Now let everyone speak, if they are able, more profoundly and better than I have done, if it only benefits humanity. Should he succeed without resistance, then he will achieve what no one has ever achieved before. Because nobody can speak and live to the satisfaction of all people, however much one wants to criticise me for it.
***
Nun rede jeder, wenn er es vermag, tiefgründiger und besser, als ich es getan habe, wenn es nur der Menschheit nützt. Sollte es ihm wohl ohne Widerstand gelingen, so verbringt er, was noch keinem Menschen gelungen ist. Denn keiner kann zur Zufriedenheit aller Leute reden und leben, wie sehr man auch mich dafür schelten will.
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.
Tiny differences matter – you want to look at Chat GPT and a typo brings you to chat about GTP, of course no problem as you know everything about Guanosine-5′-triphosphate (GTP), this tiny building block which plays an important role in transcribing the synthesis of RNA.
Well, and this is the problem, where we should not really worry primarily about Chat GPT (or google’s bard or …) which may get things reasonably correct as long as we (a) apply the correct spelling, (b) do not expect really clear replies and are happy with answers that are as concise as the horoscope or the statements of any other oracle and (c) come up with simple issues . It is so advanced now that occasionally you may end up with an honest answer:
Sorry, I cannot answer this question. I am an AI-tool.
Yes, there are things where HI, i.e. human intelligence is needed: contradictory, emphatic, combative …
More worrying is the AI-imposed formulation of questions. Embedded in our word processor, or available as AI-writing support like Outright, QuillBot, Grammarly …
Such applications may be helpful at times …, and at first glance. But then the tiny differences may make a big difference:
This is really only the first draft of the initial script and we appreciate very much feedback by the readers.
This is really only the first draft of the initial script and we appreciate very much feedback by the readers.
This is really only the first draft of the initial script and we appreciate very much feedback by the readers.
Or in Italian
Sono
Io sono
Sono anch’io
Io sono anche
AI comes up and autocorrects a sentence in different ways, sometimes possibly more elegant, and possibly “correcting” something that is actually wrong … because it is new: a new term, concept, … a searching for an “unknown unknown” — yes, borrowing from a militarist like Rumsfeld (MI?) may occasionally be more intelligent than relying on AI.
Intelligent or not … enjoy Christmas … or look forward to Spring Festival while others are celebrating …
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.”
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.
I have already complained about this case – it remains to be noted that the employee in charge is apparently so badly paid that he did not even stop at the house, but drove straight to the – remote – branch. The fact that I am expected to make the journey despite a disability is yet another sign of the decay of corporate management morals – only decent pay and decent working conditions enable decent performance. What makes the whole thing even more unbearable: attached to the e-message is an ics date file – however, the delivery did not arrive at the post office specified at that time. A mistake on the part of the postman? Hardly. A mistake by the management, which is incapable of managing. But these irresponsible people, who lack any humane character, can cash in and sell others for stupidity.
For CEOs with as little common sense as the aforementioned, there should be only one income: Incapacity-for-work-because-of-lack-of-common-sense-pension. Such beings would not be entitled to a citizen’s allowance or the like, since they refuse to engage in any meaningful activity.
As a recommendation: the film Sorry we missed you, by Ken Loach. In the DHL management this film could serve as a mirror and hopefully arouse disgust for themselves.
Once again angry and disgusted greetings from Peter Herrmann
Ich habe diesen Fall bereits reklamiert – es bleibt anzumerken, dass der zuständige Mitarbeiter scheinbar so schlecht bezahlt ist, dass er nicht einmal am Haus gehalten hat, sondern gleich in die – abgelegene – Filiale gefahren ist. Dass mir der Weg trotz einer Behinderung zugemutet wird, ist ein weiteres Zeichen fuer den Verfall der Sitten von Unternehmensfuehrungen – nur anständige Bezahlung und anständige Arbeitsbedingungen ermoeglichen anständige Leistungen.
Fuer CEOs, die sich durch so wenig gesunden Menschenverstand auszeichnen, wie der Genannte, sollte es nur ein Einkommen geben: Arbeitsunfaehigkeits-wegen-Mangel-an-Verstand-Rente. Auf Bürgergeld o.ae. haetten solche Wesen keinen Anspruch, da sie sich verweigern, einer sinnvollen Taetigkeit nachzugehen.
Als Empfehlung: der Film Sorry we missed you, von Ken Loach. Der DHL-Unternehmensleitung koennte dieser Film als Spiegel dienen und hoffentlich Abscheu vor sich selbst erregen.
Wieder einmal veraergerte und angewiderte Gruesse von Peter Herrmann
“Die Priester stehen in diesem Zeitpunkt in jedem Streit der Macht gegen das Volk auf der Seite der ersten […] Das Nonplusultra ihrer Kunst, das Unrecht der Macht in den Schutz ihrer Kutte, oder wenn du lieber willst, in den Schutz ihrer Frömmigkeit zu nehmen, besteht in ihrer Manier, die ersten Fragen des gesellschaftlichen Rechts – das Interesse für die Freiheit selber und die einfachen, aber ersten Gesichtspunkte unseres Forschens über diesen Gegenstand – unseren reichen, behaglichen und unseren nach Behaglichkeit schmachtenden armen und armseligen Zeitmenschen ganz aus den Augen zu rücken, ihnen diese Gesichtspunkte als für ihre Glückseligkeit unbedeutend und sogar für ihre Sittlichkeit gefährlich in die Augen fallen zu machen und dabei den Ansehnlichen unter ihnen den Anteil, den sie an dem göttlichen Recht der Macht selber haben, zu relevieren und den Hoffartskitzel, den sie also in ihnen verstärken, durch den Wonnegenuß der Gnade und des Mitleids zu verfeinern, auch tiefen Argwohn und Unwillen gegen jeden Mann rege zu machen, der es wagt, ihr ruchloses Auslöschen der bürgerlichen Tugend durch den Trug einer wahrheitsleeren Sittlichkeit und ihr Verscharren des Rechts in die Mistgrube der Gnade für das zu erklären, was es wirklich ist.”
Pestalozzi: Meine Nachforschungen über den Gang der Natur in der Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts; von dem Verfasser Lienhard und Gertrud; Zürich bei Heinrich Gessner, 1797, PSW 12, S. 1-221
The priests are at this time on the side of the first in every dispute of power against the people […. ] The non plus ultra of their art of taking the wrongs of power under the protection of their cowl, or if you prefer, under the protection of their piety, consists in their manner of putting the first questions of social law – the interest in liberty itself, and the simple but first points of view of our research on this subject – quite out of the sight of our rich, comfortable, and our poor and miserable contemporary men, who pine for comfort, to make them see these points of view as insignificant to their happiness and even dangerous to their morality, and thereby to make relevant to the respectable among them the share which they have in the divine right of power itself, and the thrill of hope which they thus increase in them, by the delight of grace and pity, also to excite deep suspicion and ill-will against every man who dares to declare their nefarious obliteration of civil virtue by the deception of a truthless morality, and their burying of right in the dung-pit of grace, for what it really is. “
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?)
Isn’t it another paradox – or at least another formulation of various paradoxa? Being “social beings” is in itself a kind of paradox, if we consider that the social is something that is permanently changing, this making being in a strict sense impossible: Bing is having been and becoming at the very moment we are. And controlling oneself, then, means controlling how we position ourselves in and being part of change, by which, to some extent, we change.
A matter not least of HumaArtificial Intelligence: While we are, of course reacting, caught in some kind of feedback loop, we are – if we do exist in the said sense – able to leave the feedback loop, too – making this kind of intelligence human – and possibly humane – so different if compared with Kant’s/McEwan’s Adam.
And then? Capitalism in particular, perhaps society? Ageing, especially when becoming ill, fragile? When all this means, perhaps reducing life on maintaining itself, staying alive… the permanent concern of securing food, securing living under a roof …, a large roof the seize of which goes beyond (but where is the limit?) what is needed for security, for comfort; … maintaining the body and its beauty… exercises, communication, even if it is communication about communication, classifying and screening communication … Is it about personalities, that lost character, about newspapers that perpetuate news bare of information; about publishers publishing books nobody is interested in, nobody can afford … but everybody then is encouraged (and taking up the offer) to download for free; to subscribe for free… at least for three weeks, or months or so …, having all stored on the computer, the cloud … .
Of course reading is a good thing for the individual and for humanity. But do you have to write something about what you read, which is then written about, about which legions of educated people argue, in order to subsequently document the argument and discuss the documentation in the feuilletons? (Zeh/Urban: Zwischen Welten … 32 f.)
Reducing human intelligence, even human existence… on pure being, on the very moment, without past, consequently without future, like the homo faber not being able to rest under the tree – resting needs to acknowledge movement, failing this, means failing to exist. As “always understanding what one does, means remaining unchallenged by oneself.” (Walser)
Beginning to exist is something that – from the perspective of the very individual – simply happens, out of control … and is that the ultimate answer, the fact of being damned to live like Sisyphus?
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 