The village, my village, det smukke by Møgeltønder: about 1,000 inhabitants, and somehow amazing how quiet it is: walking along the main street, you rarely meet anyone, although somehow everyone seems to know everyone else, direct contact is limited to the five neighbouring houses.
The train station — I have to go to Suzhou in order to give a lecture:
The walk through the waiting area is probably as long as the main street in my village. At 6 o’clock in the morning, it’s quiet here too… relatively speaking. Size does matter, even if it is often overestimated, because after all, some cities ‘over there’ also have several million inhabitants.
A man in the station concourse is practising Tai Chi: calm, balance, harmony… not only in the dance, but also in the clean station concourse.
****
Size matters: the evening before, I had to deal with the supercomputer. These are dimensions that are difficult to grasp. This is no longer a comparison between a mobile phone and the old Siemens computer; this is about something else:
• two buildings with a total floor space of 27,000 square meters
• a storage capacity of 20 petabytes, and a peak power consumption of 8 megawatts; a peak performance of 1.342 petaflops
• the world’s fastest supercomputer from November 2010 to November 2011 The Tianhe-1A system used a heterogeneous architecture combining CPUs and GPUs, with 7,168 NVIDIA Tesla M2050 GPUs and 14,336 CPUs
• The National Supercomputing Center in Changsha is part of a national network of six centers, including those in Tianjin, Jinan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Wuxi, each focusing on different research domains and leveraging unique networking and resource advantages
• The center’s development aligns with China’s long-term strategy to advance high-performance computing, as outlined in the National Medium- and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006–2020) and the “863 major projects” during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period
• a wide range of high-performance computing (HPC) applications, including *weather forecasting, climate prediction, ocean environment simulation, aerospace engineering, and remote sensing data processing. It also serves critical roles in **biomedical research, genetic technology, materials science, energy, and computational chemistry*.
Then I walk along the little path, wanting to use the time to gather my thoughts: a narrow trail… The path turns slightly to the right; halfway there is a wooden gate, a little rickety, but the big dog looks rather inviting, and a sign invites to take a break… Yes, a coffee would be nice. The place has something enchanted, hyggelig as we say at home.
****
• Size matters… Shortly before the train departs, I go to the toilet – unisex and accessible for disabled people; but also for tall and short people, because even the little ones need to go sometimes.
Automatic ticket inspection
1.HERRMANN PETER, train No.G1778, departure at 07:24 on 11 November 2025 from 长沙南站(Changshanan) to 苏州北站(Suzhoubei), Seat No.012D in Coach 13. The ticket price is RMB470.00
• 7:21 — a soft beep, the doors close
• 7:22 the train starts moving
• 7:26 — cruising speed is reached, 305 km/h, until shortly before MiLuoDong, the first stop.
A break, leaving the office for a short walk across the campus, around the small pond in front of my office building, my thoughts lost in life between worlds – a privilege not to be here on holiday. Music is coming from one of the nearby buildings, I look through the door: dance performances. A notice that I struggle to decipher:
2025 Celebration of the diamond and golden anniversary of Central South University and inauguration of the branch of the National Open University for the Elderly, as well as cultural performances for the Double Ninth Festival
The dances help me understand what I recently learned in theory while studying Confucius: harmony is very important here, and it is not least about being in tune with nature
— easier to understand in dance than in a textbook. The performances are a combination of dances and a film projection in the background: scenes of nature, matchine the movement of the dance and the dance matching the movement of nature. This is surely very different to what some Europeans think when they hear harmony.
On the way back to the office, I chat with Tian, a student — chat = sending messages back and forth; I still haven’t quite got used to this excessive use of these stupid smartphones. The topic is the Double Ninth Festival — off the cuff, references are made to texts from Chinese classics, such as Han Yu.
This classic text is part of the standard curriculum in Chinese secondary schools, and virtually all students have to learn it and memorise it.
Studying music was part of the curriculum of my students when I taught economics here. — No glorification, I know the pressure to perform here … but I also repeatedly experience the ‘calm’ side of this often noisy country.
The current penetration of our society with new media is a profound cultural upheaval.
A statement that can hardly denied. Often experts in some field – as medicine, finance, engineering and of course data processing/information technology – welcome this, making out the great instrumentality, seeing that ‘machines’ are better able to perform some tasks than human beings (even if this is sometimes an illusion: typing a small equation into the calculator may be more tedious than just calculating … – though having only learned to calculate with the calculator may make it impossible to do any calculation that cannot be performed by using the fingers [don’t make divisions, please]). Often the person from the street, ordinary people appreciate it as these ‘cultural tools’ make things possible that had not been even thinkable before – or at least some things are becoming easier. And then there is a third group, also reflected by within the two groups mentioned: sceptics, who, in extreme cases, lament the decline of culture and Western values.
There are surely good arguments in favour of each attitude. However, isn’t there also a good argument for suggesting that we are looking at the wrong question?
The current penetration of our society with new media is a profound cultural upheaval.
This formulation suggests that the new media are the decisive point in question. While looking at the current penetration, it refers to ‘our society’ and this ‘our society’ seems not to be at stake – or to be more precise: our society changes as consequence of (a) the new media and (b) the penetration. Such perspective has major implications for nearly everything: the way we approach democracy, elections, consumption, education, learning, travelling … . – Spoiler: the following does not claim to know the correct answer; and the outline of the present answer is moving on slippery, i.e. contradictory ground.
***
The English businessman Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) is not least known as forerunner of package holidays. However, it had not been until the 1950s that the concept came to a breakthrough: combined flight, transfers, and accommodation, and later the ‘leisure-time activities’ by animateurs characterised new ways of mass tourism. Without doubt a progressive concept, opening explorations to people who could not afford it before.
However, we also see a connotation that is often lost: the amateur had been replaced by the follower of an animateur; the immediate experience of touring by the explorer, entering unknown territories had been replaced by tourism, that offered a framework, an arena, a predefined track for tours. Of course, very few people even in the olden times could afford to travel like Marco Polo (c. 1254 – 8 January 1324), merchant, adventurer and author who travelled years along the Silk Road. One underlying fundamental change is that the multi-skilled, multi-interested and not very rich Marco Polo had been what we may call entrepreneur, undertaker – not in today’s Schumpeterian understanding – who had been replaced by today’s user. There is a paradox implied: whereas for Polo’s generation of undertakers the exchange value emerged from the use value, for today’s user (the entrepreneur as the consumer alike) the use value depends on the exchange value – so far its highest stage and ultimate expression is the financialisation of the economy, techno feudalism (Varoufakis) only being a variation.
Marco Polo, James Cook and the Horizon Holiday Group are only one of many developments that characterise the shallowing and draining of life – the seedbed for
[t]he current penetration of our society with new media
A simple answer can be given by unscrewing the wheel, returning to elitist concepts … – as said: Marco Polo had been one of the few privileged at a time where mass migration existed only as answer on some kind of exodus.
And
In the 2nd century AD, around the same time in the Western world that the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was recording his philosophical thoughts on papyrus scrolls and relying on scribes to reproduce them, the main works of classical Chinese literature were cut into stone slabs in China over a period of eight years from the year 175 AD. Thousands of copies were made in the form of copies: Moistened paper was pressed onto the inscription stones in such a way that when the paper was brushed with ink, the incised characters stood out white against the otherwise blackened paper. (Team “Mainz. Gutenberg 2000: Vor Gutenberg; https://www.gutenberg.de/erfindung/vor_gutenberg.php; 17/11/2024; own translation)
The various steps of massification from earlier developments until today seem to be inextricably linked to a flattening.
But, so far, the simple answer ignores one aspect: what appears to be massification, had been dominated by the idea of rationalisation and making control more effective – that the ability to read could also be used to read other info that those supported by the modern entrepreneurs had to be accepted as unintended side-effect. The liberating effects, however, had not been transposed into the real liberation of the user, or even more: the transformation of the user into the role of the owner. Instead, it had been the orientation on gain as sole guideline also for social processes (see Polanyi) – the alternative is becoming clear in the following lines, taken from the first volume of Willi Bredel’s Ein neues Kapital – A New Chapter: (Berlin: Aufbau, 1974: 412)
….Deshalb wollen wir lernen, fleißig lernen, nicht um klüger zu werden als andere und daraus Vorteile zu gewinnen, sondern um die noch nicht Kluggewordenen klug zu machen. Deshalb wollen wir schaffen, rastlos schaffen, nicht um reicher zu werden als andere und daraus Macht zu gewinnen, sondern um das Leben aller reich zu machen.
….Therefore we want to learn, to study hard, not to become wiser than others and to gain advantages from it, but to make those who are not yet wise wise. Therefore we want to create, to work tirelessly, not to become richer than others and to gain power from it, but to make life rich for everyone.
A simple example: The daughters of a famer had been ‘travelling the world’, the father ‘travels with them’, using the internet, National Geographic etc. and of course digital means of communication even if he rarely moved physically to the next lager city. Both could afford it, not least because they had been ‘time-rich’.
Keynes, writing in 1930 about the Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, suggested
Wouldn’t that allow all of us to travel more substantial than instagramable, to exchange honestly instead of sending only short messages and sending pictures, to study deeply rather to depend on ‘deep AI’ .
The biggest caveat to Trump’s voting victory is that contrary to the usual hype of a ‘massive voter turnout’, fewer Americans eligible to vote bothered to do so compared to 2020. Then over 158m voted, this time the vote was down to 143m. The voter turnout of those eligible fell to 58.2% from the high of 65.9% in 2020.
Around 40% of Americans registered to vote did not do so. And the number of Americans who failed to register rose to 19m from 12m in 2020. So, although Trump got 51% of those who voted, he actually got only 28% support of Americans of voting age.
If it is said that
how we learn, work, discuss, position ourselves socially and politically and make decisions – all of this is changing so quickly that we can hardly keep up
we should go a step further, asking for what we are leaning, discussing and position ourselves, what kind of decisions are we making. If the polity changes along the line of gaining and maintaining power – individually and/or in the sense of MAGA (or any other country). If political decisions are replaced by financial investments and juridification ala “seek(.)[ing] jail and public office ban (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/14/marine-le-pen-embezzlement-trial-national-rally-prosecutor-ban?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other; 17/11/2024) for disagreeable politicians we are confronted with the problem of depleting public spaces, leaving it to individuals to decide ‘what is right and what is wrong’. Such ban directed against Le Pen may be in the short run to be welcomed as it may be welcomed to ban a right-wing populist party like the German AFD. At the end, however such depletion of public spaces is a kind of re-feudalisation, reestablishing the absolute ruler. Of course it is a paradox: in the extreme case, and only then, the absolute ruler may be necessary to avoid the absolute dictator.
Indeed, it is interesting that
[t]he German legal system does not provide any legal protection against disinformation and fake news beyond defamation offences. In order to activate the protective effects of the law, a personal reference is always needed first. In the broad area of assertions without personal reference, in particular the right-wing camp has adopted the peculiar narrative that Google, X and Bytedance (the company behind TikTok) should decide on lies and truth rather than the state. (Chan-jo Jun, Flint, Jessica, 2024: Warum nicht Tiktok und Co über Demokratie entscheiden sollten. Regulierung nach dem DSA; in: Legal Tribune Online, 30.05.2024 , https://www.lto.de/persistent/a_id/54659; abgerufen am: 16.11.2024)
This fundamental problem must be highlighted: the trinity of privatisation, individualisation and the dismissal of the state from responsibility. The aforementioned juridification only appears as contradiction, insofar law is fundamentally concerned with rights of individuals. This basically opens the door to digitisation, and what’s more, digitisation becomes a logical consequence if not necessity as both are based on the principle of binarity.
With all of this, contexts are systematically destroyed – TV programmes, that people are talking about are victim of TV media libraries, commercial channels that offer whatever we like at whichever time we want [and of course, they tell us as well what we want] …. The “Monday morning question at work”: Did you watch …? The subsequent discussion cannot really happen anymore, is at least not encouraged; the debate of the latest news is difficult as the news are sooner old than they can be digested – and in addition they drown in ‘multimedia-news shows’: presenting a central message, accompanied by the stock exchange info on the bottom, the weather forecast on the right and/or some sport info on the left and not least the very latest news in a short superimposition … and of course, somewhere the next film is announced — already now available in the TV library, even if only broadcasted the next day … . This can be continued without end, applied for different areas – and perhaps the only exception is sports: bringing people together and although they get lost in the crowd, everyone feels an important part of it – not digitally, but in analogue. – And yes, sometimes the smell of horses on the field or in the arena of a circus is much better, a counterweight against Pokémon.
And it is in this sense always necessary to discuss the meaning of rights, not leaving justice as in the hands of algorithm-driven machines.
As more as we go into detail with scientific investigations we are running towards a point of statis, transcending reality to the extent to which we are missing out the actual relationships that are characterising “being”. These are disregarded in much of the actual work. It is interesting to look at the work and conversation of and between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt. Although we usually do not consider this as question of methodology, it is highly relevant that both emphasise the importance of movement, as matter of liberatiing thinking and ideas on the one hand, furthermore the emphasis by Alexander von Humboldt that traveling in actual effect allows to be immediately confronted not only with distance but at the same time with the connections between the different things. Also Alexander von Humboldt states ‘If one travels through 100 miles of earth in a few weeks, the law becomes clear’. However, this may open road to a paradox: Goethe, somewhere in the west-eastern divan, emphasisis that the ‘experience’ of 3,000 years is necessary to actually understand the world.
Three thousand years, a personal visit in Rome where I had been speaking on a conference on the diversity of modernisation, i had been confronted with being in the situation of actually living through even more than 3000 years: ancient history and even the ‘prehistoric times’ but as well the more recent histories – manifestations as the Forum Romanum, the villa of Mussolini, street names reminding of popes, politicians relevant during my own lifetime … and the personal history: having lived and worked there for some time, my modest domicile in the via della Musa, just around the corner of the villa of ‘il duce’, the office nearby, the “foundation library””” at EURISPES – there, though more hidden than really public -; occasionally the smell from a pasticeria, the cafè et cornetto, and the many reminders of personal life somewhere: the Korean signs, reminding me of the Melancholic Chanson I once received, handwritten with love;
the gelateria next to the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, where Chen and Lv enjoyed ice cream, the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore, where the friendship to Simona commenced; the now “empty” junction in front of the main station: the two old ladies, sleeping rough and … well, call it messed around, commented by my then landlady by the question: why do you always see the nasty things …. yes, all this is in some way making history: living, learning, loving, loosing …
A few days, from ancient times to personal presence …. it seems that the concentration and condensation of history actually makes it fading away, becoming meaningless. Moreover, it is not just history as we commonly understand it, but it is time in general and even in its own way reality becoming meaningless. Who would not be reminded of or even feel like Raymond Fosca, whom we know from Simone de Beauvoir’s outstanding work Tous les hommes sont mortels …. and for the one who is not, the loss of time results in the loss of relevance of life.
Et puis vous m’avez ouvert les yeux. Elle cacha son visage dans ses mains. Un brin d’herbe, rien qu’un brin d’herbe. Chacun se voyait différent des autres; chacun se préférait; et tous se trompaient; elle s’était trompée comme les autres.
Reality becomes somewhat arbitrary, random, autopoitically self-controlled – history can sold – in tourist shops, often by Asians who left there own history behind – in some respect it reminds me of having talked to Wendy from Australia many years ago: she envied me as European, with the wealth of a cultural heritage. I could only answer: The Australians killed their history, genociding the aborigines – and the Australians who acted murderous had been in fact Europeans … Selling history, killing history … and forgetting to make history as it is easier to send links instead ot talking … history from the self-service shop with the finished products …
Standing on the shoulder of giants? Or allowing them to cover us with dust?
*******
In the documentary An der Unstrutwe hear a shepherd saying:
“Indifference bothers me, unpunctuality bothers me. And it bothers me when people always believe that everything has to be like that and don’t even think that something has to be done for it in daily life. That bothers me. And going through life so lala, so unstable…I don’t like that. I have to know that when I finish work at night, I have to be sure that the day has brought something. Living like this… living like this annoys me. When people think that everything that happens here today is so self-evident. That bothers me. When I think back… Everything used to be difficult until then. Many have forgotten that. That upsets me.”
While finalising the script, already answering some questions after having submitted a first version, and thus with some time having passed since first taking up the work, it becomes clear to me that than pandemics helped to highlight part of the polity-virus but even without such an extreme and extremely manifest threat the Precarity of Society as System Crisis is sadly obvious.
Sure, Corona is still occasionally issued as threat, new variants striking – but by and large the pandemics are not a topic on the political agenda anymore. This does not mean that the socio-economic consequences are solved. Going together with other major economic crises and hazards small shops are under severe pressure; social provisions and services – be it health care, child care, education and also the capacities of municipal administrations – are overburdened and even standard obligatory acts are hugely delayed, offices closed for the public, allowing staff to catch up with the growing piles of files; the housing situation a matter of serious concern – and the government trying to cushion the problems by occasional grants to relieve the burden on certain groups.
The hopes for a fundamental change, however, burst like soap bubbles: While climate activists are blocking roads and motor highways, highlighting the dangers of global warming, asking for roundtables and negotiations, they are in many cases criminalised and/or met by aggressive measures. At the same time, private transport is fostered, now focusing on electromobility while negotiating the reform of public transport and the relevant pricing systems are suffering from the same weakness as they had been shown above in relation to Covid 19. In Berlin, after a successful referendum I support of the socialisation of the property of large housing corporations according article 15 Basic Law, there are again and again new hurdles erected: socialisation cannot become real, if it goes beyond ruinous payment of selective relief funds …
The emperor’s new dress showing that the ruler is still trapped in the structures of the small princedoms. He only reacts with fear, but without strategy, to the fact that the people have turned their backs on him. In the ‘positive’ case, it is addicted to individualism and withdraws more or less depressively into itself or the family as own little princedom; in the negative case, it follows the populist pied pipers (although such an allusion to the fairy tale of the Pied Piper of Hamlinneeds some qualification). – Still, a certain loyalty to the system is, of course, still maintained by the fact that the powers – be it in business, government and the mass media – still succeed in building up an external enemy. If, though, today’s challenges are global, not knowing any borders, it would be wiser to focus on real cooperation.
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
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:
Individual benefit +/- long/short term orientation+/- +/-Societal benefit +/- going beyond the original goal, opening new spacetimes= in/stable developmentIn the case of societally profitable relationality non-linear
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.
Death – or even already ageing … … there is something that is so well expressed in Michael Ende’s Never ending story: the Riddle of Time, the dependency and indeed relationality of future, presence and past. With every moment of our life we gain experiences – and gaining means filling the storage which is the past; and with the past and presence we encounter future which is then presence. However, while there is more and more past, future is decreasing.
So far the individual perspective. Now we face the question if such law can also be seen societally, here and now, claimed as orientation:
It is not only that every little helps – the tesco-slogan at some stage – but it is also that every little kills. I don’t want [and I cannot] enter deeply into this debate. But there is no doubt, that we live today, follow a lifestyle for which the future generation will have to pay – killing them softly, the piecemeal strangulation of the future (generation), literally breathing today the air, they cannot breathe anymore. Moreover, we deny not only their right but also the right of nature.
No, I am not going to be vegan from now on (and I will still not eat any sausages …). But there is some truth in what Frances always said when I wanted to help her in the kitchen. She gave me the knife, and when I approached a tomato she said, scaringly looking at me:
do you hear them screaming?
Of course [really of course?] it is not about single tomatoes, single trees…. But the genre, the “collective nature” may well have and should have rights – some countries are not only thinking about it, but have respective legislation in place.
A complicated debate, indeed. But obviously pointing out that the demonstrations and activities of the “Last Generation”, “Extension Rebellion” and others are not about the interests of activists and for instance the “general interest” or environment activists and those who are interested in free movement [and the free choice of the means of transport] or the imagined/supposed “interests of the state”. The interest of nature – life against life; or living of a few today against the sur-life of nature.
Indeed, the seemingly abstract question of death turns into a very concrete one.
Bottom line, I suppose: it is simply a paradox. Talking about life means acknowledging death as part of it; talking about death means being or becoming able to live. And death is so to say only the extreme, the final point on a scale. Final meaning absolute? Not really, as it is still part of life and living in the true sense, namely the understanding of relationality = processuality = totality.
Allowing others – or an other – taking one’s place, taking and giving part, including partialities.
Triage – one has to leave; not because there is not sufficient space but because there is “not enough to do”. In other words: not leaving means taking part which is at some stage about taking the part of somebody else, ignoring the other.
The challenge is balanced-managing and administering.
Inequality as permanent dissolution of entities. As such it is not a matter of distribution [though it appears to be “only” that]. Relationally is a matter of distribution as production, as such a matter of given and/as taking. Now the majestic equaliser emerges as an instrument of bringing production to a halt. The result is another dimension of the same paradox: permanent overproduction… of something that is useless, because it does not have any value. Sure, it has exchange value:
More years, not active years, but years that are only about maintaining life. Visiting doctors, physiotherapists, mobility exercise groups and social gaming events that are little social and not playful at all. Doing crosswords and jigsaws, … and in the extreme case it is even a brainless body … breathing, nutrition is artificially maintained.
Less extreme: the strive of old men and women to maintain whiteness, pushing then young to the edge, leaving them in the role of witnesses of decay. And even worse, forcing them to make the same mistake(s)!
Euthanasia, isfor very good reasons – especially in Germany, but not only – hugely problematic, problematised and prohibited; and it is still a matter that is also problematic in the commonly/mostly forgotten way: it starts from the presumption of negativity of death [interestingly in a society that claims to be Christian, where religion suggests death being redemption].
This negativity is not least an expression of the obligation to Permanently Perform Perfectly – the basic and general pattern of PPP, reading in today’s terms Power Point Presentation, and then translated into politics: Public Private Partnership.
And of course, it is not allowed to leave, to say
I did what I wanted and could do, I am ready to leave ….
Sure, there are or can be very different reasons why somebody wants to leave; as much as there are or can be very different reasons for the want to stay [leaving aside that in both cases there can be reasons out of control of the person concerned].
The problem behind all these remarks is that the system, solely concerned with the production of worthless exchange values, is reflexive in the sense of extensively reifying itself – Andy Warhol perfectively confronting us with the jester’s mirror: design, originally used as means of presentation and advertisement, is elevated and presented as arts – Campbell sends regards. And both, arts and food alike are perverted after their death, i.e. the end of living and resurrection as commodities, the presentation of life in form of symbols.
The effect depends on volume, on momentary hyper-presence, which in the extreme contains its own destruction:
The shredding of Banky’s Girl with the Balloon, just at the moment when the hammer falls – at one end, at the other end of a kind of scale, the light installation, where one can argue about whether it is really still an original piece of art when the curator replaces the defective original neon tube with one bought at the DIY store.
And indeed the new understanding of the character of arts is symptomatic for the entire range of new lifestyles. With view on Andy Warhol, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh points out that
[t]he systematic invalidation of the hierarchies of representational functions and techniques finds a corresponding statement in Warhol’s announcement that the hierarchy of subjects worthy to be represented will someday be abolished ….
(Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. (December 1, 2001). “Andy Warhol’s One-Dimensional Art: 1956–1966”. In Michelson, Annette (ed.). Andy Warhol. The MIT Press. p. 2)
(to be continued as Only Arts? Or the art of living and leaving?)
I knew it (though I kind of denied it, wanted not to think it would be real), as we talked while back about my “Higher Diplomas” in Ireland – I definitely should say “our HDips”, as Joe played an important role too: principal teacher and course director, though really important: the more or less small group of students, up to 15, welded together by provoked critical thinking, exploring something new – we as university staff only provided a space so that they could work, coming from very different backgrounds, more and more going very different ways (after starting with the same idea or even ambition: getting into social work studies). In a way I established myself as a kind of leader, mentor. Nowadays, there are about 60 students, now mainly online teaching – yes, I guess that is the real move: from learning to teaching/being taught.
Yes, there is some disappointment, perhaps even anger.
But, of course, there is another, much wider dimension to it.
The group, stablished at the human rights centre in Changsha, HRUG.legal, is discussing at the moment different informal structures as ubuntu, guanxi, jaan-pehchaan… all in some way seeing these network-like relations in a positive light. It is about communities, non-alienated relationships [or better: relationalities] and direct mutual support: do you want to go fast, go alone; do you want to go far, move together. It is about the we-society, where a village is needed to bring up a child…
Then, I asked Maria, looking for somebody who would be able and willing to talk about the Russian blat. Her spontaneous reaction:
It’s a dark side of the social connections, when personal [family, friendly and other] relations are used to achieve something in spite of law or/and rules violation. In popular terms I would call blood a corrupt way to use social capital.
Ah, capital …
Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait. (Balzac)
– and it is conservative saying this.
And from great capital we come to the great “equaliser”, knowing with Anatole France
La majestueuse égalité des lois interdit aux riches comme aux pauvres de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans la rue et de voler du pain.
Easy to conclude and learn : Sine ira, sine studio!
Is it true, then? There is no alternative? Education must be reduced on large-scale teaching, and going beyond the small learning-group is the only and necessary anti-elitist, and also anti-critical way, guaranteeing equality and access for everyone? And not least, calling for a new elite?
****
That is what they did, isn’t it? New generations of artists, opposing the academy… and establishing themselves as new academy …
Secession – though always in need of some kind of “accession”, Or even being a form of accessing: entering another, perhaps new, world.
Fear … Can we be sure about the access? What if we fail? Partial death!?
This partial death seems to be also motivation to join false friends, stick to communities – a bribe for tribe. Who wants to leave with dirty hands? So, one hand washes the other- mutuality, here with the advantage of feeling it – as it is the habit on the one on the horse market: not shaking hand in the way we usually do… but do we? Often amongst young people there is a greeting ceremony that includes a firm handshake, somewhat combined with a high 5, followed by a hug. Of course not possible in times of pandemics – there we still found some strange kin: “greeting with the elbows” – a sort of hooking up with each other?
Back to guanxi, then, to ubuntu …, facing, admitting the impossibility of distance… Trying spasmodically to “keep the church in the village” even here, talking about the global village…, and in law always also looking at emergency exit: discretionary leeway.
Mind, keeping always on the top the supposed justification: it is only the others where such networks are bad, questionable; whatever we do, is a sobber and clean way of negotiation.
It may be farfetched, perhaps one can even see it as depressive, though more likely one has to say that it is realistic: overcoming the attitude of the old white men – Aherns, Belusconis, Francescos, Prodis …., not being able or willing to leave the stage [and of course their female partners as the Lagardes, beginning a new career at a time where they should stop and enjoy the money they did not pay to the tax office] – will only be possible by teaching the youth about finality, death. And then, only then, we old men and women, whatever the colour of the skin, will be respected [and can be respected] as true gentlemen and gentlewomen.
For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.[1]
It is a fundamental challenge of scientific thinking: if disenchantment is the ultimate goal, it is at the same time enchantment that makes results valuable: the enchantment of discovering questions as being relevant in the first place and then “unpacking” the results in such a way that they lead to a renewed enchantment of life. This applies to the discoveries of Pythagoras as well as the seemingly trivial invention of a mechanism like the zip fastener.
Nowadays, the question of meaning tends to take a back seat to highly specialised knowledge, both in terms of asking questions and imparting knowledge. It is important, however, to keep the awareness alive that the latter is only a tool for understanding the world. As far as my expertise is concerned, it is about overcoming economics, being reduced to mathematical formulae, moving it towards sustainability as matter of life of and living in society; it is about reaching a legal system that promotes coherence of justice and is thus able to put content before form.
[1] Musil, Robert, 1940: The Man Without Qualities. A Sort Of Introduction And Pseudoreality Prevails; Translated From The German By Sophie Wilkins; Editorial Consultant: Burton Pike; New York: Vintage International, 1996: 199
Another time – The Economist newsletter, April 28th 2023. Subject line:
Yuval Noah Harari: regulate AI before it regulates us
Such headlines and statements make me think of the phrase sweet nothings and I am wondering if in political-academic respect a similar phrase must be formulated: wise nothings, not to say nothing wise.
The first point – formulated as question:
Is it really about regulating AI or is it about
regulating the making of AI
regulating the use of AI
regulating the use of what AI “does”
regulating the – and then: which – users of AI
?
The second point – put forward as kind of dystopian saga, and made concrete, real – seems to be more important.
We witness major progress in computer technology. The quasi-ancient times of the use of computers required somewhat simplified communication with the figure zero and one – in other words: while not speaking directly in sequences 0 1, the programming languages was not so different, just slightly: presenting the binary code in a form that looked – in part – like real language. Today, computers can be used, directly employing real language – and even some sloppiness will be accepted: different pronunciation, spelling, terms … are no problem for the processing.
The next step is the exciting one: just one word, term, short question or statement translates into kind of explorative story. Specific version: upload a document, e.g. an edited volume on racism – the stunning result: you key in an issue you want to look at and you will receive a perfect summary, completely informed and elaborating on the contradictions of opinions expressed in the different contributions. Then we have a machine translation, at this stage working reasonably good. On top of all this we have now a language correcting software, translating miserable English into good English, awkward French language into well-formulated French … . The problem is only the programming of well-functioning links between different AI instruments.
Just key in a term, perhaps name… . The result will be posted automatically to the translator, then to the AI proof reader and you will get an article on something you never heard about, written, even thought in the style of a person you don’t know in a language of which you never heard, spoken in a country of which you do not know – authored by yourself. In other words, you will not know anymore what you are doing – however, in this case – and looking at the German Criminal Law – one is wondering if we are facing a reformulation of paragraph 20, now reading
Whoever, at the time of the commission of the offence, is incapable of appreciating the unlawfulness of their actions or of acting in accordance with any such appreciation due to a pathological mental disorder, a profound disturbance of consciousness or intellectual disability or any other serious mental disorder is deemed to act without guilt.
A new version must then contain an additional sentence, like
Non-existence will not be considered as excuse, qualifying people as acting without guilt.
So, it remains your decision: feel yourself as genius or as basically non-existing something. You may translate this into “control AI or control yourself”.
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 