are responsible.” This is insidious – claim to be servants, responding only to the will of the people, yet all the while making the decisions that affect all of them.

This raises real questions of how to transform this power dynamic, to wrest control from the big three and think about the Great Community Dewey wrote of. How to get there? It starts with understanding, with seeing how decisions were made (or not made) that led us to this point and perhaps in that understanding, we can begin to act different decisions. This is powerful reading, enjoying it, and emboldened by it. – N

PS: I like this (21) “During most of human history, historical change has not been visible to the people who were involved in it, or even to those enacting it.”

Jindal/Katrina Fabrication

2009-03-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

Following up on the speech we watched by Jindal, Talking Points Memo reports his Katrina story wasn’t even true. Disgusting as it was to begin with, not sure what to make of it when it’s totally fabricated. Check it out here: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/jindals_office_tries_to_spin_katrina_story_digs_it.php

Thinking Polanyi “The Great Transformation” (136-170)

2009-02-25T11:48:00.000-08:00

Try to put this all together in brief and maybe with less cleverness than I’d like, perhaps I can revisit this again and revise.

A Double Movement

On 136 Polanyi identifies a double movement of modern society: “the market expanded continuously but this movement was met by a countermovement checking the expansion in definite directions.” And it’s this struggle of opposites that he addresses throughout – the juggernaut of the market sprawling across the globe and the resistance “countermovement.” He quotes Robert Owen who said: “market economy if left to evolve according to its own laws would create great and permanent evils.” These will be identified as being evils to humans and society, as well as eventually to the market itself.

The first evil of the market is the reduction of humans to commodities, to parts. He defines production as the “interaction of man and nature; if this process is to be organized through a self-regulating mechanism of barter and exchange, then man and nature must be brought into its orbit; they must be subject to supply and demand, that is be dealt with as commodities, as goods produced for sale.” Essentially under this system, the human could be less than human. On 137, Polanyi suggests that this is a “fiction” disregarding the health of the “soil and the people” and leaving their fate in the hands of the market “would be tantamount to annihilating them.” Hence, he says, “the countermove consisted in checking the action of the market in respect to the factors of production, labor, and land. This was the main function of interventionism.”

The Paradox

Ok, it’s a long quote, but this is the main key on 147:

“And yet all these strongholds of governmental interference were erected with a view to the organizing of some simple freedom – such as that of land, labor, or municipal administration. Just as, contrary to expectation, the invention of laborsaving machinery had not diminished but actually increased the uses of human labor, the introduction of free markets, far from doing away with the need for control, regulation, and intervention, enormously increased their range. Administrators had to be constantly on the watch to ensure the free working of the system. Thus even those who wished ardently to free the state from all unnecessary duties, and whose whole philosophy demanded the restriction of state activities, could not but entrust the self-same state with the new powers, organs and instruments required for the establishment of laissez-faire.”

Continuing, Polanyi writes: “This paradox was topped by another. While laissez-faire economy was the product of deliberate State action, subsequent restrictions on laissez-faire started in a spontaneous way. Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not.”

That’s a pretty cool thought, while economic liberals complain about a collectivist conspiracy, it seems that “The great variety of forms in which the ‘collectivist’ countermovement appeared was not due to any preference for socialism or nationalism on the part of concerted interests, but exclusively to the broad range of the vital social interests affected by the expanding market mechanism.” Intervention wasn’t planned, it emerged out of necessity and emerged all over nearly simultaneously. (154) Polanyi states that this is not the work of socialists at all, rather, (153) “On the contrary, the sponsors of these legislative acts were as a rule uncompromising opponents of socialism, or any other form of collectivism.”

One more key thought in this section, on 138, “Paradoxically enough, not human beings and natural resources only but also the organization of capitalistic production itself had to be sheltered from the devastating effects of a self-regulating market.” That is, it’s not just about protecting people, but the system if left alone will tear itself apart. We’re seeing this now and it’s long been coming. Let’s think about it like a sensible renewable energy policy. If we lived on an island and used all our trees for firewood, quickly we’d be out. (This may have happened on Easter Island.) But something more sensible, regulated, and all can survive to thrive longer.

Religion

So why isn’t this seen by economic liberals? Polanyi writes on 166: “Nothing obscures our social vision as effectively as the economistic prejudice.” Shortsightedness and faith, he repeats how the mantra of the free market is essentially a religion “a crusading passion” (143), sacred and holy (139). On 141he writes, “Economic liberalism was the organizing principle of society engaged in creating a market system. Born as a mere penchant for nonbureaucratic methods, it evolved into a veritable faith in man’s secular salvation through a self-regulating market. Such fanaticism was the result of the sudden aggravation of the task it found itself committed to …. The liberal creed assumed its evangelical fervor only in response to the needs of a fully deployed market economy.”

But it didn’t start out that way, for (on 142) “In England, too, laissez-faire was interpreted narrowly; it meant freedom from regulation in production; trade was not comprised.” Thus, “Protectionism was so ingrained that Manchester cotton manufacturers demanded, in 1800, the prohibition of the export of yarn, though they were conscious the fact that this meant loss of business to them.” This is KEY: “Freedom from regulation in the sphere of production was all the industry wanted; freedom in the sphere of exchange was still deemed danger.”

Hypocrisy

Keeping on this religious mantra, Polanyi writes, (150) “The root of all evil, the liberal insists, was precisely this interference with the freedom of employment, trade and currencies practiced by the various schools of social, national, and monopolistic protectionism since the third quarter of the nineteenth century; …” Also on 150 he writes, “Its apologists are repeating in endless variations that but for the policies advocated by its critics, liberalism would have delivered the goods; that not the competitive system and the self-regulating market, but interference with that system and interventions with that market are responsible for our ills.” We’re hearing exactly these words today, even in the face of deregulation that’s crippled us.

However, proponents of a self-regulating market are all for regulation when it suits the market. On 155 he writes, “In other words, if the needs of a self-regulating market proved incompatible with the demands of laissez-faire, the economic liberal turned against laissez-faire and preferred – as any antiliberal would have done – the so-called collectivist methods of regulation and restriction.” It’s hypocrisy at its worst. Furthermore “For as long as that systems is established, economic liberals must and will unhesitatingly call for the intervention of the state in order to establish it, and once established, in order to maintain it.” And he writes on (156) “The accusation of interventionism on the part of liberal writers is thus an empty slogan, implying the denunciation of one and the same set of actions according to whether they happen to approve of them or not.” Rampant hypocrisy, blinders on by the religion of the free market.

All of this brings me back to John Dewey and previous weeks’ readings. The idea that in fact the collective can bring about the personal liberty we seek, rather than constraining it. “They may think they are clamoring for a purely personal liberty, but what they are doing is to bring into being a greater liberty to share in other associations, so that more of their individual potentialities will be released and their personal experience enriched.” (193-4) On 216, Dewey further states, “Organization as a means to an end would reinforce individuality and enable it to be securely itself by enduring it with resources beyond its unaided reach.”

Not a Class War

Polanyi dismisses class as contributing to the problems. On 159 he writes, “The fate of classes is more frequently determined by the needs of society than the fate of society is determined by the needs of the classes.” In fact, classes are brought together by failures of the market. “Precisely because not the economic but the social interests of different cross sections of the population were threatened by the market, persons belonging to various economic strata unconsciously joined forces to meet the danger.” (162)

Destructive

The concluding parts of the essay deal with annihilation of people under the gears of the market system. Lots of discussion on this on 148, how people are made unemployed and destitute and constitutional liberties lost all “judged a fair price to pay for the fulfillment of the requirement of sound budgets and sound currencies, these a priori of economic liberalism.” He calls this a “destructive landscape (164) and a destruction of people’s cultures. And perhaps most scarily, as opposed to systems before, now, “under the rule of the market the people could not be prevented from starving according to the rules of the game.” “… under free and equal exchange Indians perished by the million.” (168)

We feel these effects today all too painfully. – Nick

Metropolis (in brief)

2009-02-23T09:47:00.000-08:00

Finally got to see the film this weekend (though i'd seen perhaps all of it as a kid, it'd faded from view.)
First thought on watching the march of the workers was a piece of art of my own, which in turn had been influenced by Piranesi and things that had been influenced by Lang's film like Star Trek's the Borg and the Matrix. Please see images of it and accompanying artist statement here: http://www.thedetroiter.com/APR04/ns_billboard.html

Another quick note, randomly stumbled on artist Michael Kaluta's website and noticed a link for "Metropolis" drawings he'd done for an illustrated book on it. It's stunning and very human work - well worth checking out: http://www.kaluta.com/pages/metropolis/metbook.html

One last quick thought - intrigued by how much silent film resembled a comic book - overly dramatic acting to carry the content through action over words, the insertion of captions.

More thoughts coming later... - N

Dewey’s The Problem of Method

2009-02-18T07:14:00.001-08:00

The primary theme in this section is the interconnectedness of individual and collective – we have associations within ourselves and without and are engaged in multiple unions. It’s not a matter of opposition as we fluidly move between associations, which are all interdependent. Dewey argues against J.S. Mill (195) in that human thought is not individual, but always shaped by the “social medium” in which we live. Dewey claims, powerfully, the collective can in fact bring about the personal liberty we seek, rather than constraining it. “They may think they are clamoring for a purely personal liberty, but what they are doing is to bring into being a greater liberty to share in other associations, so that more of their individual potentialities will be released and their personal experience enriched.” (193-4) This goes back to the idea of the “goodness of a state” (71-2) expressed earlier to allow us more freedom to be ourselves. On 216, Dewey further states, “Organization as a means to an end would reinforce individuality and enable it to be securely itself by enduring it with resources beyond its unaided reach.”

The heart of strengthening the collective is the individual, and the means are education. Dewey illustrates how better understanding of human nature modifies social relationships, which in turn leads to changes in education, and sets up a continuing cycle of growth. (197, 200) But growth for the whole is built on growth in the individual, as Dewey writes: (200-1) “Every care would be taken to surround the young with the physical and social conditions which best conduce, as far as freed knowledge extends, to release of personal potentialities.” This is powerful, in treating people with care, we can release their possibilities, rather than the probabilities that mark a person’s life from the day they’re born.

Throughout all of this work, Dewey always stresses that there’s no absolute right answers, as with continually striving for a better state, he writes, “thinking and beliefs should be experimental, not absolutistic” (202) He suggests putting philosophers in charge of things, rather than experts/specialists – who are often too narrow in their thinking to recognize associations/connections within the state. (205) There are “common interests” between us all and there needs to be dialogue to establish that. Dewey offers an elegant metaphor: “The man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied.” (207)

Ultimately, Dewey stresses the importance of community remaining “a matter of face-to-face intercourse. This is why the family and neighborhood, with all their deficiencies, have always been the chief agencies of nurture, the means by which dispositions are stably formed and ideas acquired which laid hold on the roots of character. The Great Community, in the sense of free and full communication, is conceivable. But it can never possess all the qualities which mark a local community.” (211) Again, it’s a dialogue between one another at the local level, that leads to a dialogue with those at larger level – keep in mind the global as we act local. Only this true community can come from local community. (219) Peace on earth is in his view only achievable by understanding “peoples of foreign lands.” (213) Yet to do this, we need to first understand our neighbors, remove the “otherness” about them, which in turn helps us conceive of neighbors more distant (Maxine Greene suggests this comes through the imagination.)

Dewey again emphasizes the importance of “signs and symbols” (218) and that they, like the State, must be subject to continuous inquiry in helping to bring about “a true public.” He offers this beautiful contrast, “Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator.” (219) If seeing, in this regard, stops at the surface, we need to learn to hear each other, that is truly understand “others” to build great community. It’s a conclusion filled with hope. Dewey suggests that the means are there to achieve this notion of community, and it starts in the smallest of ways. A closing aside, the tagline of the arts and cultural web-mag I ran was “unearthing a great American city, one story at a time” (and I know there are lots of slogans like this) but to me it’s a way of thinking about community, person by person, story by story, removing otherness, and building community day by day. – Nick

Signature: Benjamin Part 3

2009-02-17T21:56:00.000-08:00

I’m writing the biography of Detroit artist Charles McGee. The book is called “Signature” which refers to McGee’s view on art and life – that we imbue everything we do with ourselves, with all the layers of experience that make us unique individuals. I liken this to Benjamin’s notion of “aura” – a work of art’s “presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” (220)

Mechanical reproduction transforms the aura of a work of art into an image of itself. We “flatten” it out to make it reproducible, transportable. A painting becomes a dot matrix of a photograph, a symphony becomes analog grooves in vinyl, a recipe becomes a combination of chemicals – all of these things have now become binary bits in a digital universe – all ready to be restored, decoded, and thus reproduced anywhere, anytime. Benjamin’s essay persists because of how relevant it continues to be. These continue to be the issues of our time. As Valery wrote (as quoted by Benjamin): “… We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.” Absolutely, this is the case. And while things have always been able to be copied – we’re good at copying – they’re still originals of a sort after all. Mechanical reproduction is something else altogether.

Art is now transportable – and increasingly more so all the time – to the eyes and laptops of the public. (231) This is something that happened to language a long time ago, and in Benjamin’s time it was happening to the visual, to music, and really to life. As letters allowed stories and ideas to be transmitted, photos allowed images of things to shared, and the digital allows all of it. This bifurcates art: on the one hand it becomes more about things that can be reproduced – art is about ideas. On the other hand, the original is treasured even more for its unreproducibility – hence the emergence of Dada (237), of performance art, of the situationists, earth art, and much more. Art is democratized/art is liberated to be its own thing, in service of only itself.

As the arts have always enabled new ways of seeing, mechanical reproduction makes “a new kind of perception” (222) possible. Benjamin cites “slow motion”, zooming in, now we have HDTV that enables vision we don’t even have – we can’t look that closely at something while still so far away. Our means of reproducing reality have given us the power of Superman. Benjamin writes: “With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was invisible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject.” (236)I’ll let Benjamin speak uninterrupted here: “The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced.” “These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of traditions which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements. Their most powerful agent is film.” (221)

Benjamin makes an excellent point: “Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question – whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art – was not raised.” (227) Photography changed how we saw the world, it froze it in a sense. Whatever aura a moment in time has, it’s ethereal and dissipates. Even if we capture its image, this is a fallacy, it’s only an image, a mechanical reproduction and any sense that it has that aura – that signature of a unique moment of time is false. Yes, we can send an image of that thing anywhere, but it remains an image, a flattened out version of the real thing, a string of letters standing in for the sound of someone’s voice and the power of their intonation. Benjamin writes (223) “Unmistakable, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as transitoriness and reproducibility in the former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ‘sense of the universal equality of things’ has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction.” Reproduction is flatness. Although mechanical reproduction has made it possible to see more of our world in great detail, our view of actual experience is mediated by the images of what we’ve seen on our screens. I see something that strikes me in the formation of clouds and perhaps that conjures up something I’ve seen on TV, which in itself is an attempt to reproduce reality. It’s a two-sided coin – with something gained as something is lost. Perhaps (as I wrote in the culinary arts essay) we’ll demand more experiences filled with aura, the art we’ll value is the art of moments, only that imbued with signature, and we’ll make purposeful choices of how we live in this world – rather than leaving it to the chance of the toss of that coin.

A few disjointed thoughts:

Benjamin discusses the difference between film and theater (quoting Pirandello, 229): in film the “body loses corporeality, it evaporates, it is deprived of reality, life, voice, and the noises caused by his moving about, in order to be changed into a mute image, flickering an instant on the screen, then vanishing into silence. … The project will play with his shadow before the public, and he himself must be content to play before the camera.” In reading this, I can’t help but think of Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose of Cairo,” and Jeff Daniels character in the film within the film walking off the screen, only to eventually meet the actor who plays him…

More on film. As Benjamin rightly points out, the shooting of a film “affords a spectacle unimaginable anywhere at any time before this.” (232-3) We’re witness to a reality never possible before. A movie scene is not a real place and only exists as a result of “cutting” (233). Disagreeing with Benjamin – a cameraman is like a painter – bringing new world’s into existence through his tools. This was true in the early days of film and is becoming more so with digital age.

Finally, a bit about war. Confess, I didn’t follow all of his conclusion about war. Can’t see how “war is beautiful” in the least. Perhaps I’m missing the ironic tone, reading this mechanically reproduced as it were. No – war is the end of possibilities. Period. Not beautiful. – Nick

The Culinary Arts in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Part 2 of 3)

2009-02-17T21:15:00.001-08:00

Though actual research would make this a stronger essay, we can imagine translating Benjamin’s ideas about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction to the culinary arts. By Benjamin’s time some things have happened to change cooking: the means of production to produce food stuffs are in place and on the verge of the mechanical reproduction of the food itself – if it can still be called food, that is. Wonder bread is around the corner, and Twinkies not far down the road. Things accelerate from there and today prepackaged entire meals of any sort – reproductions of how “mom” used to make it can be popped in the microwave. To paraphrase Valery (217) there has indeed been an “amazing change in our very notion of cooking.” The aura (I’ll call it “signature” in another essay) is lost, the ritual of making food or as Benjamin puts it “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (220) is no more. When we can all eat exactly the same thing, we no longer eat anything that’s particularly special. We’re eating an image of food but nothing imbued with human care. If a painting invites us to contemplate (238) so too did a dinner cooked with authenticity. Dinner at McDonald’s? It’s a whir of the assembly line – bite, gulp, slurp, repeat – and move along.

However, in this age of mechanical reproduction we can eat any cuisine we wish from whichsoever corner of the world we all like available at the local bodega. In Benjamin’s words: “technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself.” (220) Also, flavors and combinations beyond “natural vision” (220) or natural tastes as it were, are now possible. This also means that things like corn syrup are possible as well.

Benjamin would claim a sense of “authenticity” is removed. I’d agree. Something is flattened in flavor. Everyone can eat Thai food but it perhaps ceases to offer that very identity that marked it as emanating from this unique culture, these particular people. As art is liberated by mechanical reproduction, so too is food. That is, because of reproduction, dining experiences become more than just eating well, they become works of art. The chef creates a masterpiece and we pay to be able to eat at the exhibition. In this way, culinary arts come more into being and thus seek to create something truly irreproducible. Food for “food’s sake,” so to speak. Food too was once magical (225) – those stone age art, rituals of hunt were about what nature provided – dinner. And now, we don’t know what our food comes from, what it used to look like. Like art, food loses its ritual value and has become political. And today, we’re beginning to think about slowing down, reconsidering where our food comes from. Mechanical reproduction in the culinary arts, may eventually spawn its antithesis – an awareness of what we eat in ways never possible before. – Nick

Ransom Notes (Benjamin Pt 1)

2009-02-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, going forward, I’m dispensing with the practice of dropping my notes on the readings into the blogs – too long and unwieldy. Instead, I’ll only be putting the essay-esque bits and commentary. On the odd chance there’s a reader out there, this should make the experience a bit more palatable. – N

Re: Arendt’s introduction:
I was struck by Benjamin the collector, particularly Benjamin the collector of quotes. My own writing is often prompted by and laced with quotations from a range of sources – songs, philosophers, fiction, whatever works, almost like creating a soundtrack for the story. Arendt discusses his juxtaposition of wildly diverse quotations, and we can imagine the new meanings that hence arise. It’s imperative to note, that the age of reproduction, such that all sorts of texts are available to everyone, makes this possible.

The title of this essay-logue, “Ransom Notes” reflects the way kidnappers cut and pasted letters from newspapers and magazines to prevent tracing of their identity through handwriting, the pen they used, etc. I’ve long envisioned doing a piece entirely by such means – all song quotes for instance – to tell a new story. It was thus heartening to read: “Benjamin’s ideal of producing a work consisting entirely of quotations, one that was mounted so masterfully that it could dispense with any accompanying text, may strike one as whimsical in the extreme and self-destructive to boot, but it was not….”

Arendt refers to these “thought fragments” as pearls, and the writer as a “pearl diver” descending to the bottom of the sea excavating “rich and strange” fragments. This way the past is made new, kept fresh and alive, and new meaning is created. While my quotations are random and diverse, there are a few that make their way into my work on multiple occasions and they’ve offered important meaning to me over the years. I present them here:

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” – George Harrison.

“To ask for a map is to say, ‘Tell me a story.’” – Peter Turchi

“Not the maps to guide where we go from here
The road twists and braids our hair
Until we all get there”
Speech – “Braided Hair”

“We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another’s vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.” – Alan Moore, Watchmen Ch. 10: p. 27.

Postscript: As a longtime arts critic appreciated Kant’s words on criticism and the critic as alchemist: “Critique is concerned with the truth content of a work of art, the commentary with its subject matter.”
Also, lovely stuff about metaphor and Benjamin thinking poetically: “metaphors are the means by which the oneness of the world is poetically brought about.” (14)
And the thought of Kafka, Benjamin and others trapped by the very language that was German, suffocating, stifling, powerful thoughts… - N

Community Stew and other musings on Dewey’s “The Public and Its Problems”

2009-02-09T21:56:00.000-08:00

Community Stew (or my vision of democracy as dinner)

While this thought has been brewing for some time, I found a a bit more clarity in this Monday’s discussion. We’ve been (as did Dewey) wrestling with the idea of how to be part of a community yet not lost in it. All our individual voices turned to mush, as it were. I compare this to preparing dinner – we want to incorporate various foods, spices, and allow them to retain their individual flavors, textures, but still work in service with the entire meal. Too far on one end, the dish doesn’t hold together (why not just have a tray of separate items?) Too far weighted on the other – and bland, tasteless, uniform mush. Perhaps the “Melting Pot” has been the wrong analogy. That makes us all go to the same. But that’s not what we want. However, the rugged individual – “every man for himself” – doesn’t work so well either. It’s all finding balance – that tricky tightrope walk between participatory democracy and an “eclipsed public,” or a savory delicacy and nondistinct goop.

On this subject on p115, Dewey wrote, “The creation of political unity has also promoted social and intellectual uniformity, a standardization favorable to mediocrity.” Society is flattened out, rather than made rich. He writes on 150 that equality “denotes effective regard for whatever is distinctive and unique in each, irrespective of physical and psychological inequalities. It is not a natural possession but is a fruit of the community when its action is directed by its character as a community.” Community as core of individuality….

The more things change…

While the stylistic use of language has altered somewhat and technology has certainly changed, Dewey’s words some 80 years ago could have been written today, and apply today as urgently as they did then. We still face the same issues and need to ask the same questions he was asking. Perhaps over time, a layering effect has happened where this thought is building up in a greater percentage of the population – and they can articulate it in their own (non-mushy) ways. He writes on 110, “Optimism about democracy is today under a cloud.” Then and now… On 117 he talks of the vanishing public and decreasing voting – again this sounds familiar.

We, the People, means me and you….

The interconnectedness of our individual interactions and those of groups (and individual may belong to various groups) moves them from the realm of the private to the Public. The need to manage such transactions of individuals and groups leads to the creation of the State. (P15 and 64) Dewey reminds us that the State isn’t “Sacred.” (P170) In fact, the author of the State is “nothing but singular persons, you, they, me.” (P37) This is a big point, we make the State, it isn’t the mysterious or holy collective – but ALL of us signing off on it. Why should we submit to the will of authority – only because we allow it (P53)? On 74 he talks of there being no more sanctity in church, unions, etc. than there is in the state. These are all inventions of men, and thus can be reinvented, dismantled by men too.

It’s significant to his argument that Dewey states perhaps we’ve never had democracy and makes a distinction “between democracy as a social idea and political democracy as a system of government.” We may have democracy as our political system, but not clear we’ve realized it as social idea. (143) A democratic government “exists to serve its community…” (145-6) and until all are empowered and individual enabled, we’re not there. On 71-2, he writes, “A measure of the goodness of a state is the degree in which it relieves individuals from the waste of negative struggle and needless conflict and confers upon him positive assurance and reinforcement in what he undertakes.” Are we there yet?

The Grand (continual) Experiment

The other central tenet, on p33-4 Dewey writes: “The formation of states must be an experimental process. … since conditions of action and inquiry and knowledge are always changing, the experiment must always be retried; the State must always be rediscovered. … we have no idea what history may bring forth.” This reminds me of the “Peril of Perfection” as applied to the French Revolution. Everyone thought that they got it right, as a result – kept killing each other, tearing down government. Knowing that we don’t have it right, that it’s a constant experiment, allows for growth, humbleness in recognizing that you’re part of a continuum not an endpoint… On 159-60, Dewey discusses “habit,” we need habits to operate but we need to keep questioning and experimenting – only on this balance between habit and reinvention can true growth occur.

Easy as A,B,C, 1,2,3…

On 163, Dewey stresses the importance of childhood education for shaping good citizens – a key to a true democratic state. We need to know our world (P173) in order to affect change, in order to ask the sorts of questions that must be continually asked to shape our democracy. We must be versed in the signs/symbols of community to be able to interact with one another and invent new symbols (p152) – education is empowering the individual to be able to participate in the community. The uneducated public is “mush” and thus dangerous. (178) He speaks of “too much Public” (137) voices lost, not educated enough to deal with matters. It all comes down to communication.

We (“you, they, me”) need to be watchful to keep the experiment of the State changing and constantly serving our community better. (P68-9) Hence the cornerstone of democracy is an educated public, adept at communication. We can build this “Great Community” (instead of limited “Great Society”) (126-7)
by remembering that we make the state and we must continually question that State. As he writes on 184, “Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a lie of free and enriching communion. It had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.” Communication is the key to community. (142) Building up from “communal life” (149) we can grow democracy – otherwise it’s a false approach built on hollow words and not communication….

It’s Not Technology

While yes, technology does exacerbate conditions (particular in making the larger public not only possible but unavoidable by its ability to connect everything), Dewey identifies correctly that technology is not evil, the real devil are “ideas” that change “more slowly than outward conditions.” (141) Looking at ideas as being viral (memetics theory) use people to perpetuate themselves. Hard to inoculate against and get people to think for themselves. This where Dewey’s impassioned plea for the arts comes in. “Artists have always been the real purveyors of news, for it is not the outward happening in itself which is new, but the kindling by it of emotion, perception and appreciation.” (184) The arts are pioneers, seeing in ways others don’t and thus acting as the voice of continual questioning, seeking ways to see not imagined yet….

Think Global, Act Local

We tend to vote global, but ignore the local, where our impact could really be felt, and trickle upwards. Community begins at home, all around us. Technology is changing the geographic boundaries of communication and hence community, but regardless, the heart of democracy remains in community however we continually redefine it. – N

The Public and Its Problems, John Dewey (Long Form)

2009-02-09T20:47:00.001-08:00

Notes, summation, and tangents

Some summary:
It’s interesting to see how Dewey’s argument written 80 some years ago, with a few stylistic changes and reference swaps could be for today. We face the same issues and still seem oblivious to the same problems as when he was writing. That’s touched on throughout all the notes here. Rather depressing, but hopeful to know that people have been thinking clearly, and perhaps the time will come when we act on them – and these sorts of texts will have provided a foundation for shaping the future…

P3) Addresses the idea that “facts don’t carry their meaning along with them” We have to construct it, hence objectivity of facts is called into question. I think of my term, unflattening in terms of taking information that’s flat and making it into something of meaning.
P15) Definition of the Public: “The public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for.” We see this reiterated throughout – public/private, when things can’t just be in public sphere because of interconnectedness, become Public.
P18) States that while “Individual human beings may lose their identity in a mob or in a political convention … [doesn’t mean] that some mysterious collective agency is making decisions, but that some few persons who know what they are about are taking advantage of massed force to conduct the mob their way…” There are still “concrete persons” involved – acting as representatives (true or not) of the public. Makes clear distinction between person in private and representative character. As per last week’s discussion, this mystery of the collective is talked about here….
P19) Distinction between authorship and authority – officials control behavior as public agents…
P21) “the society itself has been pulverized into an aggregate of unrelated wants and wills.” Thus state is viewed as oppressive or pooling of resources of all.
P22) “Singular things act, but they act together. Nothing has been discovered which acts in entire isolation.” This was known then, Dewey connects idea to biology, which has known this for some time, it seems the only people who don’t – deny climate change, deny problems are connected.
P24) More on connections between us all, and that all of us were infants and cared for – even when we were helpless. Example of acting in interests of others, based on understanding of benefits for all. We can apply this to importance of education (which Dewey does), to having health care, clean water, food, etc. It benefits all of us to have a healthy community.
P25) Humans become “a social animal in the make-up of his ideas, sentiments, and deliberate behavior.” Again, things are connected, ideas come from “association and intercourse” with community – inseparable.
P33-4) Dewey writes: “The formation of states must be an experimental process. … since conditions of action and inquiry and knowledge are always changing, the experiment must always be retried; the State must always be rediscovered. … we have no idea what history may bring forth.” This is key, reminds me of “peril of perfection” in thinking about the French Revolution. Everyone thought that they got it right, as a result – kept killing each other, tearing down government. Knowing that we don’t have it right, that it’s a constant experiment, allows for growth, humbleness in recognizing that you’re part of a continuum not an endpoint…
P37) Dewey says the author of the state is “nothing but singular persons, you, they, me.” We forget, it’s “we the people,” and this is Dewey’s larger point – we make the state, it wasn’t the mysterious collective but all of us signing off on it. And if we want it to be otherwise, the responsibility lies in our hands.
P41) Gives an example of village tightly connected to one another, everyone knows everything – in such a “condition of intimacy, the state is an impertinence.” And truly, we need the state to negotiate that space between people, the lack of intimacy…
P48-9) Move from public to private domain of religion. He writes, “As long as the prevailing mentality thought that the consequences of piety and irreligion affected the entire community, religion was of necessity a public affair.”
P50) Extends example above to intellectual matters – again moving from public to private. Gets to reason of why we do make some of these things public – organization and need for the State.
P53) Great question: “Why should the will of the rulers have more authority than that of others? Why should the latter submit?” Force, or is it “general will”? or because we don’t ask this question?
P63) Public to private again, in reverse: Children are educated by the State even though cared for by family. Stresses importance of childhood for shaping good citizens.
P64) “Transactions between singular persons and groups bring a public into being when their indirect consequences – their effects beyond those immediately engaged in them – are of importance.” When things we do have effects beyond the private, then it becomes realm of the public – need a State to govern those transactions. Good definition of origin of State or purpose of it.
P65) Following on from this: “The line of demarcation between actions left to private initiative and management and those regulated by the state has to be discovered experimentally.” Goes on to talk about how this line is drawn differently at different times and places. It’s blurry, we all have different definitions of it, and indeed that landscape continually shifts…
P67) KEY: “the lasting, extensive and serious consequences of associated activity bring into existence a public. In itself it is unorganized and formless. By means of officials and their special powers it becomes a state. A public articulated and operating through representative officers is the state; there is no state without a government, but also there is none without the public. The officers are still singular beings, but they exercise new and special powers.” Argument comes together from thinking about public, connections between all, line between public and private, and need to negotiate that space – need State.
P68-9) More GOOD Stuff: discussion of officials of the state “the state is its officials are. Only through constant watchfulness and criticism of public officials by citizens can a state be maintained in its integrity and usefulness.” Excellent. Again, it’s “you, they, me.” It’s up to us to watch, to keep the experiment going…
P71-2) Talks of strength of state in enabling individualism, protecting people from external forces – “A measure of the goodness of a state is the degree in which it relieves individuals from the waste of negative struggle and needless conflict and confers upon him positive assurance and reinforcement in what he undertakes.” Perhaps we could pass this sentence to the Republican Party? Of course, I suppose one reading for it could be “less taxes, less government” but I think that would be a poor reading.
P74) KEY: “There is no more inherent sanctity in a church, trade-union, business corporation, or family institution than there is in the state.” These are all inventions of men, and thus can be reinvented, dismantled by men too.
P110) “Optimism about democracy is today under a cloud.” Then and now… Stresses the need for constant criticism of the state for better democracy.
P112) I keep returning throughout this (and the class thus far) to the idea of Thinking Global, Acting Local. We tend to vote global, but ignore the local, where our impact could really be felt, and trickle upwards. Dewey talks about local formation of school districts. Perhaps this speaks against the federal or even State involvement in the schools, taking away the local ability to be active, have a voice.
P113-4) On this global-local trend, Dewey discusses town/village hall models, and how local and national are patched together. Our giant heterogeneous state is made possible by technology – but stresses how “piecemeal” this is.
P115) In mushing together heterogeneous people, lose individual ideas (See Wisdom of the Crowds) thus “The creation of political unity has also promoted social and intellectual uniformity, a standardization favorable to mediocrity.” Society is flattened out, rather than made rich. Not like making a tasty dish with different flavors, but blending it into tasteless goop.
P117) Dewey has really gotten into his argument of what’s gone wrong (evident by “Eclipse of the Public” as title of chapter), Vanishing public, decreasing vote. Don’t we hear that today? Disenfranchisement continues. Can we get “Change” that this election signaled? Perhaps only when all the people realize their ownership, their “you, they, me”….
P123) Address public not being concerned with finding “expert school instructors, competent doctors…” Missing out on the things that are really important – our health…
P126-7) Says machine age has made for “Great Society” but not “great Community.” Not truly democratic – great for some….
P131) “Publics are amorphous and unarticulated.” No focus, “canalization” – perhaps Obama did it, and Rush’s dittoheads have… But not a true public.
P133) Discusses inconsistencies in governing, saying one thing, and acting in other interests…
P137) It’s NOT not enough public, “too much Public.” Again, wisdom of the crowds. Voices lost and not educated enough to deal with all the matters. Argument for acting locally…
P140) “How can a public be organized when it doesn’t stay in place?” Need to find common denominators, unite people – get them thinking about the whole community. Huge challenge….
P141) KEY: Real devil are “Ideas” not machines – they change “more slowly than outward conditions.” Speaks to idea of memes – ideas are viral. Catch on, use technology to perpetuate themselves, infecting humans. Hard to inoculate against, get people to think for themselves…
P142) I like this: “Our Babel is not one of tongues but of the signs and symbols without which shared experience is impossible.” Even though we have great tools of communication (even more true than when Dewey wrote) we need common signs/symbols to forge great community.
P143) Makes distinction “between democracy as a social idea and political democracy as a system of government.” We may have democracy as our political system, but not clear we’ve realized it as social idea.
P145-6) Reliance on doctrines, become dogma, even good ideas – in a new situation, time, environment, too rigid. Need to question, criticism, keep experimenting. Democratic government “exists to serve its community, and that this purpose cannot be achieved unless the community itself shares in selecting its governors and determining their policies,….” Inclusion of all, realization of empowerment.
P147) Interacting of individuals with groups, groups with other groups, individuals in multiple groups, getting them all to work together, necessity of all-encompassing group – the democratic State.
P149) Beginning with “Communal life” – lead to idea of democracy. Need to start from that, otherwise false “utopian view.”
P150) re: Equality – “denotes effective regard for whatever is distinctive and unique in each, irrespective of physical and psychological inequalities. It is not a natural possession but is a fruit of the community when its action is directed by its character as a community.” Very hopeful – community as core of individuality….
P152) Signs and symbols give rise to new mediums, tools for communication. How community interacts. This means it’s essential to be versed in the signs/symbols of community to be able to interact, and invent new symbols…
P154) “We are not born members of a community” have to learn this, be educated into it… “Everything which is distinctively human is learned, not native…” Again, importance of education – in terms of community, in terms of democracy…
P159-60) Habit (Think “Tradition” in Fiddler on the Roof) Malcolm Gladwell talks about there being a “Southern-ness” that persists in geography. Habits (like memes) continue. Need habits to operate, but also we need to keep questioning, it seems to me, only on this balance between habit and reinvention, can we grow healthily.
P167) “free in thought but not in expression…”
P170) Again, question “sacred” and “sanctity” of courts, governments. But as Dewey argues, these aren’t supernatural, or holy, they are created by you, me, they… Have to always keep this in mind.
P171-2) Organization of physics making chemistry possible and thus making biology possible. Good ordering (my dad did this when he first developed science curriculum for his school as a young teacher…)
P173) KEY: Talks about how anything that makes environment “unknown and incommunicable” to human being as a disaster. Yet we allow this, prevent knowledge. Discourage education, but how can this be a democratic society if we don’t know our world?
P175) Men becoming machines to tend inanimate machines… We are becoming the Borg? Dewey questions the humanity of our choices. As we should. “The instrumentality becomes a master and works fatally as if possessed of a will of its own – not because it has a will but because man has not.” We’re not subjects to our machines by force, but because we let it happen… Continual inquiry (peril of perfection.)
P178) “Public opinion, even if it happens to be correct, is intermittent when it is not the product of methods of investigation and reporting constantly at work. It appears only in crises.” Opinion polls don’t reflect our logical thought or exploration – but simply that, uninformed opinion. An uneducated public is thus dangerous…
P181-2) Assent of the public “must be secured.” Need to be educated and empowered to give it….
P184) “Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a lie of free and enriching communion. It had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.”
re: the News – as series of events, distractions. Argues instead: “Artists have always been the real purveyors of news, for it is not the outward happening in itself which is new, but the kindling by it of emotion, perception and appreciation.” Mirrors other arguments that artists are pioneers of the future, speaks to importance of the arts to see ways that we don’t, to be that voice of continual questioning, to probe, to seek, to give us a way to see not imagined yet…. Yes to all of that. – N

Bruno Latour Lecture

2009-02-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

I caught the Bruno Latour lecture on Thursday, February 5th. He’s a delightful speaker, humorous and deadly serious all at once. Made for an engaging experience even when the material veered into dense territory.

Broke his talk into sections, how we’ve come to be who we are – perhaps the myth of modernity (said the West has never been Modern), where we are now, and his solution to get people to talk together and essentially, save the planet. While I’ve got a lot of notes on this, I’ll try to summarize just that last part here. He talks of “Cosmo-politics” a term which by using “Cosmo” ensures it refers to more than just humans and by using “politics” means more than nature. Comes up with an idea of politics of nature, whereby “Spokespersons” for humans and “spokespersons” for nonhumans, their representatives so to speak, gather at a parliament, congress, arena of all, and work out the best ways for all to survive, co-exist. It’s a hopeful image, unfortunately founded on the need to have representatives in good faith of all these parties – including humans, and that having organized it, they can act. It’s amazing to see the enormity of articles in science magazines, the emphasis in his talk, to act now. For people seeing the big picture, as I believe Latour does quite well, it’s unfathomable to unravel how come everyone isn’t realizing how urgent this is and now. Here’s hoping more people here him and start acting.

On a related note, his solution of bringing together complex issues, reminded me more than a little bit of “Consilience” E.O. Wilson’s proposal for the coming together of the sciences and the arts, which has spoken strongly to me since I first encountered it. Great book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)– N

Castells and Dyson

2009-02-04T09:51:00.001-08:00

Castells introduces the idea of a Network society, which is very much our reality today. The global economy transforms work into a “unit in real time on a planetary scale.” This is a big shift, even if we’ve been traded and exchanging globally for hundreds of years – not like this. As he notes, “labour tends to be local, capital is by and large globalized.” Thus labor is sought out where less capital can be spent. A big focus of this article is the exclusion of people from globalization – even as it connects the world, many are left out. What’s not valuable to it, is out. Calls it a Fourth World (Jack Kirby’s comics?) of exclusion – from Africa to the South Bronx.

He calls the linking structure of globalization “Network enterprise” cleverly different than a “network of enterprises.” It’s a specific set of linkages organized for a specific project that dissolves/reforms after project is complete… Transformation of power relationships between capital and labour in favour of capital. Again, capital flows where it can get labor cheapest, the flow of information and materials (air travel, etc.) make it unnecessary to centralize labor. People fall behind into inescapable “black holes” in the midst of others thriving like gangbusters. “The information Age does not have to be the age of stepped-up inequality, polarization and social exclusion. But for the moment it is.” I like this phrase – “Instead of a global village we are moving towards mass production of customized cottages.” We’re uniform in our individuality. He calls it “culture of real virtuality.”

The media plays an important role in politics and behavior of public – it simplifies messages, turns issues into soap operas, distracts from thinking about how our lives are being warped.

Information age ushering in new forms of time. We’ve moved from biological time to clock time in the industrial age. An aside on the time of industrial age from a past document of mine:

Even time got conscripted into the service of work and money, for “time is money” in today’s economy. People have observed the passage of time ever since they could pause and reflect on their environment and its seasonal changes. Within our own bodies we can detect the rhythm of our heartbeat, the alternation of our breath and in women, the menstrual cycle. The seasons, phases of the moon, and movements of the stars were all incorporated into early human calendars. Agriculture required a thorough knowledge of the seasons in order to plant and harvest at the proper time of year. The mechanical clock was first constructed in the eighth century in China to precisely calculate the actions of the emperor. Europeans later adopted this invention and perfected their own version, used at sea to calculated longitude. The mechanical clock made possible and then necessary the ability to mark off precise amounts of time that could not have been measured before. Time no longer needed to be thought of in terms of human responses or of the movement of the sun, but instead as the movement of a wheeled gear. Lewis Mumford states, “The automation of time, in the clock, is the pattern of all larger systems of automation.”[i] Newton conceived of the universe as a mechanical clockwork; ever since, human lives have been marked off and fit into the clicks of a ticking clock.

The clock became far more than just a useful tool, but a change in how humans interacted with the world. Things have to be done on time, not according to a human’s life and behavior, but of the arbitrary ratio of gears to one another. Mumford noted that “Abstract time became the new medium of existence. Organic functions themselves were regulated by it: one ate, not upon feeling hungry, but when prompted by the clock: one slept, not when one was tired, but when the clock sanctioned it.”[ii] He also stated the influence of the clock on the modern industrial age was more important than the steam engine because it was “not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing the actions of men.”[iii] People, conceived the mechanical clock to track the motions of their world. In turn, the clock gave rise to the idea of a mechanized society.

[i] Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, 286.
[ii] Arthur O. Lewis, Jr., ed., Of Men and Machines (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1963), 63.
[iii] Ibid., 60.

Castells suggests that today with the information age and network society we have timeless time, where the sequence of time is eliminated altogether. These redefinitions of time have a tremendous effect on us as a species – whose biology can’t keep up with what technology has wrought. Castells next moves to Space, and the Space of Flows. Even place is beginning to have a different meaning. In discussion group, Cindy talked about someone listening to Satellite radio while driving and hence unaware of a tornado bearing down. We lose our sense of place and I’d think a sense of community associated with it. Structured around networks our sense of community is fragile and unstable and constantly being reordered. We’ll return to this again, but Castells talks about globalization as switching on valuable people and territories, while devalued ones are switched off. The flow of wealth bypasses whatever it doesn’t need and thus even as it grows doesn’t benefit all, but a specific few.

All of this loss of time and place, speaks to loss of identity. Our cultural codes and communities are dismantled, thus meaning we either are out or we have to fight to preserve and reconstruct our identity…

Castells Information City

Internet is vehicle of new economy, just as electricity was vehicle – neither is the economy itself. Our new mobility (rapid air transit etc.) is part of this economy – linking digital and material.

3 features of new economy: Productivity – derived from application of knowledge and practice of innovation. 2) Competitiveness in global environment. We are in a globally interdependent system. As in previous article, idea of work today as a unit in real time on a planetary scale – this is new, even if trading around the world is old. It’s the “real time” that changes everything. Scary thought – we’ve created globalization but can’t control it. This is a big idea running throughout all these pieces. The systems we’ve put in place, the ideas of them, take off and we fit into them or try to. But it’s more than a runaway train, it’s a runaway train picking up steam, reinventing itself to be bigger and faster. Let’s come to the 3rd feature – Networking – assembling resources in a very flexible, adaptable way around projects – which are then done and network is dissolved to be reformed around another project. Can’t network? Can’t survive. Another scary sentence – “the only thing that counts, ultimately, is what this global financial market thinks of you.” If the runaway train wants to pick you up, it will, or it will run you down…

Information turbulences – a lovely phrase. The complexity of the systems means that small factors, moods almost, can swing and bring down the value of something. Nokia example – of company doing well but a little tremor of fear about it, and bam – trouble for the company. And it’s near instantaneous.

Emphasis on “products” – as result of innovation. None of this speaks to ability for people to live better – this seems the failure of what we’ve created and of the analysis of futurists.

Vertical organization giving way to territorially based networks – example of Boston and Silicon Valley.

Key idea: The social fabric of society is being transformed into networks, which is good for the individuals who feel great, but it’s not so good for those who cannot afford being individuals.
True – those who can game the system, play it well, can and do thrive. Others drop off the map – out of network. “The digital divide is a cultural and educational divide.” Absolutely.

Coming to cities as it’s the best environment to network to connect to others with ideas. Here we are in New York. In part, this is why I left Detroit – desire to see what other people are doing, and perhaps more cynically, this is where capital flow is. I might have the greatest idea in the world, but West of the Hudson – who’s going to plug me into the flow? It’s not that people are necessarily smarter here, but the flow IS here and that matters.

Concerning this geographical importance of cities, even when we could be decentralizing, speaks to Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class” http://creativeclass.com/ and “cool cities” movements around the country.
Castells points out how social, educational, and health services are underdeveloped technological – points out where are emphasis is – on making products, not making life better. The launch of the new IPod merits more than a better classroom…

“A society of individualism is a society which is extraordinarily dynamic, but at the same time a society of potential isolation in terms of cultural meaning that could be shared by society.” We have shared meaning, but not shared influence or power. Again, we’re leaving people farther out.
I like this: local governments are better placed than national governments to rebuild trust and legitimacy between people and their governments.
Nation article from 2004, talked about how the key to change was at the local level, local governments. Again, think global, act local. Speaks to our discussion group conversation about media monopolies and the necessity of local media. It was not our initial intent, but it became more of our mission at www.thedetroiter.com to be a voice for our community in the face of global attempts to marginalize what was happening right here. We need more voices like this….

Dyson, et al.

A lot of “shoulds,” and predictions that haven’t borne fruit. But plenty of ideas to chew on I suppose.

“The central event of the 20th century is the overthrow of matter.” This is huge. True. Then, cyberspace “is more ecosystem than machine.” True too – it’s not simply a tool, it’s a paradigm changing way of connecting one another. Not simply faster, but squashing time and space as Castells suggested.

Are information technologies really driving costs down toward zero? I suppose, but maybe quality of products is heading towards zero too…. I do see how this is all leading to decentralization of governments, etc. But perhaps there is a need to see them grow stronger, as a means of protecting people from dehumanization of globalization….

Dynamic competition vs. static. Static is making things cheaper, dynamic is making something novel. Again though, this is all about viewing things as products, not about life…

Do we celebrate individuality over conformity, reward achievement over consensus? Yes and no. We make idols of some, but refuse to value individuality of others less in the spotlight. If we can truly listen to the voices of all around us, praise their individuality, that changes things. “We all have a voice, something to offer….” I don’t hear that sort of thing often.

Is this really the end of an old civilization and start of a new? Or just another wave of change that’s nothing like our biology, that we bend and twist to fit into? Again, will governments be smaller? Not so sure – may need them ever more as protectors, regulators.

Tying all of these articles together – individualism in the face of the collective. No doubt we are being networked closer together as a result of our technology. But perhaps we have the choice to say what we value and operate from that place first, rather than the onslaught of technology. The network will keep growing and it’s up to us, as individuals collectively to define what its values are.

Unflattening the Collective (plus words about John Brockman)

2009-02-04T08:35:00.001-08:00

The accumulation of information, catalogued, ordered, is inherently flat. It might record experience but it doesn’t resemble it. However, in organizing this information through our experience, our ideas, by infusing it with our signature, we unflatten it, and create a more dimensional experience that allows another to see through our eyes, make a journey we’ve put forth. Wikipedia is necessarily flat, but we shouldn’t expect it to be more than that.

John Brockman and me…

I visited New York City several years ago with a copy of my manuscript on creativity merging art and mathematics. John Brockman’s (the creator of Edge, and agent to nearly every science/philosophical author out there) office is in Manhattan, so I decided to wander in. I took the elevator up and expected a reception desk, wandered directly into their offices. I saw him, he asked a staff member to escort me out and after handing him my text, I went on my way….

Lanier: Digital Mao, and Wisdom of the Crowds.

2009-02-03T21:12:00.000-08:00

Wisdom of the crowds posits that the group collective is smarter than the individual on account of the average of all guesses of a cow’s weight being its actual weight. Lanier would have us believe otherwise.

First, let’s turn attention to the Wiki, Lanier’s first objection and erroneous information in the entry on him. This happens, no doubt. For some reason there’s an entry on me (which I didn’t write), and for a short time in there it suggested I created something that I didn’t (and don’t think it even exists.) It’s fixed now, as has Lanier’s entry – in fact his is corrected to include his own criticism of Wikipedia. However, this false information is still floating about the Internet on other aggregator sites that pulled from Wiki but apparently never refresh from it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Sousanis) So mistakes get made, but mistakes also get fixed. This is true in anything, I think of the few times I’ve been interviewed for publication, and stunned to see the inaccuracy of what shows up in print. And that is taken as gospel. So accuracy is not guaranteed anywhere (raising a whole set of philosophical questions) and wikipedia’s strength is in the multiple eyes overseeing it and able to continually correct it. So to that end, as a resource it’s a great starting point and handy in a pinch. Realizing its strengths and its limitations helps. To those of us referenced therein and find the version of our lives misrepresented, well, I suppose we could end up in the Star instead….

Concerning the fear that kids will be using this for everything – well, they used to use the encyclopedia for everything too, so the problem isn’t new. Engendering the importance of research, investigation, is essential, and creating something that is theirs, that seems key. Then they’ll use whatever tools work best. To that end, the New York Times ran an article on kids using YouTube for research projects. One quote from the article: “Video is part of the discovery process,” he said. “Depending on the user and the type of content, users may want to start with video or text.” Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/business/media/18ping.html?scp=4&sq=youtube%20school%20work&st=cse

Where I think Lanier runs slightly off course is conflating Wikipedia with fears about collective intelligence. We’re not expecting an individual voice to come through, though an editorial tone of how Wikipedia articles are written I believe is coming into existence. We don’t read it for its value as literature, but on its value to lead us to the source for literature.

Where I think he’s totally on the right track is here: The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.

It’s not clear that the Internet is connecting us together more, or wasting our time (he said, clicking back and forth between tabbed windows and the essay he’s writing...) Concerning blogging, he says this: The question of new business models for content creators on the Internet is a profound and difficult topic in itself, but it must at least be pointed out that writing professionally and well takes time and that most authors need to be paid to take that time. In this regard, blogging is not writing.
Here, I agree and disagree. Blogging as blurting out opinions, I concur – that’s not writing. However, blogging as a tool to disperse writing to an audience, well, that’s not such a bad thing. (I’m not sure I’ll count this blog as writing, it’s probably the closest to actual blogging that I can come.) Case in point from my own life, when my brother and I started www.thedetroiter.com in 2002, we had in mind a magazine. Blog tech made it possible for us to post our stuff ourselves, without having to html format anything (although we also did that for special features) and organize it in a database. So the blog was a tool, though we used it the same way we would for in print articles (in fact my brother’s articles often appeared in print before we ran them on the web.) We were never capable of writing a quick rant and signing off (and that’s more or less true in this more private blog as well.) The beauty of blogs and YouTube comes in making publishing of sorts as accessible and ubiquitous as a pencil. Simultaneously, the ugliness of blogs and YouTube comes in making publishing of sorts as accessible and ubiquitous as a pencil.

But Lanier’s major issue is: the alarming rise of the fallacy of the infallible collective.” I don’t know if we really believe this, even with the rise of Wikipedia. Fierce individuality and worship of the celebrity of individual thrives in the face of the collective. Let’s return to the wisdom of the crowds and connect it to Lanier’s piece with a number of analogies. Yes, we’re good at guessing weights if enough answers are sought, but that says little about creating something interesting or of value. Think about cooking. If we’ve done it well, we keep each ingredient distinct, even as they work in the service of the whole, as opposed to mush. This is true in art and music as well. In averaging out – we lose bright lights, contrast, our vision is blurred with nothing to distinguish. Fades to gray, to mush, we need the language of opposites. Thus in the collective – everything has an equal voice all at once, nothing can be heard and nothing important emerges. History is a pastiche of individual voices, as opposed to the instantaneous collective – the mob, where nothing is distinct….

Perhaps that’s a useful way of looking at it. The knowledge we have today is certainly the work of a collective. But they are a collective of individuals, of layers of thoughts over time. Instant collectives lack distinct voices, American Idol produces nothing. It’s a decision we have a vote in but not a voice and not ownership. We have ownership over our ideas, over the things we create – and that’s the defense against the hive mind. Taking ownership of ourselves and being enable by our connections rather than disabled. In the next piece tying Castells and Dyson’s works together we’ll mention that networks are good for strong individuals and bad for weak. That seems to fit right in here as more and more voices are being lost. – N

More on average: In the discussion group, Michael offered the idea of King Lear written as a Wiki. Seems like it would lack something – even if in other ways it have all these eyes and minds making it better. I suggest these things lose their voice, a smattering of average. If we call that distinctive quality “signature” it’s erased, written over – something essential is lost in the process….

Nation Article

2009-01-30T18:51:00.000-08:00

Concerning the environment and economics, as per last week's discussion:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090216/pollin?rel=hp_picks

quick thoughts (really)

2009-01-28T07:17:00.000-08:00

Thread running through all pieces: We Are All Connected. Hence interdependent. This is evident in thinking about Climate Change, of course. Rivers, air, make for a dynamical system continually flowing.

Poor people matter to us - even far off as with the Bottom Billion. Besides speaking to who we are as a people, since we're connected, their problems do become our problems. We can't build large enough walls to keep the world out.

In all these cases economics and ecology intertwine, have to keep our eye on both to forge ahead.

Distinction between we/they - othering of people, leads to violence, lack of care - ultimately, seeing we're all connected, there is no division, only we - is key to all of our survival.....

All readings for 012809 – Short form

2009-01-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

Discussion Setup for Stern Review: “climate change presents very serious global risks and demands an urgent global response”

From the outset, I’m thinking of the mantra of the environmental movement “Think Globally, Act Locally.” I connect this to the “butterfly effect” in dynamical systems – small actions can have big impacts over time. By acting today, even in small ways, we can influence tomorrow in not so small ways.

The heart of the Stern Review is in the convergence of economics and ecology (as is reiterated by Sachs in his lecture). Note that both stem from the same Greek root “oikos” = house. Nomos = managing, hence economy is “household management.” Logia = “study of”, thus it’s the “study of the house” – or interrelationship of organisms and their environment. One more, ecosystem (house-system) – consists of everything living in the house and the house itself – all interdependent on one another. Seeing the interconnectedness of our planet is essential – we’re all linked by dynamical systems of water and air like arteries in our bodies. Climate change can’t be localized. Thus, in order to care about either economics or ecology, we need to be concerned with both. By mitigating (taking strong action to reduce emissions) now, Stern says, we can prevent huge future costs – economically and ecologically. Again – think local/global/butterflies and consider treating a cut as a small cost that prevents infection (threat to the entire system) and expensive treatment (or perhaps no possible treatment) down the line. Echoing the Native American philosophy of the 7th generation, Stern writes, “Such a modeling framework has to take into account ethical judgments on the distribution of income and on how to treat future generations.” Turn then to social costs, the real cost of things: what is the real cost of a Styrofoam cup if we think about the resources it takes and the landfill space to get rid of it? If we start paying the real cost of what we use – perspectives shift and habits change. Such collective conceptual shifts are necessary, but drastic measures are called for, as Stern argues, “A shared global perspective on the urgency of the problem and on the long-term goals for climate change policy, and an international approach based on multilateral frameworks and coordinated action, are essential to respond to the scale of the challenge.” Perhaps then the mantra shifts to become “Think Globally, Act Globally.” And act now.

A quick look at the critics reveals: conservatives bash Stern for playing chicken little, while environmentalists say he hasn’t gone far enough. Overall the work seems balanced to me, and lays out the enormity of issues in a way that speaks to people’s hearts and their bottom line at the same time, for in his words, “Delay would be costly and dangerous.” Furthermore, as he puts it, even if the specifics are wrong, the risks are so great that, “Uncertainty is an argument for a more, not less, demanding goal, because of the size of the adverse climate-change impacts in the worst-case scenario.” One more thing, in a recent interview, James Lovelock – originator of the Gaia theory of the earth as organism – suggests we may already be too late to avoid catastrophe. That said, he seems unconcerned, as from the view of the earth as organism, less people isn’t a bad thing. Read it here if you’re interested: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html

A question: The U.S. has been acting globally in terms of fighting communism, spreading democracy, nation building, health issues, policing, and more over the years. Perhaps if we’re concerned about our health, our security, our economy, and our future, the most important thing we can do – and do now – is take action and be leaders on reducing emissions and addressing ecological concerns around the world. In the process, as Stern says, we work with others and as I started with – perhaps these little steps lead to other things…. What should this country’s role be? How much do we pressure our leaders to make these sorts of changes? (And acting locally) what can we do within our own lives?

The Bottom Billion

All of these essays point to how we’re all connected – in this essay a key thought is: the growing disparity of wealth between bottom and top 5 billion is not just their problem “it matters to us.” We’re all connected. Thus, it requires complex, multilevel solutions.

Author identifies the problem as one of traps: 1) the conflict trap 2) the natural resources trap 3) the trap of being landlocked with bad neighbors 4) the trap of bad governance in a small country.
This Bottom billion have been declining in growth since 1970s - >>It’s a picture of divergence – not development.

Arguments that we’ve beaten bigger things – like communism, fascism, and disease, and Cuba is a failure seem pretty weak and unsupported. However, identifies factors of lack of growth well. The wage gap cycle and so on.

Talking about loss of “best and brightest” from nations, loss of critical mass of educated people. This I see as true as coming from Detroit – those who can leave – do.
These Traps are difficult to escape – presents blueprint. Closes with: “we cannot rescue them” “only can be rescued from within.” Seems true. We can offer aid, ideas, but ultimately a people have to arrive at a place together to make it work – nation building from above never seems to yield much…

Jeffrey Sachs lecture on sustainable development:

As with Stern review, connects economics and ecology and “rarely do the two meet.” His talk combines the two, and advises to keep both in sight when working on problems – we can fight poverty and save the planet at the same time.

Interesting to think of Asia’s economic growth today, as truly only reflecting its historically large population – that only in relatively recent times was “behind” in development.

>>Brief talk about ecosystem stresses. (functioning of oceans, rivers, atmospheres.) Invasive species wreaking havoc in new environments – have seen this since ships could carry rats and disease…
Asks: “Can world get together” referencing Nicholas Stern Report.

**** The most important aspect is “empathy.” Need to learn to care, to see through others eyes, stand in their shoes, see another perspective. Helps break down us versus them. The threats we face are common to us all.
Solving these problems will take management and leadership skills – cooperation and coordination are vital….

Fear of Small Numbers – the geography of Anger

Where does culturally motivated violence come from in liberal-democratic societies?

The idea of the nation-state, and thus the “national ethos” is dangerous. A singular view of a nation’s people even when embracing the idea of togetherness – creates majority and minority. Arendt and others: the idea of a national people-hood is the Achilles’ heel of modern liberal society. Suggests direct path from national genius to a totalized cosmology of sacred nation eventually to ethnic purity than cleansing….

“Social uncertainty in social life” can lead to ethnic cleansing. Separating “We” from “they.” One kind of uncertainty – how many “theys” are there? How do we define they? Is some appear to be a we but is really a they? These uncertainties can lead to violence – to ensure certainty. Globalization exacerbates uncertainties. “Anxiety of incompleteness” – trouble with majority and minority… not a complete majority with those “Small numbers” as they remind majorities of small gap between an unsullied national whole, pure national ethos. “Narcissism of minor differences” dangerous than before as how easy it is to become other – creates more fear of loss of identity, power of majority….

Globalization exacerbates conditions of large scale violence because it produces a potential collision course between logics of uncertainty and incompleteness….
>>Curiously contrary to Maxine Greene’s ideas of uncertainty and incompleteness. Where she embraces them, societies sees them as a lack.

Powerful quote: Philip Gourevitch re: Rwanda: “Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community-building.”

Vertebrate vs. Cellular systems.
Vertebrate – nation-state, central order, set of norms, flags, stamps, airlines
Cellular – connected yet not vertically managed, coordinated yet remarkably independent, capable of replication without central messaging structures, hazy in central organizational features yet crystal clear in their cellular strategies and effects – aided by Internet, very much like capitalist world and corporations moving from multi-national to transnational to global.
Terror>>Epistemological assault on us all – destabilizes idea that peace is natural state of order and nation-state is guarantor of such order.

Need to look at minorities in nation-state and marginalization of nation-state by globalization….
>>Minorities are a recent social and demographic category and today they activate new worries about rights, citizenship, belonging, entitlement, etc. Become scapegoats, an in globalization era: “Minorities are the major site for displacing anxieties of many states about their own minority or marginality (real or imagined) … Minorities are metaphors, reminders of betrayal of classical national project – nation-states failure to preserve its promise – needs scapegoats – need to eliminate minorities….

Paradox: violence, especially at the national level, requires minorities… So: why kill the weak? An argument of we/they. Fear they’ll be turned into minority unless existing minority disappears first. (Anxiety of incompleteness.) Nazis and Jews – used political propaganda to incite this fear. Could then extend it to other minorities. To construct a German identity had to eliminate otherness – Jews…. Arendt: “banality of evil.” Reduce minorities to “others” – make it easier to hate…

“One” is the smallest important number for liberalism – one nation, undivided… Minorities break up this “oneness…” We allow for procedural dissent (temporary), but substantive dissent – permanent
>>The point here is that small numbers can unsettle big issues, especially in countries like India, where the rights of minorities are directly connected to larger arguments about the role of the state, etc.

>>“As abstractions produced by census techniques and liberal proceduralism, majorities can always be mobilized to think that they are in danger of becoming minor (culturally or numerically) and to fear that minorities, conversely, can easily become major (through brute accelerated reproduction or subtler legal or political means).”

Stern Review – Short commentary for 012809

2009-01-27T10:01:00.000-08:00

The overview: “climate change presents very serious global risks and demands an urgent global response.”

From the outset of the Stern Review, I’m thinking of the mantra of the environmental movement “Think Globally, Act locally.” I connect it to the idea that small actions can have big impacts – in dynamical systems this is the “butterfly effect.” We can apply this to time – by acting today, in seemingly small ways, we can influence tomorrow in not so small ways. The premise here is that in order to counteract the catastrophe of our own making – we have to take such steps today.

The heart of the Stern Review is in the convergence of economics and ecology (as is reiterated by Sachs in his lecture), two things which are often at odds. But both stem from the Greek root “oikos” or house. Nomos=managing, hence economy is “household management.” Logia is study of, thus it’s the study of the house – or interrelationship of organisms and their environment. One more, ecosystem (house-system) – consists of everything living in the house and the house itself – all interdependent on one another. Thus, realizing our planet as an interdependent system, in order to care about either economics or ecology, we realize that we need to be concerned with both.

By mitigating (taking strong action to reduce emissions) now, Stern says, we can prevent huge future costs – economically and ecologically. Again, think local/global, butterflies – or consider, cleaning a small cut and putting a band-aid on it is a small cost, but it prevents infection, the treatment of which is expensive and threatening to your entire organism. Seeing the connections between things, between our system/planet as a whole is essential. If we wait to disaster strikes, it’s often too late – we have to amputate or worse… Systems of water and air flow throughout the planet like arteries connecting us as a whole. Literally, “we’re in the same boat brother.” Rocking one end, affects the other.

Again, global/local – act now or pay later…. As Stern writes, “Such a modeling framework has to take into account ethical judgments on the distribution of income and on how to treat future generations.” Our previous president dismissed his actions as being up to historians to judge. What if instead we think of the effect of our actions on future generations – to borrow the native American philosophy – think of the seventh generation. Thus the costs of mitigation today, pale in comparison to the costs of mitigation tomorrow, should we fail to do so today. Stern talks of social costs of carbon, or the real costs of things. What about a Styrofoam cup? Nearly free, yet a huge use of resources and landfill space. If we considered the real costs of everything we use and have to start paying this cost – our perspective shifts and our buying habits change. We’d buy things that lasted and wouldn’t leave behind toxic residue when they finally had to be put out to pasture.

The need for taking significant action now is presented here: “The current evidence suggests aiming for stabilization somewhere within the range of 450-550ppm CO2e. Anything higher would substantially increase the risks of very harmful impacts while reducing the costs of mitigation by comparatively little. Aiming for the lower end of this range would mean the costs of mitigation would be likely to rise rapidly. Anything lower would certainly impose very high adjustment costs in the near term for small gains and might not even be feasible, not least because of past delays in taking strong action.” That is, if we’re willing to pay a little today, we won’t be stuck with an unpayable bill tomorrow. And so with the stakes this high, perhaps the mantra stated at the outset shifts somewhat and becomes “think global, act global.” As Stern puts it, “A shared global perspective on the urgency of the problem and on the long-term goals for climate change policy, and an international approach based on multilateral frameworks and coordinated action, are essential to respond to the scale of the challenge.” We’ve got to get it together, together. “Above all, reducing the risks of climate change requires collective action. … Delay would be costly and dangerous.”

I looked briefly at some criticisms of the Stern Review. On the conservative side of things he was bashed for playing chicken little, while environmentalists say he hasn’t gone far enough. Overall it seems balanced to me, and lays out the enormity of issues in a way that speaks to people’s hearts and bottom line. Furthermore, as he puts it himself, even if the specifics are wrong, the risks are so great that, “Uncertainty is an argument for a more, not less, demanding goal, because of the size of the adverse climate-change impacts in the worst-case scenario.”

One more thing, as I typed this up, I happened upon an interview with James Lovelock – originator of the Gaia theory of the earth as an organism. Scarily, Lovelock suggests we may already be too late to avoid catastrophe. That said, Lovelock seems unconcerned, as from the view of the earth as organism, less people isn’t a bad thing. Read it here if you’re interested: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html

Stern Review – commentary for 012809 (LONG VERSION)

2009-01-26T16:54:00.000-08:00

(short one coming...)

“The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.”

~ Immediately I’m thinking of the mantra of the environmental movement “Think Globally, Act locally.” This persists throughout the document.

“Climate change is global in its causes and consequences, and international collective action will be critical in driving an effective, efficient and international collective action will be critical in driving an effective, efficient and equitable response on the scale required.”

~It may take disaster to show just how tightly we are all connected. The dynamics of weather and the butterfly effect demonstrate this – small things create big things – this thought will be reiterated.

“Climate change presents a unique challenge for economics: it is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen. The economics analysis must therefore be global, deal with long time horizons, have the economics of risk and uncertainty at centre stage …. [para] this will look at important areas of economics…”

~ My key theme from this is the connection between economics, ecosystems, and ecology. Often seen as being at odds – they share the same root and it seems it takes a looming crisis to weave them back together.
Some definitions:
• Economy: “household management” from the Greek – “oikonomia” – household management. Oikos=house. Nomos=managing. An economist is a “household manager.”
• Ecology: Also from “oikos” = “house, dwelling place, habitation” “logia” = study of. Hence, the study of the interrelationship of organisms and their environments.
• Ecosystem: a “house” “system” – consists of everything living in the house and the house itself, thus the ecosystem is the living organisms and the nonliving physical factors that make up their environment, all interdependent on each other.
An economics that takes into account the interdependence of all its units is one that has to think about the environment and the cost of human actions on it – and how those effects can come back around and effect humans.

“The effects of our actions now on future changes in the climate have long lead times. What we do now can only have a limited effect on the climate over the next 40 or 50 years. On the other hand what we do in the next 10 or 20 years can have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next.”

~Again, “think global, act local” – let’s apply this to time. Global is the long view, local is short action. Small changes now over time can have great effect. Butterfly effect in action. Small things lead to big things.

“Mitigation – taking strong action to reduce emissions – must be viewed as an investment, a cost incurred now and in the coming few decades to avoid the risks of very severe consequences in the future.”

Three ways of considering the economic costs of impacts of climate change and costs and benefits of action to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases:
1) Disaggregated techniques – that is considering the physical impacts of climate change on the economy, human life, and on the environment.
2) Using economic models – estimate economic impacts of climate change and transition to low-carbon energy systems on economy
3) Comparisons of current and project “social cost of carbon” with marginal abatement costs.
His conclusion: the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs.

“The scientific evidence points to increasing risks of serious, irreversible impacts from climate change associated with business-as-usual (BAU) paths for emissions.”

~ “Business-as-usual?” Suggests definite need to reconstruct what BAU means.

Mention of “dynamic feedbacks” – part of climate change – also of economic systems. Current greenhouse gases in atmosphere 430 ppm CO2, only 280ppm before the Industrial Revolution. World has already warmed more than half a degree Celsius. Another half a degree projected over the next few decades.

Talking of temperature increases of up to 5 degree Celsius: “Such changes would transform the physical geography of the world.” To say that this would have a significant effect on human lives is a huge understatement – it changes where we live, how we live, everything. Want to live on Mars, on Venus – exaggerations, sure, but the conditions for which human life survives is a tiny slice of a range. We’re a goldilocks species, too much, too little, too hot, too cold – we’re out of luck…

“Warming will have many severe impacts, often mediated through water” Continues on to talk of flood risks and eventual reduction of water supplies. Then crop yields, spread of diseases, loss of coastal cities, huge extinction of species with only 2 degree Celsius of warming. And more….

“The impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed – the poorest countries and people will suffer the earliest and most. And if and when the damages appear it will be too late to reverse the process. Thus we are forced to look a long way ahead.”
Discussion this statement – developing regions tend to be warmer already as it is. These areas are dependent on agriculture – which will be hit heavily. Low incomes already don’t help either. Exacerbate differences between rich and poor still further as a result.

Whatever benefits of warming for cold weather latitudes, offset by other losses.
“The monetary impacts of climate change are now expected to be more serious than many earlier studies suggested, not least because those studies tended to exclude some of the most uncertain but potentially most damaging impacts.”

Talks about even greater temperature increases – saying earlier estimates about warming may have been optimistic – these would take “us into territory unknown to human experience and involve radical changes in the world around us.” “With such possibilities on the horizon, it was clear that modeling framework used by this Review had to be built around the economics of risk.” Rather than averaging across possibilities – which conceals risks, which if they were to come true would be catastrophic.

~ Again, global/local – act now or pay later…. “Such a modeling framework has to take into account ethical judgments on the distribution of income and on how to treat future generations.”
This runs counter to GW Bush – saying it’s up to historians to judge how he did – why not think about future generations when we make decisions now. Think of the seventh generation as the native Americans did. We’ll return to that…

“The analysis should not focus only on narrow measures of income like GDP. The consequences of climate change for health and for the environment are likely to be severe. … Again, difficult conceptual, ethical, and measurement issues are involved, and the results have to be treated with due circumspection.”

Maintaining BAU, may have a greater impact than thought – taking into account impact on environment and human health, climate system may be more responsive to greenhouse-gas emissions than previously thought, and disproportionate effect on poor. … it’s difficult to make economic forecasts, just as it is to make climate change forecasts. “Much (but not all) of the risk can be reduced through a strong mitigation policy, and we argue that this can be achieved at a far lower cost than those calculated for the impacts. In this sense, mitigation is a highly productive investment.”
“Emissions have been, and continue to be, driven by economic growth; yet stabilization of greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere is feasible and consistent with continued growth.”

* “Yet despite the historical pattern and the BAU projections, the world does not need to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development.”

~ This is key – this means you can save the planet without having to stop doing business. Everyone wins.

“Overshoot” – allowing GHG to peak above stabilization level and then fall – unwise as it would mean reducing carbon emissions drastically and perhaps not feasibly – economically or practically.
4 ways to cut GHG emissions – reduce demand for emissions-intensive goods and services; increased efficiency; action on non-energy emissions (i.e. deforestation); switching to lower-carbon tech for power, heat and transport.

~ All of these again are little things – to create big things. All within reach, not difficult to achieve but their impact is great…

Goes on to estimate GDP cost of cutting carbon by 2050 – 1% of annual global.

~ Reduce is a necessary theme here – in building more efficient machines, in cutting down waste all along the way. Transport is hard to cut quickly, but ultimately necessary.

“Low-carbon economy brings challenges for competitiveness but also opportunities for growth.”
~ Obama’s inaugural speech spoke to the need to move in this sector – “Individual companies and countries should position themselves to take advantage of these opportunities.”

“Implementing climate policies may draw attention to money-saving opportunities” – again, this is local/global. Big theme here – marginal costs of abatement vs. the social cost of carbon. “Even if we have sensible policies in place, the social cost of carbon will also rise steadily over time, making more and more technological options for mitigation cost-effective.”

Key Paragraph: “The current evidence suggests aiming for stabilization somewhere within the range of 450-550ppm CO2e. Anything higher would substantially increase the risks of very harmful impacts while reducing the costs of mitigation by comparatively little. Aiming for the lower end of this range would mean the costs of mitigation would be likely to rise rapidly. Anything lower would certainly impose very high adjustment costs in the near term for small gains and might not even be feasible, not least because of past delays in taking strong action.” “Uncertainty is an argument for a more, not less, demanding goal, because of the size of the adverse climate-change impacts in the worst-case scenario.”

~ If we’re willing to pay a little today, we won’t be stuck with an unpayable bill tomorrow. It’s difficult to get people to see this, to see beyond the inconvenience of thinking beyond today. But there it is, if we don’t “sacrifice”, don’t cut back, address things now (and it may already be too late), tomorrow’s costs are out of this world – perhaps literally.

“Policy to reduce emissions should be based on three essential elements: carbon pricing, technology policy, and removal of barriers to behavioral change.”
1) Carbon pricing is first. “people are faced with the full social cost of their actions.”
~ This leads me to think of the real price of things – i.e. a Styrofoam cup. It may cost nothing to us – it comes free from after dinner or getting takeout, or almost nothing to buy and since the makers of it can’t be doing it at a loss, presumably it costs them even less to make it. Yet what then becomes of it. What is the cost in oil needed to produce it, in how it decomposes or doesn’t, the landfill cost, and so on. If we start looking at the real costs of everything we use – it shifts our perspective. And if we start having to pay the real cost for such things – no doubt this would change our buying habits. We’d buy things that lasted, things that could be touched over and over again and not leave behind a toxic residue when finally they had to be put out to pasture.
2) Tech policies – from R&D to demonstration and deployment. Helping low-carbon tech get a leg up, as it costs more in startup than existing tech, with the idea that it will cost less as more of it is available. “The knowledge gained from r&d is a public good; companies may underinvest in projects with a big social payoff if they fear they will be unable to capture the full benefits. Thus there are good economic reasons to promote new tech. directly.”

~ Do people do the right thing for the right reasons? Probably not enough of us do. Therefore by converging economics and ecology – if people are given a new reason to do something, a reason that they can understand in terms of dollars, perhaps they do the right thing regardless. In this way we trade teaching about ecology to teaching about economics – and people listen.

3) The removal of barriers to social change.
All of this speaks to “fostering a shared understanding of the nature of climate change and its consequences.” Changing our understanding is key, and we’ll return to this.

“Adaptation policy is crucial for dealing with the unavoidable impacts of climate change, but it has been under-emphasized in many countries.”
~ Act local: “Unlike mitigation, adaptation will in most cases provide local benefits, realized without long lead times.”
Need “financial safety net” for poorest in society, likely most vulnerable to impact. “Adaptation action should be integrated into development policy and planning at every level.”

Key * “An effective response to climate change will depend on creating the conditions for international collective action.”
~ Act global. “A shared global perspective on the urgency of the problem and on the long-term goals for climate change policy, and an international approach based on multilateral frameworks and co-ordinated action, are essential to respond to the scale of the challenge.”
~ We’ve got to get it together, together. – “international cooperation” on all aspects of reducing emissions. “Cooperation can be encouraged and sustained by greater transparency and comparability of national action.”

~ Stern suggests connecting various existing carbon trading schemes and those in development together can be beneficial. Here it seems is a nod to ecosystems – everything is interdependent.

Continues to press the need for international collaboration, understanding and cooperation. – think Global, act global.
On a practical level – now – “curbing deforestation is a highly cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Again, tie this into the carbon markets.

Key * “Strong and early mitigation has a key role to play in limiting the long-run costs of adaptation. Without this, the cost of adaptation will rise dramatically.”
~ Think of cleaning a cut and putting on a band-aid, so it doesn’t get infected, prevents huge costs down the road. We can think of this in the organism that is ourselves, need to think about it in terms of the organism that is our planet, and as Stern suggests, organism that is our economy.

Key building block – “shared understanding, cooperation…
“Without a clear perspective on the long-term goals for stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, it is unlikely that action will be sufficient to meet the objective.”
Action must include: mitigation, innovation, and adaptation.
“There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if strong collective action starts now.” “But it is already very clear that the economic risks of inaction in the face of climate change are very severe.”
“Above all, reducing the risks of climate change requires collective action. … Delay would be costly and dangerous.”
~ Shared understanding and see that “we’re in the same boat brother.” Need to think global and see that rocking one end has an effect on all of us….

As I typed this up, happened upon an interview in this week’s New Scientist with James Lovelock – who proposed the Gaia theory of the earth as an organism. Scarily, Lovelock suggests we may already be too late to avoid catastrophe. (Though he proposes one last ditch solution and bets we won’t do it.) That said, Lovelock seems unconcerned, as from the view of the earth as organism, less people isn’t a bad thing. Read it here if you’re interested: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html

Also, did other reading about the Stern Report. Seems much debated. Conservatives bash it for chicken little “sky is falling” while environments bash it for not going far enough. Seems pretty well balanced in my view – and it clearly identifies the enormity of the issues and the way in which we need to think about the problems. If specifics are wrong, well, we’re always learning more. But as the report emphasizing, if the high end of the risks are realized, we’re in trouble, better to start paying attention and asking the right questions…

First Post

2009-01-24T19:24:00.000-08:00

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