Autore: Peter Herrmann's Blog

Continued from the riddle of time

Of course, we can easily say that this is the world of arts, not relevant for what is usually perceived as real life. So, coming back to real life then – or is the following the prolongation of arts in the form of an utmost absurdity, the unsane form of not leaving, a pattern that we can find in the catholic church: the Pope, not being able to fulfil the obligations, however staying in office, seeing himself obliged to do so, so to say following in the footsteps of his master. This “factual sedisvacancy” can be seen is expression of what had been said: the separation of life from living, the fact that existence is reduced on reproduction of from, well possible: ongoing existence while being quasi brain-dead. All this is also showing the kinship with artificial intelligence/singularity: let others think – I only repeat my thinking – let others repeat any thinking and merge what I thought with my presence which is reduced on its own past (if there is any past left).

The felt obligation to live eternally is the conviction of this being, the pure existence as only way to eternal life [yes, paradoxes are lurking around every corner]. A new version of eternal life is found suggested at least, now popping up as

artificial intelligence and singularity.

Too often reductionist…. – as already Marshall McLuhan said:

the purpose of communication surely is trying to illuminate most people do what goes on in human life people never communicate most people never communicate in their entire lives they think that what they say is communication what they the communication is the effect of what you say it’s not what you say it’s the effect of what you say

(1971: MARSHALL MCLUHAN on ADVERTISING | 24 Hours | Writers and Wordsmiths | BBC Archive; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFjj3OyjzwA)

The crux is that the body is on the one hand defined as solely being outer shell, whereas it is in fact the only thing that remains real; AI is however, essential, defined as essence, while it is in fact not anything else than the reification of the past, and as such “dead life”, with this formulation leaning towards Marxist political economy where we find the term dead labour. At the end of the day it is about the synergy of externalisation and internalisation – cogito ergo sum. Reinterpreting this in materialist terms, means that AI easily results in extinction of being – thinking is reduced on personal reproduction, based on and resulting in ongoing partialisation. What appears is complete openness, the permanent reshuffling of parts, is in fact the overcoming of elements – where there is no entity, there is no need for any elementary form: arbitrariness is at work. However, god doesn’t throw dices. And while questioning god seems to be reasonable, it goes without question that nowhere the throwing of dice can be found. Whenever we witness and do something, we decide, we feel empathy, we revise … and we take responsibility for what we are doing and what we refrain from doing.

Reification of being is then becoming the supposed final goal of super-modernity [more appropriate than postmodernity I guess]: AI is then the final stage of ‘commodification of thinking’, of course including the reduction of thinking on the production and shifting of little particles – electro-magnetic waves without inner force moving towards creation and meaning.

What is, however, the difference between such particles: reproducible, combinable in different ways, forms, shapes on the one hand and particles that are accessible and appropriable and offering seemingly endless possibilities as reality that can be shaped by mind and will through the knowledge of quantum mechanics?

My suggestion is that telos is at least an important part, referring to the following layers:

• it is inherently given in the second case, not simply defined by the economic powers
• inherently given includes negotiation – and while negotiation is always also a matter of power, it is also a matter of simply finding a “violent setting”; instead, relationality is the foundation on which the different agencies move, “agencies” meaning (i) that every side is relevant, in some way and (ii) relationality is not least a matter of recognised, accepted and utilised mutual…, well, not dependency but interaction, inter-expressing something of exchange, mutuality.

Reification maybe a side effect but it is in any case an end in itself and/or a servant for the user, not a means to serve “something else”, i.e. a profiteur.

Sometimes it is a narrow line, sometimes overlapping, always in need to ask for looking at the following equation:

Returning now to the disappointment of the old white man and woman … grumpy, elitist, the challenge is to re-establish teaching – and even communication in general – by way of increasing openness, a kind of renaissance as it will be necessary to overcome borders, moving first vehemently away from partialisation and return then, after the first big steps, to specialised analysis.

Isn’t that as well the general problem of life and living today? The often lamented short-temperedness, the lack of concentration in response to the continued demand for quick answers, often to be given without being asked a formulated question. The patterns that had been earlier described as prevalent in today’s art where they in actual fact only reflect the changes in the political economy of life/living – reflecting in a perverted way the Marxian conviction:

If we presuppose communal production, the time factor naturally remains essential. The less time society requires to produce corn, livestock, etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or spiritual. As with a single individual, the comprehensiveness of its development, its pleasures and its activities depends upon the saving of time. Ultimately, all economy is a matter of economy of time.

(Marx, Karl, 1857-61: Economic Manuscripts Of 1857-1858. [First Version of Capital]; in: Karl Marx Frederick Engels: Volume 28: Marx 1857-61; London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010: 109)

It remains the competition, guided by the challenge to be part of, not to contribute to – not least as the being part of is simply about the form, and here it does not matter of what one is part; in the second case it is about the what, and after getting this clear, we can and have to think about what a suitable contribution is. In academia, applying too often the first way, we find again and again the learning of reproduceable formulas, so to say sine ira et studio, or even without interest and substance.

Again, it is a simple calculation that is needed to figure out what we – the old and young [being aware of the stereo typing] can contribute:

Experience as matter of confusion, permanently crossing lines and borders, in the way Dalì once – supposedly – said, something like:

confusion is the source of creativity;

and what Picasso experienced and expressed by pointing out that it took him a long time to find himself, his own style, after having learned during a relatively short period how academic painting is done [while being aware of the fact that he could not have found his own style without this knowledge].

Is there a solution? Mass education is reproduction, elite education is innovation? The danger is obvious: the loss of utopia.

And with this we face the challenge to look forward, considering even future as past – as Oscar Wilde said

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

Then, there will be no clipping wings of the innovation-oriented urge of youth; and there will be no acknowledgment of entrenched stubbornness of the old, no acceptance of such idiosyncrasy as wisdom ….

Back to secession and accession – mentioned earlier:   

The reference to reality is so well expressed by Ken Loach, contending

L’art se fait dans une forme de colère contre l’art, et pas quand il sert d’instrument de contentement de soi pour les classes dominantes.

Art arises out of a kind of rage against art, not when it serves as a self-gratification tool for the ruling class.

(Édouard Louis. Ken Loach. Dialogue sur l’art et la politique: 62)

Is not then the convulsive clinging to existence simply a perversion of the lack of individuality, which stands against true individuality as social being?

Édouard Louis notes in the same book:

(Je prends des exemples personnels non pas pour parler de ma famille en tant que telle, mais parce que c’est à travers cet angle-là que je me sens plus juste et plus proche du vrai). Les individus, étant donné leur pluralité, deviennent d’autres individus dans d’autres contextes politiques. C’est pour cela que les discours de la gauche sont importants, parce qu’il est presque impossible de changer un individu isolé, mais paradoxalement il est possible de transformer les des individus collectivement, en transformant le langage et sa circulation dans l’espace public, puisque cette transformation est toujours potentiellement possible grâce à la pluralité de manière d’être propre à chaque individu.

(I mention these personal examples not to talk about my family as such, but because I find this perspective more correct and closer to the truth). Thanks to their inherent plurality, individualsbecome other individuals in a different political context. This is why the discourse of the left is so important, because it is almost impossible to change an isolated individual; instead, paradoxically, it is possible to transform individuals collectively by transforming the language of public space, because this transformation is potentially always possible because of the plurality of each individual’s possibilities of existence.

(Édouard Louis. Ken Loach. Dialogue sur l’art et la politique: 50)

Leaving this dialectic out of consideration, accepting the loss of the social as existential focus, is sad on a personal level, and hugely problematic when we consider the grumpy old men and women, glued to their posts, and possible fatal for a political movement thinking that debating issues of woke capitalism is more important than addressing questions of class and political power. Berlusconi (founder of the right-wing Forza Italia), James (tea party republican), Largarde (European and World Banker), Prodi (considered the founder of the Italian centre-left, another expression for “gravedigger of the left”), Ratzinger (ex and em pope) knew well, where the real problem must be seen.

Reaching such point one should become cautious, ask oneself bravely if it is time to leave.