Categoria: general

The world is flat – or: can thinking flatten the world?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general

The world is flat … – and there is some flavor of naiveté in such theses …

Finally, the fall of the wall did not just open the way for more people to tap into one another’s knowledge pools. It also paved the way for the adoption of common standards—standards on how economies should be run, on how accounting should be done, on how banking should be conducted, on how PCs should be made, and on how economics papers should be written. I discuss this more later, but suffice it to say here that common standards create a flatter, more level playing field. To put it another way, the fall of the wall enhanced the free movement of best practices. When an economic or technological standard emerged and proved itself on the world stage, it was much more quickly adopted after the wall was out of the way. In Europe alone, the fall of the wall opened the way for the formation of the European Union and its expansion from fifteen to twenty-five countries. That, in combination with the advent of the euro as a common currency, has created a single economic zone out of a region once divided by an Iron Curtain.

Page 54 of Friedman’s book “The World is flat” (2005, 2007)

Many one hope that the thinking in the rest of the book is less flat: celebrating the formation of the EU, by dating it to 1989, and celebrating the advent of the euro as common currency at a time when some of us already predicted a harsh crisis which indeed manifested itself in 2007/2008 seems a bit …, well let us say … – lacking thoughtfulness …

It reminds me of another thing I read recently, somebody from the NorthAmericas complaining about Europe, celebrating the USA and highlighting the difference between the USA and Europe. One of the differences was telling: the Americans drive on the right side, whereas the Europeans drive on the left … – well, a sharp and clear distinction. But true in some way perhaps? The Europeans are increasingly following the flattened understanding of the world by the Yanks …, that may then be the reason for driving in foresight since years on the … – have to check next time when walking across the streets. My be the Brits are the only real Europeans ….? And they may leave the EU ? …. So many questions …

Liberals

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, general, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, publications, works, works, projects, publications

We frequently talk about neoliberalism – and the disastrous implication its proponents cause. Indeed, there is the need to criticise these policies. But preparing my presentation for Hungary, soon coming up under the title

Precarity as Part of Socio-Economic Transformation – New Perspectives

 , and of which the abstract can be found already here, I am getting another time aware of the fact how important it is, to overcome the danger not to block oneself by sohrt-termism. I pointed this frequently out, for instance when looking together with Marica Frangakis for The need for a radical ‘growth policy’ agenda for Europe at a time of crisis; or asking  if we face a Crisis and no end?, looking for the Re-embedding economy into life and nature. Already at an early stage I asked Crisis? Which Crisis? aiming on Assessing the Current Crisis in a More Fundamental Way. Ireland as a Case Study.

In empirical terms, some of this may be outdated – actually I am currently preparing also the report for the Max-Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich which I am going to visit during the upcoming weeks – it is the annual report on legal changes in Ireland.

There is one point, we may actually learn from the liberals, expressed by David Lloyd George.

Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

It may well be questioned if he, as liberal, would agree with proposals of today’s liberals – I have my doubts. But in any case, a radical shift in thinking and acting is needed, anything else will mean not more and not less than death, even if it may mean to Die Slowly:

He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn’t know, he or she who don’t reply when they are asked something they do know,
die slowly.
Let’s try and avoid death in small doses,
reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.

There should be no place for it, for the Lentamente Muore.

New Year – Nuovo Anno

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, quotes

(scroll for English version below)

Ogni mattino, quando mi risveglio ancora sotto la cappa del cielo, sento che per me è capodanno. 

Perciò odio questi capodanni a scadenza fissa che fanno della vita e dello spirito umano un’azienda commerciale col suo bravo consuntivo, e il suo bilancio e il preventivo per la nuova gestione. Essi fanno perdere il senso della continuità della vita e dello spirito. Si finisce per credere sul serio che tra anno e anno ci sia una soluzione di continuità e che incominci una novella istoria, e si fanno propositi e ci si pente degli spropositi, ecc. ecc. È un torto in genere delle date.

Dicono che la cronologia è l’ossatura della storia; e si può ammettere. Ma bisogna anche ammettere che ci sono quattro o cinque date fondamentali, che ogni persona per bene conserva conficcate nel cervello, che hanno giocato dei brutti tiri alla storia. Sono anch’essi capodanni. Il capodanno della storia romana, o del Medioevo, o dell’età moderna.

E sono diventati così invadenti e così fossilizzanti che ci sorprendiamo noi stessi a pensare talvolta che la vita in Italia sia incominciata nel 752, e che il 1490 0 il 1492 siano come montagne che l’umanità ha valicato di colpo ritrovandosi in un nuovo mondo, entrando in una nuova vita. Così la data diventa un ingombro, un parapetto che impedisce di vedere che la storia continua a svolgersi con la stessa linea fondamentale immutata, senza bruschi arresti, come quando al cinematografo si strappa il film e si ha un intervallo di luce abbarbagliante.

Perciò odio il capodanno. Voglio che ogni mattino sia per me un capodanno. Ogni giorno voglio fare i conti con me stesso, e rinnovarmi ogni giorno. Nessun giorno preventivato per il riposo. Le soste me le scelgo da me, quando mi sento ubriaco di vita intensa e voglio fare un tuffo nell’animalità per ritrarne nuovo vigore.

Nessun travettismo spirituale. Ogni ora della mia vita vorrei fosse nuova, pur riallacciandosi a quelle trascorse. Nessun giorno di tripudio a rime obbligate collettive, da spartire con tutti gli estranei che non mi interessano. Perché hanno tripudiato i nonni dei nostri nonni ecc., dovremmo anche noi sentire il bisogno del tripudio. Tutto ciò stomaca.

Aspetto il socialismo anche per questa ragione. Perché scaraventerà nell’immondezzaio tutte queste date che ormai non hanno più nessuna risonanza nel nostro spirito e, se ne creerà delle altre, saranno almeno le nostre, e non quelle che dobbiamo accettare senza beneficio d’inventario dai nostri sciocchissimi antenati.

Antonio Gramsci, 1 gennaio 1916, Avanti!, edizione torinese, rubrica Sotto la Mole

(taken from here)

Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s day.

That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management. They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit. You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates.

They say that chronology is the backbone of history. Fine. But we also need to accept that there are four or five fundamental dates that every good person keeps lodged in their brain, which have played bad tricks on history. They too are New Years’. The New Year’s of Roman history, or of the Middle Ages, or of the modern age.

And they have become so invasive and fossilising that we sometimes catch ourselves thinking that life in Italy began in 752, and that 1490 or 1492 are like mountains that humanity vaulted over, suddenly finding itself in a new world, coming into a new life. So the date becomes an obstacle, a parapet that stops us from seeing that history continues to unfold along the same fundamental unchanging line, without abrupt stops, like when at the cinema the film rips and there is an interval of dazzling light.

That’s why I hate New Year’s. I want every morning to be a new year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. No day set aside for rest. I choose my pauses myself, when I feel drunk with the intensity of life and I want to plunge into animality to draw from it new vigour.

No spiritual time-serving. I would like every hour of my life to be new, though connected to the ones that have passed. No day of celebration with its mandatory collective rhythms, to share with all the strangers I don’t care about. Because our grandfathers’ grandfathers, and so on, celebrated, we too should feel the urge to celebrate. That is nauseating.

I await socialism for this reason too. Because it will hurl into the trash all of these dates which have no resonance in our spirit and, if it creates others, they will at least be our own, and not the ones we have to accept without reservations from our silly ancestors.

Antonio Gramsci, 1 January 1916, Avanti!, Turin Edition

Translated by Alberto Toscano

(Republished here)

 

Methodology – some general questions

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, works, works, projects, publications

I uploaded a lecture I gave today,  25th of December 2015 to Students at 中南林业科技大学班戈学院/Bangor College CSUFT
中国湖南省长沙市天心区韶山南路498号. Changsha, PRC

 

Though the lecture refers to the work of a group of students and their work on essays (mostly concerned with “Studying Abroad”), some fundamental issues of methodology are raised and may be of interest when doing research in economics and political economy.

They may be used in different ways as a kind of “propedeutico”.

Reference to the books mentioned:

References in the text:

The Other Christmas Story

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, quotes
From Adorno’s Minima Moralia
English –
scroll further down for German – Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben
Here is an audio recording of this section in German language
For the complete text in Italian – Meditazioni della vita offesa
============
Asylum for the homeless. – How things are going for private life today is made evident by its arena [Schauplatz]. Actually one can no longer dwell any longer. The traditional dwellings, in which we grew up, have taken on the aspect of something unbearable: every mark of comfort therein is paid for with the betrayal of cognition [Erkenntnis]; every trace of security, with the stuffy community of interest of the family. The newly functionalized ones, constructed as a tabula rasa [Latin: blank slate], are cases made by technical experts for philistines, or factory sites which have strayed into the sphere of consumption, without any relation to the dweller: they slap the longing for an independent existence, which anyway no longer exists, in the face. With prophetic masochism, a German magazine decreed before Hitler that modern human beings want to live close to the ground like animals, abolishing, along with the bed, the boundary between waking and dreaming. Those who stay overnight are available at all times and unresistingly ready for anything, simultaneously alert and unconscious. Whoever flees into genuine but purchased historical housing, embalms themselves alive. Those who try to evade the responsibility for the dwelling, by moving into a hotel or into a furnished apartment, make a canny norm, as it were, out of the compulsory conditions of emigration. Things are worst of all, as always, for those who have no choice at all. They live, if not exactly in slums, then in bungalows which tomorrow may already be thatched huts, trailers [in English in original], autos or camps, resting-places under the open sky. The house is gone. The destruction of the European cities, as much as the labor and concentration camps, are merely the executors of what the immanent development of technics long ago decided for houses. These are good only to be thrown away, like old tin cans. The possibility of dwelling is being annihilated by that of the socialistic society, which, having been missed, sets the bourgeois one in motion towards catastrophe. No individual person can do anything against it. Even those who occupy themselves with furniture designs and interior decoration, would already move in the circle of artsy subtlety in the manner of bibliophiles, however opposed one might be against artsiness in the narrow sense. From a distance, the differences between the Viennese workshops and the Bauhaus are no longer so considerable. In the meantime, the curves of the pure purposive form have become independent of their function and pass over into ornaments, just like the basic shapes of Cubism. The best conduct in regards to all this still appears to be a nonbinding, suspending one: to lead a private life, so long as the social order of society and one’s one needs will allow nothing else, but not to put weight on such, as if it were still socially substantial and individually appropriate. “It is one of my joys, not to be a house-owner,” wrote Nietzsche as early as The Gay Science. To this should be added: ethics today means not being at home in one’s house. This illustrates something of the difficult relationship which individual persons have vis-a-vis their property, so long as they still own anything at all. The trick consists of certifying and expressing the fact that private property no longer belongs to one person, in the sense that the abundance of consumer goods has become potentially so great, that no individual [Individuum] has the right to cling to the principle of their restriction; that nevertheless one must have property, if one does not wish to land in that dependence and privation, which perpetuates the blind continuation of the relations of ownership. But the thesis of this paradox leads to destruction, a loveless lack of attention for things, which necessarily turns against human beings too; and the antithesis is already, the moment one expresses it, an ideology for those who want to keep what is theirs with a bad conscience. There is no right life in the wrong one.
 ******
Asyl für Obdachlose. – Wie es mit dem Privatleben heute bestellt ist, zeigt sein Schauplatz an. Eigentlich kann man überhaupt nicht mehr wohnen. Die traditionellen Wohnungen, in denen wir groß geworden sind, haben etwas Unerträgliches angenommen: jeder Zug des Behagens darin ist mit Verrat an der Erkenntnis, jede Spur der Geborgenheit mit der muffigen Interessengemeinschaft der Familie bezahlt. Die neusachlichen, die tabula rasa gemacht haben, sind von Sachverständigen für Banausen angefertigte Etuis, oder Fabrikstätten, die sich in die Konsumsphäre verirrt haben, ohne alle Beziehung zum Bewohner: noch der Sehnsucht nach unabhängiger Existenz, die es ohnehin nicht mehr gibt, schlagen sie ins Gesicht. Der moderne Mensch wünscht nahe am Boden zu schlafen wie ein Tier, hat mit prophetischem Masochismus ein deutsches Magazin vor Hitler dekretiert und mit dem Bett die Schwelle von Wachen und Traum abgeschafft. Die Übernächtigen sind allezeit verfügbar und widerstandslos zu allem bereit, alert und bewußtlos zugleich. Wer sich in echte, aber zusammengekaufte Stilwohnungen flüchtet, balsamiert sich bei lebendigem Leibe ein. Will man der Verantwortung fürs Wohnen ausweichen, indem man ins Hotel oder ins möblierte Appartement zieht, so macht man gleichsam aus den aufgezwungenen Bedingungen der Emigration die lebenskluge Norm. Am ärgsten ergeht es wie überall denen, die nicht zu wählen haben. Sie wohnen wenn nicht in Slums so in Bungalows, die morgen schon Laubenhütten, Trailers, Autos oder Camps, Bleiben unter freiem Himmel sein mögen. Das Haus ist vergangen. Die Zerstörungen der europäischen Städte ebenso wie die Arbeits- und Konzentrationslager setzen bloß als Exekutoren fort, was die immanente Entwicklung der Technik über die Häuser längst entschieden hat. Diese taugen nur noch dazu, wie alte Konservenbüchsen fortgeworfen zu werden. Die Möglichkeit des Wohnens wird vernichtet von der der sozialistischen Gesellschaft, die, als versäumte, der bürgerlichen zum schleichenden Unheil gerät. Kein Einzelner vermag etwas dagegen. Schon wenn er sich mit Möbelentwürfen und Innendekoration beschäftigt, gerät er in die Nähe des kunstgewerblichen Feinsinns vom Schlag der Bibliophilen, wie entschlossen er auch gegen das Kunstgewerbe im engeren Sinne angehen mag. Aus der Entfernung ist der Unterschied von Wiener Werkstätte und Bauhaus nicht mehr so erheblich. Mittlerweile haben die Kurven der reinen Zweckform gegen ihre Funktion sich verselbständigt und gehen ebenso ins Ornament über wie die kubistischen Grundgestalten. Das beste Verhalten all dem gegenüber scheint noch ein unverbindliches, suspendiertes: das Privatleben führen,: solange die Gesellschaftsordnung und die eigenen Bedürfnisse es nicht anders dulden, aber es nicht so belasten, als wäre es noch gesellschaftlich substantiell und individuell angemessen. »Es gehört selbst zu meinem Glücke, kein Hausbesitzer zu sein«, schrieb Nietzsche bereits in der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft. Dem müßte man heute hinzufügen: es gehört zur Moral, nicht bei sich selber zu Hause zu sein. Darin zeigt sich etwas an von dem schwierigen Verhältnis, in dem der Einzelne zu seinem Eigentum sich befindet, solange er überhaupt noch etwas besitzt. Die Kunst bestünde darin, in Evidenz zu halten und auszudrücken, daß das Privateigentum einem nicht mehr gehört, in dem Sinn, daß die Fülle der Konsumgüter potentiell so groß geworden ist, daß kein Individuum mehr das Recht hat, an das Prinzip ihrer Beschränkung sich zu klammern; daß man aber dennoch Eigentum haben muß, wenn man nicht in jene Abhängigkeit und Not geraten will, die dem blinden Fortbestand des Besitzverhältnisses zugute kommt. Aber die Thesis dieser Paradoxie führt zur Destruktion, einer lieblosen Nichtachtung für die Dinge, die notwendig auch gegen die Menschen sich kehrt, und die Antithesis ist schon in dem Augenblick, in dem man sie ausspricht, eine Ideologie für die, welche mit schlechtem Gewissen das Ihre behalten wollen. Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen.

Take in refugees – Abolish all causes of flight

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general

Take in refugees – Abolish all causes of flight

For a civic platform against isolation and xenophobia

Refugees stranding at European railway stations; razor-wired fences hastily raised along the borders; terror attacks against people in public spaces of a mega city – what Europe perceives as a state of emergency long since is the hard reality for ever growing parts of the world’s populace.  What’s new, the horror the people in the South try to escape from becomes tangible amidst Europe. We get a notion of how much already the world is out of whack. Increasing destructions of living conditions, hatred and violence are not falling from the sky. They are the result of a global politics placing economic interest over human interests. The thereby accepted exclusion of the majority of the world population forces people to flee and fuels violence. The unbridled free trade to the expense of the global poor, an economic policy leading to the destruction of the environment, the arms trades with dictatorial regimes, and the delivery of weapons in crisis regions dramatically increased the social inequalities between and within countries. Crises bear fear; a fear exploited by right-wing populist movements like the German Pegida or the AfD. Dull and hollow rabble-rousing against refugees, against the media, and against an open Europe, these movements serve the longing for national solutions and claim those will guarantee order and stability. But crises also bear solidarity: Millions of deeply committed citizens motivated by sympathy and readiness to help authentically take stands against racism and violence. Globalisation may not be a one-way street. Globalisation and migration are two sides of the same coin. We should meet the challenge in a way that makes sure that the encounter of different cultures ultimately includes chances to form the conditions for a world society. This includes a vision for a society allowing everybody around the globe safe access to decent living conditions. Necessary are alternatives to the dominating profit- and growth-oriented economic regime. Necessary is the safeguarding of public services here and beyond all national borders. Only by this way the twofold right, the right to stay and the right to leave, will have its breakthrough. Only where a dignified life is possible and only where no one is forced to escape due to war and social dislocation the right to free movement is complete. We take a stand for a strong welcoming culture and oppose any solutions that are based on national exclusion and the violent walling-off of the European borders. We support the freedom of movement for all people – no matter if they are fleeing war, ecological destruction, or poverty. We demand the reinforcement of the law of asylum and its completion through a migration law based on human rights and not on economic profits. We urge for the rejection of the dominating destructive dynamics and commit ourselves to a Europe in solidarity. There are a great number of us.

And you can join.

Vernunft und Verstand sind des Teufels Huren

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, quotes

Vernunft und Verstand sind des Teufels Huren.

ein altes, tüchtiges Pfaffen-Wort, Allen denen zu Lieb und Ehren,

denen Vernunft und Verstand im Wege stehen. Sie sagten auch:

‘Verstand und Vernunft können Gottes Wort nicht verfechten; sie

sind nur große Wettermacher und Hagelsieber in der Schrift!’

Freilich machen sie anderes Wetter in der Schrift, als es die

Pfaffen gerne haben, welche lieber im Dunkeln munkeln und

immer nur vor dem Teufel warnen, aber nicht anders, wie jener

Dieb auf der Flucht, der immer aus Leibes-Kräften rief: ‘Haltet

den Dieb!’ – damit man ihn selber nicht dafür erkennen möchte.

—

Lichter weg! mein Lämpchen nur!

Es nimmt sich sonst nicht aus!

Aus:

Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Deutchen: nebst den Redensarten der deutschen Zechbrüder und aller praktik Grossmutter, d.i. der Sprichwörter ewigem Wetter-Kalender; Wilhelm Körte; F.A. Brockhaus, 1847; 567 pagine; hier: Seite: 450

Management

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, quotes

Management by Champignon

Employees are left in the dark; occasionally throwing manure on them – and as soon as somebody shows him/herself the person is dismissed.

Management by Crocodile

To be up to the neck in the mud – but brag.

Management by Helicopter

To hover above everything, land from time to time and cause quite a stir – and vanish into thin air.

Management by Herodes

Searching intensively for the right successor – and fire him/her.

Management by Ping-Pong

Processing with everything by passing it from one department to another and back again – so that with the time they are solved automatically.

Management by Robinson

All are waiting for Friday

(Translated from SOZIALWIRTSCHAFT Aktuell 12/2002. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft)

Pillage – Plundering

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, quotes

Le grand risque est que les gens croient qu’il y a création de richesses la ou il n’y a qu’enrichissement. L’argent ne peut se faire que sur la captation d’une valeur ajoutée. La rémunération du capital n’est pas un gain pour la collectivité, quand elle ne correspond pas à une production de biens ou services supplémentaires. Ce n’est qu’un mécanisme de pillage sophistiqué.

(Guy Hascoët: L’économie solidaire au cœur des nouvelles régulations économiques – I found it in Mai 2002 on http://www.social.gouv.fr/economie-solidaire/economie/econo_sol/ascoet.htm)

Christianity – the Halloween-effect

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

So far we may consider us as lucky beings — as said: caught in a cage, but knowing by whom, clearly seeing the tamer, being able to find the addressee when considering resistance. Though extremely brutal at times, it is a somewhat simple mechanism, not to say: mechanics … . The cogwheels of the machines that are taking control of the body of the workers are working along the finely Taylored (yes, I know: some would like to see tailored … — I am speaking of Taylored though) lines, producing the car for the ‘Emporio Ford T’. And as much as this is a matter of production, it produces and reproduces itself in all fibres of life and living. As much as the wheels are turning the machines, they are also mechanisms that are securing what had been said before, quoting again Marx’s Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

For one thing, the object is not simply an object in general, but a particular object which must be consumed in a particular way, a way determined by production. Hunger is hunger; but the hunger that is satisfied by cooked meat eaten with knife and fork differs from hunger that devours raw meat with the help of hands, nails and teeth. Production thus produces not only the object of consumption but also the mode of consumption, not only objectively but also subjectively. Production therefore creates the consumer.

This is winding up the entire life then:

I wind up a clock, I wind up a chain at the chain of the web at the loom, I wind up the automatic toy: Everywhere it is about mechanical activities, dealing with things: unresisting and lifeless.[1]

This is a short passage from Victor Klemperer, written is his notebook of a philologist, dealing with the LTI, the Lingua Tertii Imperii — and he writes it with reference to the language of the “German Reich”. There the term Aufziehen, winding up had been frequently used to describe the way the fascists had been winding up people, human beings. — Frightening brutality, and still allowing naming the adversary.

Indeed,

words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed without that one is getting aware of it, seemingly they do not show any effect, but some time later the poisonous action is virulent.[2]

Is that the step that stands at the end of such a terror regime? Or is it just the foundation on which another regime is erected, seemingly a completely different one?

I watched a film — Yanis mentioned it once and I thought it could be worthwhile to learn about the Invasion of the body snatchers.

Frightening — especially as I switched directly after the end of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the other film, seeing (one may say) the opposite: The human bodies seemingly snatching the body of the machine, though actually being absorbed by it. This does not happen to the body snatchers: they are really “taking over” — a so-called thriller, but extremely weary when confronting it with the Chaplin film which I watched just after the Invasion

Right at the beginning of the Modern Times, at minute 1:13 ff., we see the shift from the sheep brought to the shambles to the workers now being tied into the e ‘Emporio Ford T‘  … .

As explained on the 12th of September 2015 in an article

Digital Taylorism. A modern version of “scientific management” threatens to dehumanise the workplace

in the Economist

Taylor’s appeal lay in his promise that management could be made into a science, and workers into cogs in an industrial machine. The best way to boost productivity, he argued, was to embrace three rules: break complex jobs down into simple ones; measure everything that workers do; and link pay to performance, giving bonuses to high-achievers and sacking sluggards.

Seen in this light, next the Emporio Armani comes to mind — and all the similar No Logo empires, tayloring in at least two new ways:

The one may be seen as simple form of “imagined inversion of body-snatching”: wearing the Armani skin, walking on the Nikely across the catwalk, following the time as it is set by Patek Philippe, looking at the Swarovski glamour through Gucci-eyes, the head, carried by the gym-athleticised body, the eyes produly peeping out of the makeup-made up face — who knows what is real what is fake, who can know it as we finally are all critical about GM-food and environmental protection and the logo-industries, now presented on the perfected catwalk that hides behind google-algorithms being against GM-food of course allow us to drive the GM-vehicle. The new show is about ourselves, the new “We”, digitally taylored and finally gaining its real form: the total fiction.

Indeed, the other form of tayloring goes beyond simple body snatching and is about Identity Theft. It can only be understood if we honestly consider our own readiness of giving identity away, in the extreme revealed by the Confessions of a Shopaholic (Just ignore the kitschy Happy End) — the extreme form that most of us can avoid, however, without avoiding the form itself: the fiction of the Pearly Gates replaced, taking the form of the shiny imagination of fictive money within the brute world of fictive capital.

It is reflected by Adorno, stating in his Minima Moralia

The trick consists of certifying and expressing the fact that private property no longer belongs to one person, in the sense that the abundance of consumer goods has become potentially so great, that no individual [Individuum] has the right to cling to the principle of their restriction; that nevertheless one must have property, if one does not wish to land in that dependence and privation, which perpetuates the blind continuation of the relations of ownership. But the thesis of this paradox leads to destruction, a loveless lack of attention for things, which necessarily turns against human beings too; and the antithesis is already, the moment one expresses it, an ideology for those who want to keep what is theirs with a bad conscience. There is no right life in the wrong one.

And indeed, the damaged life about which Adorno wrote was located in the damaged world of the after WWII, the world the post-fascist period — still exposing with Adenauer in Germany, McCarthy in the USNA, Kurt Waldheim in the UN, the world being nearly driven to war as the self-proclaimed world-gendarme felt threatened by the Sputnik, end even more so by the Cubans the womb from which it emerged —, this world was founded in the 80/20 rule, mentioned previously. But even this developed further, the 80/20 replaced, or should one say: refined by the 99/1 rule: the oligarchy of the 1 percent, ruling the 99 percent.

The paradox is that the ruling classes themselves obviously lost control – no sympathy, no pity; though perhaps hope? Wolfgang Streeck importantly asked the question

Has Capitalism Seen its Day?

He points out five aspects characterising a crisis of capitalism that mark the potential end: Core of his definition of capitalism is his reference to a “social order build on a promise of boundless collective progress xyz” And the following are the five aspects highlighted in the presentation.

  • The crisis of growth, giving way to stagnation
  • The increasing inequality of the distribution of the remaining growth
  • The reference of the money economy to a growing mountain of promises that are becoming less likely to become true
  • The at least three major crisis the capitalist centre has undergone since the 1970s, namely a matter of inflation, public finances and private debt
  • The inability of the regulatory system to provide satisfying answers.[3]

— Of course, the imaginary plastic world, the identity theft and body snatching can at least serve as metaphor of such “new world (order)”. Perhaps this is so scary real that we have to distract ourselves by going for something really scary these days.

Coming back to that “wrong life”, we see that it gets even further distracted by the fact that the bodies are snatched, now it is better to say: obsessed by the ideas of a certain omnipotence of the alienated existence: on the one hand it is about replacing real life, real experience, real learning by projection on a canvas. Well, you may learn to fly your DIY-aircraft with your DIY-pilot license and you face a heart-attack because after your DIY-economics course you miscalculated the energy consumption of the plane, now being afraid to crash … — don’t worry, you can solve the problem as you surely attended the course on advanced cardiac life support. It is the blackboard-leaning method par excellence.

Politically we are caught in the idea of globality, a state of immeasurableness — the problem is only that we are limited in our understanding of the actual meaning: “We” claim easily for us, and start screaming, shouting, erecting fences as soon as “they” claim the same right. We still lead the debate on ius sanguinis versus ius soli, mixed with a notion of ius culturae, having difficulties with accepting that the “we” has now a completely different meaning:

Et la voix prononce que l’Europe nous a pendant des siècles gavés de mensonges et gonflés de pestilences, car il n’est point vrai que l’œuvre de l’homme est finie que nous n’avons rien à faire au monde que nous parasitons le monde qu’il suffit que nous nous mettions au pas du monde mais l’œuvre de l’homme vient seulement de commencer et il reste à l’homme à conquérir toute interdiction immobilisée aux coins de sa ferveur et aucune race ne possède le monopole de la beauté, de l’intelligence, de la force et il est place pour tous au rendez-vous de la conquête et nous savons maintenant que le soleil tourne autour de notre terre éclairant la parcelle qu’à fixée notre volonté seule et que toute étoile chute de ciel en terre à notre commandement sans limite.

This so well said by Aime Cesaire in his book on the return to the country of birth. Indeed, such “we” has to have understood in a new way, as I ventilated in an interesting discussion with Nadia early this year after the Thinkshop of Laboratorio Expo “Perspectives on Agency and Participation“, which took place on the 15th and 16th of May at the Institute of Advanced Study (IUSS), in Pavia — as summary of the debates will soon be published under the title

You, me and the ‘WE’: Global Responsibility

on the Feltrinelli/EXPO-site.

There I concluded the considerations, surely very much stimulated and enlightened by Nadia, saying

What I kind of propose is a positive notion at the end. I think it happened on the 15th of May about 400 years ago that the Treaty of Westphalia had been signed, I remember the date, but not the year — 1648 was it? It has basically always been seen as the point of beginning of nation building, of the establishment of constitutions and of the modern nation state. Let’s consider this: before, we did not have a nation state. So the optimist part of this is: we did manage for a long time without the nation state, perhaps it is the time now to say that we can do without the nation state again today. It does not mean falling back in time to before 1600, but it may be that we have to look more at the levels of power and redefine the power of global, international organisations: the European Union, the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations and their regional bodies, the recently declared new Global Goals: there has already been quite some development in this respect and I think through these bodies, taking up what you just said, we need to make aware of the importance, of the content, of the challenge there is. As I said, we cannot do without it, but we have to better define what we want to do with it. And I think this is the point now on which we should focus when talking about urban, environmental or economic sustainability, and of social responsibility.

And talking then about any ius culturae can only be valid when we are ready to think about a new culture, leaving behind, overcoming the arrogance of the centre-right, i.e. the right of the centre to act as standard for the rest of the world. The right has to be one that is not based on centre and periphery, but the right of overcoming those categories. And we may even say the right to overcome categorical thinking. The right of living Multiple Identities as the maestro does …

Do we still not know what Confucius stated as simple principle of learning?

I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.

Actually, I think we do know and I saw it the other day in the eyes of 章熟艏. We talked about e-leaning, computer courses and …, then she asked me who would be teaching her next semester. I told her and I saw her joy when I said it would be a human being, not a computer.

It is still time to escape the body snatchers – if we manage to resist them.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. (Leonardo da Vinci)

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[1] A longer quote here from the German text

 AUFZIEHEN

Ich ziehe eine Uhr auf, ich ziehe die Kette eines Gewebes am Webstuhl auf, ich ziehe ein automatisches Spielzeug auf: überall handelt es sich um mechanische Tätigkeit, die an einem widerstandslosen, leblosen Ding ausgeübt wird.

Vom automatischen Spielzeug, dem drehenden Brummkreisel, dem laufenden und nickenden Tier, führt der Weg zur metaphorischen Anwendung des Ausdrucks: ich ziehe einen Menschen auf. Das heißt: ich necke ihn, ich mache ihn zur komischen Person, zum Hampelmann; Bergsons Erklärung des Komischen, es bestehe in der Automatisierung des Lebendigen, findet sich hier durch den Sprachgebrauch bestätigt.

Gewiß ist „Aufziehen“ in diesem Sinn ein zwar harmloses, aber doch ein Pejorativ. (So nennt der Philologe jede „verschlechterte“ oder verringerte Wortbedeutung; der Kaisername Augustus, der Erhabene, ergibt als Pejorativ den dummen August, den Zirkusclown.) (Victor Klemperer, LTI – Notizbuch eines Philologen (1947) Oktober 2012 in Allgemein, eBooks, Exzerpte und Sprachen

[2]      Or in the original by Klemperer

Worte können sein wie winzige Arsendosen: sie werden unbemerkt verschluckt, sie scheinen keine Wirkung zu tun, und nach einiger Zeit ist die Giftwirkung doch da.

[3]            Sure, it still needs an agent — Streeck does not discuss this. And I will not discuss this shortcoming as it would end not least in a critical debate of social-democraticism.