tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78220933140524698982024-02-07T05:36:13.565+00:00How to Believe in the FutureAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-58777055670626814292013-08-16T10:33:00.002+01:002013-08-16T10:33:59.259+01:00dogs without masters
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“2312” by Kim Stanley Robinson is
a book I'd advise everyone to read. There are some bleak aspect of
humanity described, but it provides also a good study of the worst of
our society and its capacity for change. One of the interesting
analogies not developed enough to my taste in the book is the change
from wolf to dog.
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Dogs were wolf, until domestication
by men. If any of you have seen documentaries on wolves, or read
books on them ( I'd advise there Mark Rowland's books – he is a
philosopher who has actually lived with wolves), you would know that
wolves are more intelligent than any dog we know. Dogs need to be
taught, through quite a strong discipline, how to react and be the
best they can. Wolves have still an innate intelligence.
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We are dogs to our society, and
through some weird aspect, through an appeal at laziness that we all,
one way or the other, succumb to. The example I have witness, and I
know I'm not the only one, is the camera. The analogical to digital
camera has brought a weird development. They are essentially the same
to us, the support is different. Except that an analogical camera
always provided the option to understand the process that was going
on. You had a receptor of light, the film, you had a lens that would
say at what distance you wanted this light to come, you had a focal
that said in what amount of light at the time, and a timing of
opening for this focal that said for how long.
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That was it, that was simple and
everybody could understand it, and make what they wanted of that
understanding. You had your camera, and power over that camera. The
digital revolution is a funny one. Though we can understand the
digital process analogically, it is different in the fact that the
changes we make, afterwards, are beyond the our understanding.
Photoshop is a software that does not ask us to understand the
cartesian coordination system to make changes manually, or even
understand the RGB color numbering as a mean to scan the pixels of
the image. All the algorithms are provided, and secretly kept, so we
actually rent the power to change the picture, as the knowledge is a
kept property,
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This process of acquisition of
knowledge, so the taking on power of our lives, more and more so, and
it is the complete domestication of society,that does not happen only
in individuals life, but also in the political sphere. The idea that
socio-economical problems are phenomena for which answers are more
complicated than the actions a government can do is a lie that is
slowly coming up due to an invented complexity of the system. The
most problematic aspect of this problem of fake complexity is that it
slowly destroys the democratic process.
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As Weber described it, a government is
defined as the organization holding the legitimate use of violence.
Bourdieu continued by assigning the government as the maker of the
symbolic violence as well. In a democratic society, the population is
therefore the decision maker, and anyone who is against that
population will be punished ( one of the condition of justice is the
fact that any breaking the rules risk a punishment ). The erosion of
the democratic process I've mentioned earlier is that governments,
and politicians, are losing that capacity to define the symbolic
world –
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I will quickly mention the United
States of America which have clearly lost they democratic capacity
when private companies are allowed to present and campaign for their
favorite candidate, and the people candidates are not allowed the
same financial support for their campaigns -</div>
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The media, held most of the time by
profit seeking organization, will ascribe the language to use about
socio-economical problems, and will define the perspectives and
paradigm to hold about the economy. Also, the U.S.A. Being the
hegemon, they confirm that language. Hence, a politician wanting to
talk another language about these problems will appear as being
either utopian or stupid, when there doesn't have to be something
wrong in proposing other ways to exchange or produce (
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinaleda,_Spain">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinaleda,_Spain</a>
this is an example ).
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My point is that we think that the
financing of the economies seems complicate, because we have actually
assigned a system that is overtly dependent on markets, especially
since the implementation of a single currency that doesn't allow much
power by the states to control themselves (
<a href="http://translate.google.fr/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://blog.mondediplo.net/2013-05-25-Pour-une-monnaie-commune-sans-l-Allemagne-ou-avec&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpour%2Bune%2Bmonnaie%2Bcommune%2Bsans%2Bl%2527allemagne%26client%3Dubuntu%26channel%3Dfs">http://translate.google.fr/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://blog.mondediplo.net/2013-05-25-Pour-une-monnaie-commune-sans-l-Allemagne-ou-avec&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpour%2Bune%2Bmonnaie%2Bcommune%2Bsans%2Bl%2527allemagne%26client%3Dubuntu%26channel%3Dfs</a>
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It seems all overtly complicated. Like
unemployment. Unemployment is greatly the result of automation, and
the mis-distribution of the investment for population to direct their
own business, especially in developing countries. There is a systemic
unemployment, and while we look partly to the USA to see how they
solve theirs, they have found a solution, criminalize part of the
population and send them to private prisons, so you create growth
while solving unemployment, and the state goes back to its original
feudal prerogative – deciding who is a foe and who is a friend.
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Accepting unemployment as unavoidable
is a paradigm that governments could accept, if they would take back
the power that is theirs – deciding how we talk about ourselves as
a society. Unemployed people are partly people incapable of joining
the productive forces because they had other worries, but also people
capable of joining the productive forces, but with no place for their
capacities. And then, a lot of people work for NGOs, and are
officially unemployed. So what is a worker, and what is an unemployed
is a real societal problem, that is ignored, because governments do
not want to change, challenge, the domesticated minds.
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-25477988732330947812013-07-22T18:16:00.000+01:002013-07-22T18:19:37.101+01:00 Little poetic presentation to an art exhibition <br />
<br />
On the 10th of july opened the summer exhibition of the Karlsruhe ( Germany) Art Academy, and here is a text distributed for the event.<br />
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As the exhibition is now closed, I can present it to you, and offer you to print and distribute it at every art show, as an introduction.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">" <span lang="EN-GB">You are and have been here confronted to a wide range of
contemporary arts. It is probably not your first time and if the world, you
with, on and in it, survives reality’s dangers, it will not be your last. </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"> Why the literally figurative
intrusion in your life when surrounded by the conceptually representative? I
won’t tell you. I just hope to effectively be a symbiotic parasite to the
experience. Like my analogical organic friends, I lack a sense of scale of the
world, and might be from another kingdom or realm, and hope to haunt the art
and its public with the truth eternally present to all exhibitions and
constantly ignored. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"> I would like to remind you that you
will forget most of what you’ve seen, and yet will in the future be reminded of
a room that you don’t remember now; will in the future forgotten rooms you will
have been used to remember, and never know. And this says it all. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"> It shows that beyond your
appreciation of what is beautiful or intelligent, beyond your emotional
consciously repressed reaction and your grin to what is ironically pathetic to
you, beyond what you find is original and what expectedly follows the history
of art as you know, beyond your humble restrain to add unto others art your art
and your arrogance not say anything, there is an army of artists feeling like
you ever do. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"> They have exposed here all the
insecurities that a life with an end presents. They have shouted as they could
that there is a life, there was a life, and there will hopefully be a life. And
all will deny it is only that, and life has never been only that. Life could
have been the lack of choice, society’s usual subjugation of the physical world
through work by workers subjugated by the physics of the social world. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"> Instead, artists have chosen to
show what we see in the opposite sex, the same-sex, anyway the object of our
fantasy: what we need for life but can’t live with. The struggle to ask without
words wither we deserve love or ought to take the choice we always have. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"> And they will do it by immersing you
in other powerlessly magic realities, by representing what they hear in the
woods where once upon a time all the trees have fallen; by building the
sculptures ancient Greeks were never ordered to liberate out of the marble for
fear of the disorder of the mind information of a new kind creates; for all the
new media you’ve seen here just hint at what we all have yet to learn. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"> So be nice to them, they have
searched here for guides who have proven themselves through age and recognition
by chance. Guides who have mastered them or abandoned them, but will always
stay guides that could not let them free, for their best or their worst. They
are a community of the now, a ‘we, the people’ to whom the injunction of the
artist for art sake lets only the future historians create a movement, this
nostalgic solidarity of the art. They search now for a wider public, a public
that won’t doubt that talking to them, telling them they have to continue, for
everybody’s sake and for themselves, is the thing to do. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"> A public that will
remember them; so all can one day be reminded they have forgotten.
¨ </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-13847490158309714522013-07-20T09:07:00.001+01:002013-07-20T09:07:16.949+01:00 Sociology and Science-fiction: Beyond Social Forecasting an analysis of The Culture saga of Iain M. Banks<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: left; }P.western { font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }P.cjk { font-family: "DejaVu Sans"; font-size: 12pt; }P.ctl { font-family: "DejaVu Sans"; font-size: 12pt; }A:link { }</style>
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Science-fiction is a genre that has appeared mainly in the 19<sup>th</sup>
century. The first famous novel to have extrapolate from science
developments to make a story was probably Mary Shelley's
'Frankenstein. The modern Prometheus'. It is associated more with the
Enlightenment that with the industrial society as can be considered
as a warning to the quests of science. It is the subtitle of the book
that sets the moral of the story as it references an ancient Greek
myth of a titan rebelling against the gods to give man a fair chance
but got punished as he did not give a political sense supposed to
come with the knowledge of the fire he gave to humanity.
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We then observes the science-fiction of the industrial society, the
one grounded in sciences and all its possibilities. The genre hosted
stories suppose to scare its readers, like the Robert Louis Stevenson
“Strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hide” or to fascinate them
and make them dreams, such as most of Jules Vernes stories. In the
case of Jules Vernes, there was as well a will to educate its readers
to what to expect and why not fear sciences. It is so not surprising
that a lot of the inventions in his stories came to be true, such as
the submarine. Jules Vernes is also associated with the beginning of
Universal exhibitions. The places where the promises of the
industrial ages where illustrated.
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The English-speaking countries saw the real rise of science-fiction
as a real genre in the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century on.
The only known attempt at legitimizing science-fiction in French
literature was the donation of the first 'Prix Goncourt' to John
Antoine Nau's 'Force ennemie'. The stigma of science-fiction then
appeared in France just before the 2<sup>nd</sup> Word War and this
author is now only remembered by a few. The appearance of such a
stigma could be due to the French educational system which was and
still is very elitist and creates antagonisms between empirical
sciences and human sciences. The elites educated in literature would
then snob anything scientific and the stigma would then be trickled
down to the populations. The only two notable works that escaped the
stigma was the apocalyptic 'Ravage' by Barjavel and Pierre Boulles'
'Planet of the Apes'.</div>
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Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor challenger stories, H.G. Wells' 'War
of the Worlds' , Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', H.P. Lovecraft's
'Colour Fallen from the Sky' are all proofs that science-fiction
became a legitimate style in English-speaking countries. It would be
interesting to see what made science-fiction a genre more accepted
genre in the United- Kingdom and in the United States of America
early on when it took so long to loose its stigma in the academical
world in other developed countries.
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There are then until the 80's three giants of science-fiction
appeared: Philipp K. Dick, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert ( I've latter discovered after writing this essay (2009) about Heinlein) . The latter
two will be the most relevant for this essay as they have created
important sagas that have left traces for ever on literature. Frank
Herbert wrote the Dune saga. It is set only one big planet of sand,
even though some people do travel between planets. The theme running
through his saga is the question of control and religion.
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The Asimov's Foundation saga is maybe more interesting to study. It
is set in a future where humanity is scattered around the universe,
where the planet of our origin is lost and where five important
forces are in secret conflict to put a direction to humanity. The
forces are humanity in its general chaotic behaviour as we can
observe it in our history, the first foundation society which looked
at develop technologically only, the second foundation that looked at
developing a real understanding of the human psyche, the Mule who is
a human monster undoing all predictions and finally a planet called
Gaia which is an integrated psychic system on its own.
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For a decade between 1985 and 1995, these giants have been replaced
by one author. William Gibson is the most important writer for the
sub-genre of cyberpunk novels. He is the inventor of the neologism
'cyberspace'. He wrote about the pharmacology, as defined by Bernard
Stiglier, of immersing cybernetic systems and the cyborgification of
humanity. He is also the one who acknowledge Iain M. Banks as his
up-coming counter-point in quality in innovation for science-fiction.
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<span style="font-style: normal;"> Iain M. Banks most important saga
is called The Culture. To set the Culture, it is a civilization which
exist in the entire universe. It is stated that it is one of the most
advanced civilization in the universe, the assumption being that
there are millions of civilizations. It is partly humanoid but the
choice is left to all its citizen to chose and change whenever their
body. The other members of the civilization are all the robotic
sentient beings. Since all the biological members live either on
constructed planet controlled by such sentient beings or on sentient
ships, these beings are the one making all the decisions. The level
of technology of the civilization give them an infinite amount of
energy and material resources, so it is equally distributed to all
the citizens. The machines do all the needed work, what is left for
the citizens is to enjoy their life, to be ethnographers of lesser
civilization or ambassadors. The story-lines are then most of the
time around citizen in quest for adventure sent by the sentient
machines to do some spy work supposed to help a lesser civilization. </span>
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After such an introduction on the history of a genre, the
methodology use for this essay will be outline and then put to
practice. The subject of study will be The Culture saga, and more
than the piece of literature that it is, it will be the society
described which will be studied. It will be a form of discourse
inter-textual analysis (Jaworski and Coupland, 1999;Coulthard and
Sinclair,1975) that will provided at first. The theme of the first
research will be centred around utopia and how they are always
relative in the good they represents, depending on the time and
country of their origins. The second analysis will be an attempt at
using sociological heuristic devices to analyse a fiction. It is a
paradigm in cultural studies that has not yet made its marks. Jean
Baudrillard did use his own analytical framework to study films
(1994) and psychoanalysis, though its heuristic devices were meant to
study the human psyche, is now used to study different media and even
politics (Zizek,1989). Some sociologists might think it is a futile
attempt but as the philosopher Mark Rowland has outlined (2003),
science-fiction is a great tool as it is a mirror to humanity. A
distorted mirror at that which helps us reflect on how our society is
or might be. It is why most of the socially conscious authors of the
beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century looked at this genre to
outline what to fear in their changing society. The result of the
second analysis will show that the different sociologist who
explained through grand theories problem of inequality in our society
were grounded in a modern society and we can imagine the variables
that make such inequalities.
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The first analysis will be on the question of utopia and dystopia in
literature. Utopia are possible a sub-genre of science-fiction
appeared before the genre. It has started with Plato's 'Republic', to
Tomas More 'Utopia', adding Rabelais 'Gargantua' to the list and the
20<sup>th</sup> century saw the rise of dystopia like 'We' by<span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">
Yevgeny Zamyatin, '1984' by George Orwell, 'Brave New World' by
Aldous Huxley and adding to that for reasons explained later 'I am
legend' by Richard Matheson.</span></span></div>
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Utopia are important in our literature and in our history of
philosophy as they set the dreams and fears of a given society at a
time. Plato was disillusioned by the death of his master condemned by
the bourgeoisie of his time for disturbing the peace of mind of the
populations. Plato set himself then to set a society that would be
perfect, in his mind. Hannah Arendt, after World War two noted that
Plato was probably the first to imagine a totalitarian society, as
the only his will was important in this imagined society. This then
set the question of what makes an imagined society a utopia or a
dystopia.
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I would argue that most utopia are dystopia and all dystopia are
certainly utopia. All the utopia tend to look at a final society, a
society without history, as nothing need to change any more. In
Gargantua, Rabelais write about a peaceful society living in the
invented Abbey of Theleme. It is a place where the youth can develop
themselves freely out of the constraint of a strict education. It is
a real dystopia for all the slaves that are suppose to provide for
their needs but Rabelais made sure that it is not an important theme
in writing this society.
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'We' is probably the only real dystopia of an over-controlled
society where freedom does not exist and humanity is transformed into
a big production machine. It is Jeremy Bentham pan-opticon brought to
the level of all society. Only if society would deserve such a
treatment by a being knowing better would this fate be an ethical
one, like we consider the fate of all our farming animals. It is a
story that has probably inspired a lot '1984'. The question now rises
that if every utopia are really dystopia, could all dystopia be
utopia ?
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'1984' see a small part of the population having to work for the
party, so the rest of the population can live without worries. The
party members take care of all the state affairs but to be sure that
society does not get disturbed by anyone looking to make some
troubles, all the party members are constantly under surveillance. It
is the sacrifice of a few for the good of all the rest. Then come a
man of the party who discovers a little bit of freedom and do not
have moderation with this newly acquired sense of freedom in breaking
the system.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The question of utopia and dystopia is even more relevant in 'Brave
New World'. The people in there are just happy to be where they are
at, they have drugs so life anxiety is entirely non-existent and they
are all free to consumes all the products they want. Even if there is
a caste system, the genetically engineered and drugged humanity do
not feel it is unfair. More than that, it could also be noted that
they do not live the disciplined sexual repression of our society.
They do not live the lies of a life under a religious code. It is all
in all a perfect Parsonian ordered society.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So why would 'I am legend' be considered a utopia? Well if the
dystopia mentioned early have something in common, it is that there
is always the need of an individual looking at having its own outlook
on society being a good reason to seek the end of the given society.
The societies are always anchored in their own way. That is maybe why
'I am Legend' is maybe a real utopia. The hero is the individualist
man that we can see in all these stories. The difference is that he
is the last human on earth, the rest of the population has been
transformed in wild vampires. In the end of the book, we learn though
that some vampires are more controlled than was assumed and they do
try to build their own new society and that the will and desires of
this lonely human, outsiders are infringing the freedom of that
society.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So where is The Culture in that series of text ? The Culture is a
self-declared perfect society. The only change that we observe
throughout the sage are technological discoveries, but there are no
changes in nature in this society. Everybody is free to do as they
wish. Nothing is condemned to the extent that if a citizen manage to
kill another one, the worst he can expect is being ignored by other
citizens but he will still have all his rights. Everybody is under
the sentient machines surveillance, except if they ask not to, and
they do not really care about it as they cannot be obliged to do
anything. A machine did in 'The player of games' blackmail a
citizen, threatening to ruin his reputation by demonstrating that the
citizen cheated. The citizen did cheat and by obeying the blackmail,
his crime went unnoticed, but the game was not an important one.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Everybody in The Culture is an individual. Even the sentient
machines are individuals, who get to partly construct their own
operating-system and name themselves. There are groups also within
the culture which rebel against some ways of the culture, but they
are integrated and live the way they do. All the views and all the
ways are accepted and there is always some place to satisfy someone
desires. It is a society that is beyond a utopia or a dystopia. I
will use important sociological theories now to study The Culture and
see how it radically opposed to most societies in our history.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Will have to start with Marx. Marx established that the industrial
society could be solely studied if we took as an object of study
commodities. The first step-would be to to understand how commodities
are produced and distributed, and then understand how the commodities
are valued. Both these researches would outline a system in a given
system (Zizek,1989). We are confronted here with a overproduction of
commodities, but unlike the prediction of 'Das Kapital' volume one,
there is no under-consumption created since everything is free.
Commodities have no values as there is an infinite offer. There is no
working class but the sentient machines which do more than one task
while enjoying looking at life at the same time. The citizens have no
class and further more, it followed the Marx slogan “<span style="font-weight: normal;">From
each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Observing therefore that Marx is “outdated” for The Culture, we
can turn to Weber. Sentient machines provide the form of instrumental
rationality at its best. There is though not much bureaucracy
attached with them as we do not see much rules. The machines hold the
monopole of instrumental rationality in the sense that they are the
one to calculate the values of most actions. What they have noted is
what we start to understand is that instrumental rationality does not
exist in an infinite system and has been only an excuse for
ideological actions (Damasio, 1995). This is where we might observe
an inconsistency in The Culture. There is a status system in the
Sentient machines. The bigger the ship or the Orbital ( the
constructed habitations), the more respected their point of views.
They have a higher processing power and their opinion is considered
more than any others but even among the most intelligent beings,
there are dissenting opinions.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
If there are no rules, where is Durkheim's anomie? Well there are
still social norms. There is such a multitude of societies within The
Culture that there are always social norms in a given sub-group. The
example of the player scared of being blackmail shows that anomie
does not exist and that most citizens find a place where they feel
free in their wills and do not find social norms too constrictive
either. This where Durkheim shows the lack in his heuristic paradigm,
he did not consider much the effect of the lack of regulations in a
given society, just the lack of social norms.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So it is a post-industrial society close to Bell (1974)works. The
problem is that as stated earlier, there is no industry. Knowledge
accumulation is the most important practice in The Culture. They have
a central hub where all the knowledge is shared for everybody. Their
definition of knowledge is also important as they understand that
there is always a paradox of the observer. The problem is that Bell's
analysis was still material and considered an economy, which is
entirely absent here.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What is very present in this society and the theories that do
enlighten us a little bit to a process inherent in The Culture is the
process of individualization (Beck,1992;Bauman,2000;Giddens,1991) The
communities we observe are communities of practice (McDermott et al.
2002) that bring in individuals only. It is not consumerism that
makes the individualist process as you would need an economy to
create real consumerism. It is rather the saturation of information
provided to everybody. Information has no exchange value but absorbed
in different ways will create different identities. Individuals in
The Culture are also not embodied in a fixed body. The self is
managed (Goffman, 1959) but not for the reasoned outline by Goffman.
What is observed in the question of the management of the self is
more accounted to free will as defined by Hegel:
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“The Will is Free only when it does not will anything alien, extrinsic, foreign
to itself (as long as it does so, it is dependent), but wills itself
alone – wills the Will. This is the absolute Will – the
volition to be free.” (1991, p.442).
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i><u><b>References</b></u></i></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Banks,I.M. </span><i>The Culture
Novels.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> London: Orbit Press</span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Coulthar,R.M. And Sinclair,J.(1975)
</span><i>Towards an Analysis of Discourse. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">London:
Oxford University Press</span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Coupland,N. And Jaworski,A.(1999)</span><i>
The Discourse Reader. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">London:
Routledge </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Baudrillard,J.(1994) </span><i>Simulations
and Simulacra. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Michigan:
Michigan University Press</span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Bauman, Z.(2000) </span><i>Liquid
Modernity</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Cambridge: Polity
Press </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Bell, D.(1974) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York:
Harper Colophon Books</div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Beck, U.(1992) <i>Risk Society</i>. SAGE Publications</div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Damasio,A. (1995) <i><cite>L'Erreur de </cite><u>Descartes</u><cite> :
la raison des émotions.</cite></i> Paris: Odile Jacob</div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Giddens,
A.(1991) <i>The Consequences of Modernity</i>. Stanford University
Press</div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Goffman,E.(1959)
<i>The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life</i>,
New-York: Anchor Books</div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Hegel,G.
(1991) <i>The history of philosophy. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">New-York:
Dovers Publications</span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
McDermott
et al. (2002) <i> Cultivating
Communities of Practice </i> <span style="font-style: normal;">Harvard:
</span>Harvard Business Press</div>
</li>
<li><div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Rowland,M.(2003)
<i>The philosopher at the end of the universe. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">London:
Ebury Press</span></div>
</li>
<br />
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-72731531714608130332013-07-17T19:23:00.002+01:002013-07-17T19:24:23.019+01:00 World War Z on a couch
<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }</style>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I never know to what extent are films
and books analysis going beyond the intention, but intentions are
never the only things at play. Hence, I'm going to develop quickly
here a study of “ World War Z”. It is only a study of the film as
I have not read the book. <br /><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There are two elements I have
perceived from this film. The first part of the study, is influenced
by the fact I have followed some seminars by Laurence Rickels, for
three years now. I have also read Sigmund Freud and Slavoj Zizek, who
are the other psychoanalysts of films and literature that have
influenced a bit my understanding of the film.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /> Brad Pitt suffers from the
abandonment as a father figure. He has been asked to quit his job,
and feels in such a way castrated. I'm hypothesizing that the
decision to stop being a father ( but a stay at home “ mother”
figure) came some time after the death of his father, so he feels
guilty – quitting his job was like killing his father. This
ambivalence of feeling – wishing to be a man without killing the
father – can only be resolved in one way, says Freud. The only way
to redeem this neurotic stage is to kill himself, like Jesus did, so
he can accept himself as a father, having punished himself. Ok, it
might not be clear at first.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Let's try again. There is one taboo in
society: do not try to be your father. Your father is all powerful
and knows best, also he gets all the girls in town. We do though have
to kill our father to accept ourselves as we are. Comes the tricky
bit: if we kill our father, we are run by guilt, we know it's bad
because things might run amok ( check the definition) – and if
things run amok, our brothers might want to kill us, and so will our
sons. So we have to feel better, hence we sacrifice ourselves, to
feel better, to feel redeemed. Weird, I know, but it somehow works,
for psychoanalysts and Christians.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Boom ! First part is done and
explained. <br /><br /><br /> But wait, the best part is yet here. Though
we can have the psychoanalytical reading set on the protagonist, the
protagonist might just be the personification of a societal
observation.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What does it mean ? I'm not entirely
sure. The film has clearly been financed by the U.S. Defense
department, and this guys know what to do in films. So, what can we
learn from their message ?
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One: dictatorships are the best.
Indeed, if we observe where the zombies emerged from, we understand
that democracies are prone to zombyfication: India, South Korea,
United States ( yeah, I know, hardly a democracy – except in the
eyes of the american public). But let's see the countries that escape
zombyfication... The first one, on top of the list, is North Korea.
North Korea is the only country to have no zombie at all because they
have, in 24 hours, taken out all the teeth of everybody.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ok, that does make sense. The
problematic sub-text of the film is Israel. Israel has a government
that for the last decade, didn't recognize the right for
self-determination of the Palestinian people and has grab their
lands. Israel has been condemned for that, but somehow, in the film,
that's what makes Israel a strong country: their capacity to make
walls. Their capacity to reject a part of humanity is what keep them
alive for some time in the film – also they have a highly effective
intelligent agency, we're told again in the film. The interesting bit
though is that once Israel decides to accept Palestinians and protect
them, the celebration for that peace is the cause for the
zombyfication. Zombies arrive just at the moment of peace
celebration....
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Which made me wonder about the last
country ( not counting the Belorussian plane that saves our hero).
The United Kingdom is the country that saves the world. Is is an
undemocratic country ? Well, it is interesting to ask. The
undemocratic technie that saves the world, in the film, is what the
U.K. Is best at at the moment : Surveillance ! The film projects most
of the part in the United Kingdom through CCTVs. The cameras are
finally useful as they let know everybody were the zombies are and
what to do against them.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ok, so the Department of Defense
prefers that there is no trias politica principles. No balance of
power and no accountability to the people, because it tends to slow
us down. And that is where I'm stuck. Ok, we become Zombies when we
want what is right. To get rid of zombies, we have to kill ourselves,
we have to transform ourselves, to become effective at killing
zombies. I do not understand what the Department of Defense asks of
us through the psychoanalytical self-sacrifice. Do they understand
democracies, as killing the King to become our own Kings, give us
ambivalent feelings - and they do as we want problems to be solved
faster but with justice - ?
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I wonder what they ask of us. Our
neurotic hero has to lose his family to realize that he really wants
to be father and that he cannot be run by his sense of guilt ( that
made him loose his libido). Have we lost our libido through
democracy, or through the fact that we do not believe in it anymore ?
What does it mean to kill ourselves in this sense – and for what ?
Do they want us to choose for ourselves, or is there an intention ?
I'm just not sure.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-25179129833343415362013-06-11T14:02:00.002+01:002013-06-11T14:20:58.744+01:00Old man's ramble <br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So I'll try again writing a blog,
slightly political, slightly sociological, slightly entertaining.
I'll try. I'm making the commitment to my small small readership,
once a year.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The whole question is what to start
with. And I came up with an idea. I don't know if you've other
articles, but I came upon a realization. As we all know, we have an
unfair economical system that does not promote wealth redistribution
even if it is in the interest of society as a whole, so all its
actors, even the one benefiting of the economical system. Some smart
business man are aware of that, and we ought to give them credit more
often than we do, they are saving it for the others, blinded by their
inheritance. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We have an economical system that does
not in general promote its perpetuity, or societies, or most of
enterprises. Indeed, a company that sells well its product, that is
reasonably in the products it provides, would have sold at some point
to everybody a product that last and at some point, that company will
have serve its purpose, and will have to dismantle. Now, that ought
to be normal. It is normal. Except that we do not easily accept it,
and it is mainly because of vested interests. We are blinds to the
normal need for change and evolution. Companies ought probably to
think about their end, and I think it was the idea behind having a
mandatory amount of money in a bank, to prepare for the end. The
workers are not happy when this happen,and it is because the average
expectancy of humans has outgrown the life-expectancy of most
economical enterprises. We are not told that.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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Indeed, between the reality of
capitalism and the theory of capitalism, we can find a universe.
Anyway, capitalism as it is is about keeping an advantage on
everybody else, by mean of control of the land, of the media and of
the political landscape. It's about an oligarchy that provides
nothing fair,and keeping that advantage constantly. That's where Marx
was probably the most right, alienation is a necessary by-product of
a mode of wealth distribution based on private property. We are,
entrepreneurs as well as workers, alienated from everything. The only
times labor laws were put in place, in most countries, it was because
either the populations were too educated for their own good, and
sacrifices were made by the owners of means of productions to prevent
a good revolution, or because the big companies wanted to make
investments, but to keep their advantages, they would require all
their competitors to do the same. This is what happened with most
welfare or mandatory insurances schemes: keeping the advantage by
uniforming the procedures.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A fair competition is non-existent. It
is in theory possible, if we adopt a total<br />
<a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent.html" target="_blank">transparent society</a>, but
we are very far away from that. As much as we can still consider, and
we will have to or fall in a dark age, that we can reshape our
economical system ( limiting the use of limited first-hand goods (
and redistributing first to the region holding these goods) –
eliminating everybody's debt – having a different economy for life
( as it is – so the enjoyment of culture) – an ownership of
material products by societies ), we are far away from considering
total transparency as another need for keeping human society going
on. Total transparency seems to be an invasion of our private life,
but more than the fascistic idea that people who have nothing to hide
do not hide anything, I think that there is something wrong with
society when we feel like hiding.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
For example, someone prosecuted for a
crime will try to hide it, for shame and knowing that most of us will
judge him. How can people who are condemned are supposed to
reintegrate society when they hold a stigma. I think that there is
indeed something stigmatic in secrets. We also know that secrets only
exist for the powerful. There is a very clear example in the news
this week: the PRISM scandal is only relevant when put next to the
Bradley Manning prosecution. The U.S.A. Are allowed to uncover
everybody's secret conversations around the world, but the world is
not allowed to know what the U.S.A. did wrong ( shooting journalists,
torturing people in private prisons, supporting dictators and telling
their diplomats to keep rubbing on their good side, fueling
military-coup against socialist leaders...). Even for rich people,
the fiscal audits from most European countries are actually limited
in their research when auditing the fiscal revenues. Other than it is
still legal, to some extent, to have off-shore accounts ( rich people
have the right to pay taxes anywhere they want, as they pay
handsomely lawyers who research what are the loopholes in every tax
code)
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course, total transparency is
impossible at the moment. The wealth injustice, the conservative
spirit touched by everyone, the frustrating mediascape, leads us to
be incomplete being capable of all freudian pathologies. We are not
sincere with ourselves, me least of all. Total transparency would
require that we get rid of some constants in our constitution ( all
around the world, everybody think they are slightly better than the
average...), like our need for consistency, which prevents us from
accepting change, especially in ourselves, or our need for a positive
self-image, which explains why there is no Joker around the world (
no one I've ever met would consider themselves a bad person).
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Anyway, I'm back, I'll try to be there
as often as possible, with rambles and constructed thoughts. We'll
see how it goes. By the way, calling on readers, if you have a theme
you'd like me to express my opinion on, I'll gladly do !</div>
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<br /></div>
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The next article will probably be on badly paid jobs we can't relocate, language and what it shows about societies, and any thing that passes through my head at the time </div>
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<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-65981177421373498612012-08-12T17:51:00.003+01:002012-08-12T17:51:33.068+01:00Top 5 Graphic Novels<br />
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Back to culture and personal reviews.
At this point in my life, I would like to make a desert island, all
time favourite top 5 graphic novels ( comic series). I do not know if
I should start by explaining first the value of graphic novels and
their history. I think I will just remind that they used to be the
stuff of the children and the working class for a very very longtime,
after they were the invention of the print ( before that they were
the stuff to educate as well but a fringe of the population). It is
the twentieth century I think that they became the stuff of adults,
when people who grew up with them got accustomed with them, as well
as the ones with the development of pornographic graphic novels. They
will never completely be lost, but they were quickly overcome by the
internet and animated films, so I might be in the perfect generation
to judge the perfect graphic novels for adults.
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Well, now the I have quickly establish
their history, that I have legitimised also my taste through my age (
which I'll agree is a shaky excuse, but not much of you will have
better ones). I will present my top 5:
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1 - Hellblazer.</div>
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2 - Sandman.</div>
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3 - Preacher.</div>
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4 – Transmetropolitan.</div>
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5 – Planetary.</div>
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Some have more than one writer and
graphic artist, so the title of the series will be enough for now.
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Hellblazer tells the story of John
Constantine. He is an Englishman from Liverpool originally, but has
been adopted by London. He comes from the working class, which gives
him a leftist fibre I really appreciate. It is an ongoing comics,
that will probably follow the fate of all the famous super-heroes, it
will last and last and your children might read it as well, and then
it will restart again and so on. The particularity though is that
Constantine is not a super-hero. He does not have the stuff of
heroes. He is a coward who feels oblige sometimes to save the world,
but would rather let other people die, and only when cornered does he
do something, or at least that what he was when I discovered him.
Before that, he was an arrogant bastard who thought he could do good,
but then ended up killing his friends. He is bitter because of his
life and because of the world. He might have some powers, as a
self-proclaimed magician. We do know though what are magicians, yet
we keep going to their shows. It's now been almost 30 years that
Hellblazer comes monthly out, and it goes in depth in defining the
psyche of a man who has lost his twin at birth, like Philip K. Dick,
and like the author has developed a lucid way to explain and distort
reality.
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Sandman is the acclaimed work of Neil
Gaiman. Sandman tells the story of Dream, one of the 7 eternals (
Destiny, Destruction, Delight ( who became Delirium), Despair, Desire
and Death are his siblings). Eternals have realm, which interact with
reality, and actually give reality its movements. Neil Gaiman plays
in these novels with the mythologies we had through our history and
still the one we have nowadays. It is full of reference and it
imagines the personal histories behind the myths and what are the
emotions that gods have, towards humans and themselves. Sandman is a
great creation on the subject of imagination, as it is what dreams
are for.
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Preacher was the comic book that got
me to serious adult comic books. Before encountering preacher, I was
a marvel super-hero follower and a Mad magazine reader. Preacher got
me to believe that graphic novels can really be smart adult
entertainment. Why ? Well Preacher is about a preacher with an
alcohol problem, a hit-man girlfriend and has a drug addicted irish
vampire as a best friend. It is a very smart graphic novels as I
said... Preacher is a very american graphic novel, as our Preacher
goes through the U.S.A. To find God and get this last one – very
interesting minor caracter – to explain why he has quit on his
creation. Preacher illustrates Bill Hicks perspective on the USA: it
is a country filled with the worst of humanity, and yet keeps a good
aspiration to be the best it can – even if it fails.
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Transmetropolitan's protagonist has
the best name in the history of fiction: “ Spider Jerusalem”. I
don't know where the name came from. It is set in a not-too-distant
future, in a big city. The city represents the world, or is the
centre of the world. Well it only represents it, it is actually
New-York as it was, so the lighthouse of the world. In this city,
everybody is hyper-connected and Spider Jerusalem used to be a famous
journalist. And after some years in the wild, he is back and the
world is not better. Spider Jerusalem is moved by only one thing: the
Truth. It is a hero who knows what he wants, and he will do anything
– armed with a bowel setting movement gun – to get it. And people
read him, so he gets enemies. He represents the fourth branch of
power as it should be. He is the hero that societies could have.
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Planetary, finally, is the comic book
on comic books. Every parts of this story is an adaptation of another
comics of the 20th century. I have not read enough comic books to
know where does everything comes from, but it is impossible not to
see that it is all about comic books. All the old ones appear, like
Tarzan and the masked cowboy, the enemies are the Fantastic Four and
every body appears, even the ones I've just mentioned ( and maybe
that's why I've put it up in my top 5 – John Constantine is
transformed into Spider Jerusalem). I'm still trying to get my head
around it, as I do not yet have resolved everything, but if one day
you think you have accumulated enough knowledge about this art, this
is the last graphic novels to read.
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For any adults ( over 16) ready to
discover interesting graphic novels, other than these, try V for
Vendetta, Watchmen, Promethea and Swanpthing ( all by Alan Moore if I
remember correctly), Sin City, Goddess, Lucifer, The Sandman theatre,
Hit-man, Y the last man, or go ask your local comic book store. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-72031511344891670332012-07-06T15:09:00.001+01:002012-07-09T11:02:44.456+01:00Eunuchs of the World<br />
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Back for a quick self-reflective
study of my knowledge. It is not epistemology as I do not concentrate
on the value of my knowledge, though I do doubt it sometimes, so I
take back what I said, there is a bit of epistemology. Doubt is the
foundation of knowledge. Anyway, it has been a long time I have
written to be read, and not written to make sense of what I think I
think, so it might take time to get into the careful balance of
humour and seriousness. Seriousness and humour are just opposite
sides of the same coin: a paradox born from the contradiction of our
perception of the world, our expectation of the world, and the
reality of the world as we perceive it.</div>
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I will not go for too much
psychology, no matter how interesting that knowledge can be,
pathologies of the psyche are too rare compared to the pathologies of
our societies. Of course, both were born quite early into our
civilisation (whether the personal development through language and
the recognition of the Other or the societal development of
information sharing and the confrontation with other perspectives). I
will go into the realm of what I think is political philosophy, but
as you, smart audience, know, no intellectual realm has borders like
North Korea.
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Let's just start with the birth of
societies, as I have finished reading “ Guns, Germs and Steel” by
Jared Diamond, who points out the chance of we, Eurasian, born on a
continent with an East-West axis, where the weather is relatively
equivalent, compared to all the other continents. This indeed means
that transport and exchange are easier, as in order to go from one
part of the continent to the other we did not need to go through much
deserts or oceans, compared to the populations living on other
continents. At that, we had the luck of having easily domesticable
animals, and crops that provide enough nutrients and are easy to
farm, so agriculture became the biggest advantage.
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Agriculture was and still is the
greatest thing that happened to man-kind, as it has provided us with
a surplus in energy, and saved us time, meaning that we got to work
on other things. I do not yet have the correct education in physics
to understand the full consequences and relationship between energy
and time, or space for that matter. Knowing though what I don't know
makes me even more curious. Anyway, agriculture brought more people
with more free time capable of working on much more, giving us
technology and complex societies. It was though because of the
spatial advantage that some cultures got to develop faster than
others, and when confronted with these others, determined who would
be the master and who would be the slave.
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Here, we will have a little bit of
time for a philosophical stage whisper. I am telling you quickly how
master/slave relations were understood by Hegel and then by Marx,
because it is always something interesting to keep in mind. A man
meets an other man and it is a traumatising experience, because both
of them thought that they were the centre of the world. So they had
to fight, to affirm their uniqueness. Two possible outcomes. Outcome
A, one wins, the other dies, end of the story. Outcome B, one wins,
the other accepts that the winner gets to give the orders. So we have
a winner Master and a loser Slave. Master needs Slave constantly,
because S determines who M is. Without S, M is nothing now, while S
is like he was before, except that there is now a meaning in his
life: receiving orders. Of course, receiving orders means that there
are imperatives, things that he can't have and as Groucho remarks,
that's how desire was born because “ I'd never WANT to belong to a
club that would accept me as a member”.
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The birth of desire is the result of
an order given, by the father or the social authority. That's how
History started. Indeed, the M would never want any change, does not
have any desire, he is the content father who just needs to
perpetuate how society is. On the other hand, the S is the worker,
the one who has to accept the situation with frustration – this
latter feeling being transformed, sublime into production surplus of
the cultural or intellectual order, when it is not of the political
order.</div>
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Hegel and Marx thought that it were
the total Slaves who made history, Hegel thought it happened in the
realm of ideologies, Marx in the realm of economies and I go for the
poor compromise of not knowing the causality and doubting there is a
one way causality. I say “total”Slaves, because there are a
hierarchy of Slaves: the priest, the politicians, the lawyers, the
soldiers and so on until the lowest of the law. It is not economic
relations that always change the ideologies, it is not always the
ideologies that change the economic relations. Change is just what
you get when the slaves have learnt much and the Masters forgot how
they won.
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Domination as the little story has
undergone here happens only under universalisation of a field, a
realm, or an order. What I mean is that you cannot have an asymmetric
relationship if it does not occur in the same frame of understanding.
For example, and here we are using an example from Bourdieu, let's
say I want to compare the size of my reproductive organ with the one
of my neighbour. I tell him mine is 31 centimetres long, and he tells
me his is 12 inches long. We do not use the same measures so we can't
compare, he and I will never know who is the master and who is the
slave. Now, let's say that I am a legitimised authority, I tell my
neighbour that we can only use centimetres. It gets to be a different
relationship. It is accepted by him and I who the winner will be,
because we have agreed on a frame.
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I mention in passing the process of
universalisation, because it is an ambiguous process of domination,
and pacifications of conflict. Why do conflicts get less violent when
everybody agrees on what are the terms of the fight ? Well because it
accepts a common ground. Of course, usually, the common ground works
mostly in favour of the one who ascertain his domination in an other
field. For example, I am the master of the armies, I will put
everybody under the influence of a religion we shall all believe in.
The master of the armies therefore established the universalisation
of the cultural context. It is then in these fields that domination
will be recognised and that rebellious production, the sublimation of
the frustration and the creation of the desires, will be born.
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The ambiguity of the
universalisation process is that one of the dominant forces of
universalisation, of setting legitimate fields of hierarchy, is the
State. The State will state rules, nominate, and act in an accepted
way. Whether we like it or not, we abide by the State rules, and this
because the State is our legitimate authority. Now, we are getting in
the thick of it. There is of course an idealised power called the
State, which will establish a lot of fields and the rules of games of
these fields, under which people play the different games of social
life. The State in itself is though a field where we find rules of
games and people playing to get on top.
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From there on, different fields will
bring on different elements with different interests, mainly keeping
the status of Master. Hence, when we see positive change within
society, looking back retrospectively, two sorts of groups are the
elements of these changes. The first one is the group of particular
slaves, which have taken the oppression to an unsustainable point,
where antagonistic forces meet. Of course, this type of group will
create a problem, as Badiou notifies, since they might only demand
change for their own private interests, and not a change in depth of
the order of things within a given society.</div>
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Normally, a slave-group that asks
for change which might not consider the others does so because their
field of oppression is not shared by others oppressed in a different
way. The petite bourgeoisie in Russia which saw its political capital
stample on asked for a revolution, but the political field capital
was not shared with the peasants, hence the economical oppression (
USSR was about economical oppression more than it was about political
oppression, as is the case in China now – the instruments of
productions were not shared but concentrated among the few
bureaucrats coming from the small revolutionary bourgeoisie-
Yougoslavia was about political oppression) of most of the
population.
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The second type of revolution, or
actual societal change with a deep impact within history comes from
the people living outside the realm of the Master/Slave relationship,
in the societal level and not the psychological one. They are not
oppressed and they are not oppressing, there interests are only out
of empathy, a quality easily suppressed by enslavement into a
relation. Of course, these people ask for change on a global level,
and are heard with a very long delay.
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The religious figures are among these
types and usually people with no powers commemorate by history but
yet that we can't follow because we still feel trapped. I call them
the Eunuchs, as their motives are solely the interests of humanity at
large. They are the ones who consider everybody. Ghandi for example
did not only defend against the oppression of the external forces,
but also the internal oppression of Indian societies. Of course, what
I say here as been proven by history, wether in Egypt or in China,
sometimes they had Eunuchs to direct the administration and nobles
have overthrown them when their private interests where at risks.
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The Eunuchs are the ones to save our
world, as they are outside any Master/Slave relationship of any kind,
but can see them all. They would, I guess, defend the sanctions upon
Greece for not adhering to an individualist capitalistic ethos, but
would also remind the Greeks that if they would want really a fair
Earth, their standards would have to go down anyway so that the
Wallensteinian periphery ( “The South”) get to be defended as
well against the oppressors that Europeans are.
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The Eunuchs are the real Marxist
proletarians, because Marx has ignored ideology, he could foresee
that the proletarians would fight between themselves and between
nations before fighting against their oppressors, that is my point I
think. .</div>
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<br />Thanks for reading </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-37272181487471305732012-02-14T12:30:00.001+00:002012-02-14T12:30:19.396+00:00Ethics is the realm of the immaterial<br />
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So here is an article
based on an interesting conversation with my bro-in-law, which turned
into an attack from my sister to me. The theme of the conversation
was the illegal download of music unto my computer, which I was
calmly enjoying in my room. My bro-in-law being an intellectual
property lawyer, he saw it as an infringement of the rule of law,
which I am not denying, but that it was a behavior closer to Greek
anarchism as imagined by the English than a behavior ought to be
normal. As for my sister, as an economist, it was just another
example of the fact that I am a bourgeois who has no respect for a
hard-working class, which I am only partly denying.
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Can I go anywhere with
this? I think it is largely possible to show that though I am in the
wrong, it is only relative to how we accept the world we live in
today, and how we would like it to be. And again, if we can't dream
of a better world, I still wonder if we can take any moral
high-ground, as there is nothing morally constructive otherwise. I
don't know now if I should start by taking a position of the
particular to then go to the universal, or start with the universal
and go unto the particular of the arguments.
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To start on my
position, I was stating that the music industry nowadays, does not
represent any opportunity for music players, when it has all the
potential to. Indeed, music players get only 3 cents per song on a CD
or 6 cents per song on Iplayer, so they do make a lot of their living
in concerts. Now production companies do make a lot of money, and the
reason to make this money to hire lawyers and lobbyist so they can
keep on there business. Or to spend money on videoclips and
advertising to promote one or the other untalented crappy
son-of-producer to teenagers. This is the industry we are financing
when we buy a CD and all of it to satisfy a property fetishism (
which I suffer from sometimes myself, but I didn't dare to tell my
opponents that, because it does ruin a little bit my argument against
that industry).
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Now, we have to
understand that most music players until the rise of the reproduction
industry, where rarely professional musicians, but where part-time
musician. It is therefore a funny thing to think of an artist as
something that has to be done full-time. A composer of classical
music could pretend to that, but they are a dying breed, and it is
still something that is enjoy almost only in big concert halls or
operas ( I went to “Yvonne, la princesse de Bourgogne”, by
Philippe Buysmans, among other operas and concert this year). And
that's where it has to be understood that Walter Benjamin was right,
reproduction does kill the art. Reproduction transforms a performance
into an information. And information should be free, otherwise there
won't be anything shared by humanity.
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A small paragraph on
information. Information is any stimuli that is shared, and therefore
can be used as a sign – a shared tool of communication. Education
for example is information – we teach each other signs, ways to
interpret the world – so we can better understand how each other
thinks. Now music reproduced is solely information, as it is the
reproduction of information we can all understand and correlate to,
but further more, it is the name of the artist and the song which are
important. If we wouldn't share that, then only people with money
could exchange these informations, therefore excluding people who
have not access to it. Let's take another example, if Leonardo da
Vinci was still alive, and did not want the Mona Lisa to be
digitalized or even printed, only people who can afford holydays in
Paris and time to go to the Louvre would know what it is. Is that
fair? But now, is seeing a print of the painting the same as the real
stuff? No, just like listening music from my computer not the same as
going to a concert.
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Now, back to the
artist. Artist are people allowed to do what they like, because they
have found owner of means of production ready to invest in them and
what they produce to make a profit out of it. The investment is first
cultural, in the sense that they manipulate information to make it
somehow worthy, so there is an economical return afterward. Of
course, the manipulation of the cultural is never too easy for there
are people who have an education of the history of art, so can
compare it with more data. Hence it is easy to create worth for
teenagers as they do not have any standard to value cultural
worthiness. So is it fair that some are lucky to find a patron when
others are not recognized as doing anything worthy of recognition, as
money generates worthiness and not personal appreciation. As a
Houellebecq wrote in his latest book, we can see Damien Hirst and
Jeff Koon discussing how they will share the art market ( well how
russian oligopolist, arab princes and Saatchi brothers are getting
along if we want a wider picture), create unequality. But hey, it is
alright, it is the rule of law as it is and as it should be accepted.
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So my point, that I
didn't get to pass, was that as hours of work should be reduced as
the amount of work to produce a sustainable market has diminished (
it has, that is why we have systemic unemployment), it leaves more
time for everybody to be an artist. No, everybody should not be an
artist, and yes artist are essential for the world to make it a
beautiful place. But everybody should contribute also a little bit
towards working ( in french, the word 'travailler (working)' comes
from trepalium, meaning an instrument of torture) for the whole
society. If you go to a pub in Ireland, chances are that you will
hear a band there, who does that for there own pleasure, and not for
money. Isn't how art should be provided? Otherwise, as my sister
pointed out, artist have more chances to come from people like me,
who have parents who can provide for them. And a lot of musicians
comes from such backgrounds ( no generalization here though).
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Now, I would like to
downside my argument here a little bit. It is true that there is a
lot of justification here for an illegal action. There is nothing
wrong with justifying actions actually, it is part of a brain process
for everything that we do. Even irrational arguments will be
justified in our brain, and sometimes for the wrong reasons ( split
brain research have proven that) and maybe I act that way because my
environment pushed me to act that way, on the other hand, because I
have always pushed my reasoning to the furthest I could, my
justification have changed as it would fit a wider understanding of
the world and the conception of an ideal world, instead of just
justifying through social convention.
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Justification through
social convention, such as saying that the Greeks deserve where they
are now because they didn't play by the rules of our game, is
actually the way that a big part of humanity has been controlled for
centuries. The example of the stupidity of social convention lies in
a few philosophers, since antiquity, but is in our modern days best
exemplified by Bourdieu when he says that the best jokes on
christianity and beliefs do come from cardinals. Indeed, when you are
up in the game, it is easier to cheat. It is actually worst than
that, if you are higher up in any social game, it is actually good to
show in private that you support the opposition and in public you
still manipulate everybody, because you see the whole game and yet
know that nothing can touch you.</div>
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<br />
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<span lang="en-US">Hence, for example,
though greek cheats, it is at all level of society and easy to
identify as it is a universal behavior, on the other hand, while
Greece has a shadow economy estimated at 25%, Belgium shadow economy
is estimated at 20%. Not that far behind, the difference is that
Belgium shadow economy is also mostly done by rich people engaging
“smart-accountant” who know how to dodge all taxes. The social
convention pushes us to believe that the problem comes from the
everyday greek who does not make you pay for the added value on the
desert he just sold you.
</span><a href="http://www.gregpalast.com/lazy-ouzo-swilling-olive-pit-spitting-greeksor-how-goldman-sacked-greece/">http://www.gregpalast.com/lazy-ouzo-swilling-olive-pit-spitting-greeksor-how-goldman-sacked-greece/</a><span lang="en-US">
</span>
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Of course, the
explanation on this website is not the one we need to point out,
because though we ( the youth and the educated-engaged academics) do
repeat it all the time, conventions tell us to go through the
political process, though it is accepted that it is lobbying works
only if you have money, to get it to change. So what are we left
with? Well not working constantly the game of social conventions, and
knowing why intelligently, and informing oneself oneself on why and
how, is actually a good way for emancipation and change within a
system.
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Now, back to our world,
which is a horrible world where lazy-ass bourgeois like my-self can
spare not to have a student job and instead roam the internet to
accumulate information. What we have here is an unstable and unfair
environment, but like any environment it can change, through
feedbacks and pressure on parts of its components. The pressure will
always result on some change, for example, representative democracy
has lead the youth to be partly disillusioned by our capacity for our
society to be better. The pressure for growth has created a
vicious-circle based on debt, and debt is only the lending of
future-time, therefore neither the baby-boomers are capable of
considering a better future. To change the environment, we have to
therefore pressure it to change, through actions which are disruptive
to its systemic working, ergo I'm doing good downloading louis
armstrong's CD's and strangely, I don't feel like I'm stealing him of
anything.
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-16879643553228962362012-02-02T15:47:00.001+00:002012-02-02T15:48:59.116+00:00I can't get no ( satisfaction - from exchange-value)<br />
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I have not written for
my blog for quite a while. I do not know if I should really do my own
psychoanalytical observations here. I have received demands for and
against. I will favour at the moment the voices in favor, as I have
not yet taken any rendez-vous with a professional and I could make
you, my invisible audience, my symbolic master. So now I do know if I
should dwell a bit into personal explanations.
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It has all to do with the
self, the perception of the self, and the expectations of the self. I
have recently moved back to Brussels, my hometown and it takes some
time to adapt. I am indeed confront with the self-perceived self of
my past, the self I have constructed for me in U.K. And this new
breed of self that has not entirely found itself yet. I have though
high demands and expectations, I know that I had the luck to grow up
in an environment that brought me informations and a way to value
informations and I have also the brain capacities to process with
ease these informations, though I do have to work still on my memory.
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The fact that I find
myself very intelligent, and that people find it hard to disagree on
that statement but agree that it is not a mark of humility to state
it, I find I have to learn a lot and do a lot with this intelligence
and when I do not, I beat myself to the point that I sulk into doubt.
It takes me time to get back unto my feet and tell myself that I need
to start again. This is though how real strength is defined though:
the ability to go back to a fight. So here I am back, to my world of
reflection, with a self perceived as being worthy to lay down
thoughts, no expectation to be incredibly smart and innovative ( not
to put to much pressure at the beginning) but with the goal of
someday looking back and the roads I took with slight pride.
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So now that my time with
my lacanian master that you are is up, I will start to write about a
very simple class on a Marxist analysis of commodities. It is mostly
for myself that I will write about it and I have not yet come to a
conclusion, as usual with my personal work. The first exercise will
be to outline the difference between two useful concepts: the
use-value and the exchange-value. The use-value is the value of a
commodity as it is. It is a very hard thing to actually conceive as
it is linked to the concept of necessities. Indeed, something can be
truly useful only if it is necessary. And a necessity is linked to
either a mean to survive, either a mean to develop oneself as its
own.
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It is easy to value the
use of food, and then again, exotic food has more exchange-value than
use-value. It is more difficult to value a pen or a computer, as
someone might find himself working to accomplish himself when others
might buy these tools just to show they can exchange a possession for
social recognition – social recognition is something I will later
on define when I will define the different forms of capital ( and not
stop at Marx definition of capital : Any commodity which helps the
accumulation of exchange-valued commodities). So two forms of
use-value: the material form, as something that we need so our body
survives and the spiritual form - nothing essentially religious- but
just specie-centered idea that the human only has a spirit – as
something that we need so we can do something of our life as we have
decided to independently do.
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Now exchange-value is the
thing of everyday now. It is the discussions around the price of
things, as we exchange money for different objects. Money has become
the universal standard to establish exchange-value. We exchange
anything ( almost) for money and the price actually does not reflect
on anything in particular. What we pay at a restaurant for example,
is only defined as what the boss of the restaurant think is the
normal price for what he serves. It has nothing to do with the pay of
the cook, of the waiters and waitresses, of the food or the price of
the designer he chose for his menu. It is something he thinks is the
price that people will pay. This price will be accepted only by a
social standard established by different networks of people. Let's
say the boss of our restaurant is a friend of two newspapers editors,
then his price will be high, as the media can easily make a price (
an exchange-value) socially acceptable or not, no matter the fact
that the value of a dinner is relative to the taste of the person
going to the restaurant plus the added use-value commodities used (
mainly the food and the labour).
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Now we are constantly
reminded that the exchange-value is the everyday lie that we accept.
No matter that televisions cost far more in a store that the added
cost of their productions ( and that the value added is done through
off-shore front companies so less redistribution for profit is done),
we are aware of it and yet ready to buy new ones before the old ones
are really broken – Brave New World accepted ideology as well –
reparation is something of the past, replacement is the standard of
living now. What Marx has noted though is that the exchange-value of
a commodity will always rises faster than the exchange-value of
labour, meaning that no matter that a company makes profits, the wage
of the common worker will never rise, except to the need of
necessities ( the risk of a lower production due to excessive
frustration). Satisfaction of the exchange-value of labour will be
also discussed later on, I want to first talk about the standard of
exchange-value.
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<br /> Currencies are the
universal standards of exchange-value and it seems a fair one. Of
course, since the 20th century, the value of currencies are
themselves only exchange-values, as the price of foreign goods
depends on the exchange-value of a currency to another. Meaning that
somehow, a currency will have a better value or a worst value
depending on a socially acceptable consensus of the people buying
these currencies. The value of a currency is therefore not defined by
the general population, there is nothing democratic about it –
except maybe in China -, but by the people who own a high social
capital.
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So here I have to explain
the notion of social capital. Social capital I will define as the
trust accepted in a source for its information. The trust in itself
is the capital. Meaning that someone with high social capital will be
able to decide more or less the exchange-value of any commodity, as
it is the information generated. Somehow, no surprise here, but
people with high economic (material) capital have had a high social
capital for a long time. That's why two of the big three rating
agencies belong to the “ public”, meaning stocks can be bought on
the stock exchange so you can have a more-or-less important say
depending on how much money you put in, and that the last one
“Finch”, belongs to one of the most connected man of France.
These three make the weather in finance, even when they are proven
wrong.
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Now, about satisfaction,
it is something personal to the extent that there is an emancipation
for the power of structure around. The structures of the system are a
necessary tool, in the sense that no one can promote anarchy as it
does not bring forward a liberation from the necessities of life.
Then again, we are not satisfied by the necessities only in life. We
do need to do something out of our life to bring on an existential
satisfaction. We can accept on one hand the animalistic satisfaction
of procreation, in the sense that we live and do what we do so we can
live on through our offspring and so one until the end of the earth,
or we can do something for which we are proud to have bring something
forward to humanity and all the other species that will recognize the
contribution. What is not a necessity is do something we do not like
for a defined amount of time just because we cannot choose something
else ( or for a lesser time).
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Satisfaction is relative
to emancipation as I said, because it is a standard of living we
accept for ourselves, and this standard is accepted because we are
told is acceptable, until a certain point. This is why information is
a useful tool for the emancipation for humanity, though still a
difficult one to use, in the sense that the medium of information is
still important to make an effect. We are satisfied by how things
goes because we do not want to know more, and generally we decide to
ignore what we know because how we came to learn was not enough to
chose to accept it. What we have learned can possibly rise our level
of dissatisfaction and because we do not do anything about, it is
favorable to ignore the information.
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I think I have now lost
my self a bit in the meanders of political economy. Anyway, the
prices do not reflect offer and demand, but by the complex
relationship ordered around by exchange-values. <br /> I will write
more next week, as I have decided to take back on the goal to write
an article a week as a way to prove and improve myself. That's all
folks ! </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-79332980551519846952011-11-30T13:30:00.001+00:002011-11-30T13:30:50.087+00:00Chess of life<style type="text/css">
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I have the luck of having been
introduced to chess quite early in my childhood and taken a liking to
it. Of course, in the digital age, it is a game that tends to
disappear and it is not one of the games that spurs creativity as a
recent academical article as noted. On the other hand, chess has many
advantages for self-development, and it is also a tool to a certain
understanding of the world, in an ideal-type of way.</div>
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The concept of ideal-type is actually
a good one to start up with the subject of chess, as no ideal-type
exists in reality. The problem is that every words represent an
ideal-type. For example, “ chair” represents something in our
mind, but we never see it in the world exactly as we see it in our
mind, so we create a group of things we observed that can belong to
that group. The problem now is that such groups make sense only in
relations to others as the limit of a group can exist only if they
are other things that have borders as well.
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So if concepts that make sense of the
world is stuck in borders of this world, we find our thoughts on a
checkerboard. BOOM ! Here I start with my chess concept ( it is not
mine, it is actually more Wittgenstein's one, I have just adapted
it). So we are stuck with generalisations in our mind of everything
that surrounds us. Each generalizations have its limits, and our mind
can only collect a limited amount of
rules-concepts-generalizations-heuristics-devices. 8 by 8 cases,
separated by black and white so we know every time what are the
limits more or less. So we have a structure of understand that is a
checkerboard. What you can see though is that a checkerboard will
never move. It is 8 by 8, it is black and white. Point. It won't
transform. It is a tabula rasa of understanding that is slightly
useless as though we have understood more or less the limits of our
understanding, no one can say that they have not changed there minds
and that the relations between concepts have not changed.
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So we need pieces. The pieces are the
words we are going to define, the cases we are going to give depth to
so we have a dynamical understanding of the world. Pieces are shit
complicated to understand as they represent something for their modus
operandi but their m.o. are useless if they would have been alone on
a checkerboard. Indeed, a rook can move everywhere, and then would
represent everything, if he had nothing to stop him. Something that
represents everything, represents nothing. So again, a piece
functions is only defined in relation to others. A bishop can move
far and well, compared to a King, but it is kinda stuck, compared to
a rook.
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<br /> So we have dynamical concepts
moving around in relations to others, but also in relations to where
they start from. And here, we observe a hierarchy of concepts, where
we have loads of little understandings, which can be sacrifice
because they can be replaced easily by others. Who cares for the word
chair, as I have the verb seating, I have stools, I have sofas and
armchairs. On the other hand, I do care for future, past or present,
because they are important for me to know where ( when actually) I
am. And what about Me. Could Me be a king, that I might lose on a
checkerboard? Anyway, we have a hierarchy of pieces, that is assigned
rather by their uniqueness than by their function.
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<br /> I would like to make a
parenthesis here concerning pawns. A pawn can go a very long way and
be transformed into a key piece for someones understanding of the
world. Let's say use the color blue, which is not that important ( it
didn't really exist in ancient greek, and there are a multiplicity of
blues in Inuit ). It is a color. The thing though is that in relation
with, let's say phenomenology or linguistic or history of art, we can
start detail the color in all its specificities in a culture at a
given time and how it might represent part of the view of the world
this culture has. Bam ! The blue was a pawn of daily language that
became a Queen to understanding the world. The pawn had to travel
from its original position, to the furthest point it could go, and by
always sustaining its relations to other points without falling out
because its position was to be taken by a stronger piece.
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What is weird though is that the
responsibility of a concept and the power of its modus operandi are
different as well. Indeed, let's look at the fundamental concept for
a game of thoughts: the King. It's function is to go slowly where it
will find a safe roof, which is not really impressive, and yet it is
the most important piece. As such, it is only because we have a game
that we have King, and it is the importance we put on this singular
concept. If we take the Queen, we can make it as relevant we want to
the other pieces as we wish. The Queen is the other singular piece of
the game and it can do pretty much what we want her to do. Would we
wish though to let her stay at home to care for the King, she
wouldn't be that important anymore. She has a defined function, but
her importance depends only in the relation she has been put with the
others.
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So what is left within a game are the
rules of the games. Indeed, the modus operandi and the rules are
slightly different. First of all, the rules are set in the times of
the games. For example, first moves can be different from other
moves, and the clear example is that a pawn can move two steps if it
is its first move. It is afterwards restricted. Another example is
the King and the move called castling, where he moves two steps to
hide behind a rook. He can't do so if he moved previously, or the
rook moved previously, or if he is moving through a mate. Such moves
are therefore constricted by the rhythm of the game. Rules are also
quite tricky as they are sometimes unknown by most of the players.
For example, en passant is a rule that not everybody knows, where a
pawn can take a side pawn that moved its initial two steps. So the
more rules a player knows, the better off he is.
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So now we have introduced the player.
Rules apply to him. Would he touch a piece, he has to move that piece
and would he stop touching that piece, he can't change his mind to
move that piece until it is his turn again. The player is constricted
by the rules but like a piece can move within the rules limited by
him. The main rule being the goal: mating the king ( not as finding
him a suitable queen, but attacking him and living him no escape).
The player assign the importance he wants to each of the pieces to
defeat his opponent. That's where the opponent enters our realm of
understanding. The game is Manichean, it is one against the other. To
play well, the importance is not only to put your piece in a
favorable place in relation to the other pieces ( and even the pieces
of his own colors which assure his defense but also his moves to
come) but to anticipate the other players move.
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That's where it becomes tricky.
Concept fights one another, over an important idea. We are almost in
a Hegelian fight between a thesis and an antithesis. We are actually
exactly there. As personalities that compose the self are nothing
more than define in opposition with other personalities. We
anticipate the other players move and most of the time, you
anticipate the other player's best possible move. This is where the
game gets tricky, because the best move can be set three turns
afterwards by a succession of apparently irrelevant moves. We have to
put our shoes in the other player's mind and assuming that he is
slightly more stupid than we are ( would we think he'd be smarter, he
would anticipate our anticipation and counter the our own
counter-move). Would he be more stupid though, we can find ourselves
at lost, since we foresaw wrong and would change tactic in mid-way
leaving maybe an unexpected opening. The argumentation never goes as
expected.
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That's why we can fight ourselves at
chess ( and the here-presented symbolic chess). Indeed, you just need
to turn the checkerboard to see from the opposite perspective what
has been going one and even better, you know what is anticipated from
the opposition and go on this eternal fight of counter-anticipation.
Internal discussion over what is right or wrong, over we should
follow passion or reason, are set within a checkerboard, where there
is a king one side and the other, and there are different arguments
for one and the other, which are set within the limit of our mind and
sometimes, unexpectedly, a pawn through experience would become more
important that when it started and would reverse maybe the game we
thought was set for ourselves.
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Of course, we can cheat. To cheat we
just have to be sure the opposition hasn't seen what we did or ignore
the rules we have set ourselves. A game of chest, professionally, is
noted down, so there is always a repercussion to inconsistencies of a
game.
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There are so many things to say about
the games of chess set in our lives. We can observe that it is a
relation game, and it is not necessarily because you have a lot of
concepts on your side that you will win. It can for example mean that
you did stay on a good defensive the whole game, but you went nowhere
to attack the other, and worse, you stuck yourself and an opponent
horse came through to stalemate you where you haven't left place to
escape. Too many words can block winning an argument because of
confusion when the other can move its concept freely to counter or
attack.
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The infinite variations of games means
it is impossible to know how a game will end. It does depend on the
players level of the game, but even then, every body forget pieces or
make mistakes. It is of course impossible to apply a chess game to
reality, but somehow, all of reality is applicable to a chess game.
Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose but we always lose a little,
rarely it is a stalemate. And there is always another game coming.
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-85749187038190853612011-11-25T14:49:00.002+00:002011-11-25T14:49:23.330+00:00Applied Spider-Man Theory<style type="text/css">
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> 'With power comes responsibility' is Spiderman motto and a well observed rule that we can observe sometimes in our society throughout history. There are maybe though exceptions and to find these exceptions, I would like to explore to what extent is that motto true. If it was entirely true, would the Green Goblin really go on rampages like he does ? Well, that might not be the best of examples, since he is held responsible for his actions by Spiderman, and punish, maybe not accordingly in a fair way ( a lot of times Spider-man would be too nice to the different people who impersonated the Green Goblin, from my point of view). </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Anyway, first we have to start with a definition of power, and I will use classic sociological theories to do so. First of all, any power is characterized by an inter-dependent relationship. You do need two people for one to exert power over another one and there must be a need for these two to be in such a relation. For example, it could be two lovers, in which case they are dependent on each other for their feelings to be kept alive. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> First question that arises then is that most relations are asymmetrical at a given time, meaning that someone will always make a decision that the other(s) will have to follow. There is nowadays a view that power is unfair, but it is bound to exist in the sense that if two persons try to exert power on the other, they would nullify each others decision and nothing would move. That's why that in the example of two lovers, the decisions would have to be balanced, either in time or in the theme of what has to be decided. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Now that we know that every inter-dependent relations will have a power relation, we have to observe in which way the power goes. One has power over another one, if he controls some uncertainty to come. I hold a gun to your face, I'm dependent on you because I want your wallet, you are dependent of me because I'm holding some uncertainty about your future ( life or death). It does not have to be a threat but the uncertainty control can be a reward. I ask you to clean my shoes and you'll get a big fat check, I get to decide the quality of the cleaning. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The third element of power we need to find, if we want to see the verstehen, it is the will to make someone do something. It does not have to be conscious, but it has to be accepted. Back to lovers: I want new shoes and someone in love with me offers them to me. I can accept them and offer back gratitude or more or I can refuse them and reject the person courting me. Have I exerted power in both cases ? In the first one, I would say that I did, as I have accepted that I hold a way to make someone do something for me, in the other one, even though I made someone do something I have reacted in such a way that it will not ( hopefully) happen again. In the second case, I have not exerted power, but the image the other had of me did and as such, he forced himself.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Now, what are the different types of power we can observe in society? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The first one is the power of Coalition. Meaning that many can form peer pressure, or threats to make someone do something. Unions are a good example, though it has to be noticed that they are trying to counter another form of power. They do though exert a form of pressure to act in a certain way in an inter-dependent relationship by holding cards over the future. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The second one is Hierarchical Authority. I have a boss, I have to obey him. We both work for the same institution, but this institution has given this guy the power to tell me what I have to do otherwise he will ask that some sanctions will be applied to me. He represents the power of the institution into which I am a part of, and as such, it is not directly the person who has power. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The third one is the power of the person holding an Information. In social sciences, informations ( and it is slightly similar in physics) can represent anything. So someone holding money for example, holds information that will make anyone do something. A better example might be, in theory, the University professor ( in a perfect world) who can ask his audience to be quiet, otherwise he won't share what he knows. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The fourth one is the Mastery of a process. Imagine that a prisoner is given the right to serve whoever he wants in a prison, well, people will have, to some extent, obey him otherwise they won't be sure what they will be served. He is not an authority, as he was not given power, but is one in practice. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The fifth one is the power of the Expert. Everybody knows this power: the doctor who can prescribe you a good drug or tell you everything is alright and you should go to work. The lawyer who tells you you'd better settle or loose in court, even though in your mind you are totally right. The architect who tells you that another floor will really not fit the general symmetry of the building. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The sixth one is the power of the Network. It is a vicious power that everybody to some extent uses. You know a guy who knows a guy so you can do something that someone else, who knows no one, can't do. The person with the network, does not have a power of coalition, because it is not a fixed group, he does not have to be an expert or an authority, but he is just a pal with the person who has some power.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Finally, there is the Manipulation. It is all the form of power that are based on simple manipulation of the pathos of the other. The other one is in love with you, well you don't have to go and get your coffee anymore. The other one is stupid and get enraged easily, well you have heard that this guy you hate told something against him in his back and he better get his ass slapped. Someone you never met does not know you're bluffing when you say your his boss's son, he will also get your coffee. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Now, all these powers have limits and consequences. To have limits and consequences, the power relation has to be observed, felt and understood. If I went to see ' Eat, pray, love' 5 times with my girlfriend because I'm telling myself I love that film, the power my girlfriend has over me is probably limitless. If I suddenly become a pure existentialist in front of man holding a gun in front of my face and decide I might as well die here, he can shoot, but he won't have made me handed in my wallet. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The thing is that sometimes, we see the power and dislike it, but without observing what gives this power its limits. The limits of power are a lot of times set by the responsibility this power has in an inter-dependent relationship. For example, a King of France has an almost absolute power over his kingdom. He has so only though as long as he can hold his kingdom together. Now if he starts going crazy on spending and taxation and people do not recognize their country anymore, they will find a way to fight this power. The opposite is kind of true, someone who has a lot of power, but use it in such a way that everybody in the relationship is happy, will hold to this power very long. If women are portrayed as the weaker gender, men will have to be polite and courteous because they are the protectors. If now women want to be seen as equal, men do not want to hold the responsibility anymore. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> With the loss of power therefore might also come the loss of responsibility, which might be the vicious side of this story. Imagine the owner of a company. He gets to decide who works where and what salary they'll have, and if he abuses of that power, like the king, he would be in trouble. But now, a CEO, who does not own his company, is not responsible for anything, as he would point at the shareholders and say that they hold control over future uncertainties. These shareholders though, will point at the market and consumers to say that they hold the control over the future uncertainties of the company. Everybody has some power, meaning that everybody is responsible, meaning that nobody is. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> We can find this disappearance of power and responsibilities in a lot of strata of society I think. Certainly in politics, in economy, in class inequalities. The best way to avoid the costs of power is obviously the tendency for synopticon. The synopticon is the process of everybody looking at one person. This person will look as holding a lot of power, and yet it is only because everybody looks at him that he will look as being responsible. A National football trainer would look responsible for his team, but it is just because he is the one put up front by the team and the owners of the club. Mubarak is also good example of someone who looks like he is in power of a country and held responsible for the inequalities in this country, but he was just a front figure for a whole clique.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> People are afraid to look powerful, because they do not like the cost of power, the responsibilities. They prefer to put up masks. If you want to make something positive for the world though, you do need to have power over what goes wrong. I don't know on this one if I really prefer Spider-man over Superman. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-44166334892889705842011-11-23T14:21:00.000+00:002011-11-23T14:21:34.939+00:00Lure an Instant Blast. Past-Present-Future<style type="text/css">
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</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Well, it is almost confirmed: neutrinos go faster than light. Which raises the question of what else could go faster than light? Well, if a fundamental particle goes faster than light, can we still believe that the rest of the world follows the speed limit? There are no sanctions against going faster than light, otherwise Switzerland ( and I love this scenario) would have been warped in a black-hole and never heard off again. </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The recent study that is left apart from the mainstream media is a research done at Cornell University where a psychologist managed to prove that some people are precognitive, when compared to the average. Which means that they could guess the event coming, even if that event was random and not capable of being calculated. I know, it sounds crazy, but how come it sounds more crazy than neutrinos going faster than light? Isn't it in the end maybe the same paradigm forbidding anything to go faster than light that forbids us to think that the future exists before we make it ? <br />
So here is the theme of this article: the paradigms of time. </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> It will of course be composed in three, because so far we are only capable of doing such a taxonomy: past, present and future. What it might be is also an evolution in humanities evolution, in a very weird way and I hope that I am wrong, because Copernican revolutions are starting to be annoying, in the sense that we always restart from the start all our thoughts and at the same time feel the need to work at filtering the ideas from the past that should not be taken for granted. </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> I'm not sure how to structure this article, as dividing in it three and it looks like I'm repeating point, but if I work thematically, it will be worst as I would lose myself or repeat arguments, the perfect ingredient for boredom ( if you aren't already). Just to throw out my thesis before everything, and try not to be too linear, I will try to defend the idea that we have not concentrated enough on the future, though it is, in the public, only part of our society since the end of the nineteenth century ( thank you sci-fi), it will become ever more important. <br />
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</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> How and why and what the fuck are three good questions to this erratic claim. What I want to observe though is that in antiquity and in our history, until I don't know when, it is actually relative to societies and individuals, we have concentrated ourselves on the past as a way to see the world. It is of course logical, in the sense that we can more easily generalize and make sense of the world if we have examples we can build on. It is though more than the logic. The past has been a way to legitimize our present and our future. <br />
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</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> We were anchored in rituals and mythologies that would tell us 'eternal' truth that guided us. It is why these societies had a slightly more deterministic outlook that our present. It wasn't scientific determinism, in the sense that everything was the consequence of some cause indirectly related to the Big Bang, but that everything was already written or the choice of some unearthly human-looking god figure. This god(s) figure would also be related to the human in power, through some kind of story or ceremonial selection. And the gods always came from a long time before humanity and only our memory served us. Knowledge, then represented the accumulation of stories and rules.</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Then came the present in our mind, and we killed the gods, and we invented free-will. Free-will is the lie of the present. When the past uses memory, we uses perception to make sense. We look left and right and study how the world goes through repeating experiments and transforming them into formulas. No matter we know that the formula can always be discussed. Which is the bases for contemporary knowledge: discussing what has been accumulated. The present is the most important time at present ( haha), in the sense that we tend to see history as something that glue us, but we are not ready to build a better future because present problems seem more important. The present is also seen as somehow accidental, so legitimacy doesn't come from the past, but from the fact that things are the way they are. <br />
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</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> And the future will come some day as the main perspective. Of course, I will not be there to see a society of individuals future-oriented I think. Hopefully though, I will help towards that like many others have in the past. How would that look though. Well first of all, we would be more morally responsible, as a better future for each of us is the only reasonable answer to the ultimate question of ' why be good ?'. More than that, the future is based on imagination, which might be the faculty the makes us different from animals. It is also the faculty that made our reality nowadays. For all the Ian M. Banks readers out there, if they do read scientific publication, they would understand that a lot of the new physics theories or engineering marvels come out of his books, just like Isaac Asimov invented ethical robotic and the concept of Earth as a self-regulated-system otherwise known as Gaia. </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Overall, it is difficult to understand that we need to forget our memory, we need to not trust what we see, but only imagine what is to come to jump unto the next realm of understanding. I know that it is still a limited way to absolutely understanding the world, but it is always within limits that we have understood the world, and every time the limits have grown. Which might also be the center of limited-rationality, that we act as rationally as we think we can, but only because we do not understand our limits. Would we consider a future, where our limits have augmented, we already are opening our frame of decision and extending our rationality. </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> So now, I will try this difficult task of considering futures, even near futures and then think about how the present can lead to the different scenarios. The past and the present will then be mixed into one since they are the same from a future perspective. The question about the present will only be how it will be judged, though that's actually a trick of our present-oriented mind, since a future-oriented mind won't have to judge the past. All in all a difficult question, where I've lost myself in this free writing exercise which I feel will lead to somewhere.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-86545124571214772492011-11-03T10:50:00.000+00:002011-11-03T10:50:28.146+00:00Socio Scooby Logy Doo<style type="text/css">
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> So I am writing an article on monsters and it might look childish but science is in the end just fiction confronted with reality and there are probably some realities in our cultural monsters. Of course, the fascination for monsters is not shared by everybody, the fact that I have grown in geeky culture through and through is either the chicken or the egg of this fascination. Now I will present here some observation about the contemporary monsters we encounter in our comics, films and books. While reading this, let's keep in mind that monsters have existed since the dawn of humanity and are as important memes as deities and some deities happen to be monsters. I will though speak only of contemporary monsters and I will not work on their evolutions as it would have to follow the evolution of society. ( Yey, I have here the idea for another article to come ). </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Let's start with the basic for any analysis: a simple definition and a simple taxonomy ( an Aristotelian organization) of monsters. The definition will be 'a supernatural threat to humanity'. And the subgroups of monsters are the big monsters, the hunter monsters and the swarm monsters. As you can see, it is pretty basic ( basic reflexion has time and time proven to be really infinite and might actually be an oxymoron). Now we have to see what I mean by these subgroups. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Well the big monsters are most probably the oldest monsters humanity had. They are the giants and the titans, the cyclopes and the leviathan, the king kong and the godzilla. They are the top of the food chain that everybody expects but never meet. They have also been embodied in science with mega-volcanos, intergalactic crashes, surprising tsunamis and lunatic suns. The newest kind of big monster I can think of is the alien spaceship. The aliens in themselves can embody different kind of monsters, but the spaceship usually represents what is too big to be controlled. The fear behind monsters is probably the one of finding something we could never have control on. We have to thank though hollywoodian mythology which always finds a way to destroy the threat and makes us forget that destruction is not a synonym for control. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Now a monster that I think has appeared only at the end of the 19<sup>th</sup> century ( though this has to be verified) is the swarm monster. The best example is of course the zombie. They have the power to increase exponentially and though they are small and weak, get us because of their number. I said that the first swarm I can think of in our culture are the morlocks in the H.G. Wells ' The Time Machine'. They represent the mass of workers having evolved in subhumans and are the enemy of the small elitist communities of Eloi. There is so this elitist representation of the proletarians that we can find in the end in zombie movies as well. Of course, swarms are also represented by science nowadays though diseases and infections, but the fear I think is the lost of power of the few who think themselves smarter against the mass of slow, small minded beings. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Finally, I add the hunters. The hunters are actually like human beings but generally feed on humans. The differences are only the differences we want to see. As such, it works like racism does, in the sense that we generalize an evil on a specie more or less similar to ours and the legitimization for hunting them down is the prejudice, without considering their weaknesses ( except as a mean to eradicate them). What is funny is that at the end of the 20<sup>th</sup> and the beginning of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, we have seen an interesting evolution that tries to show an open-minded humanity which seeks to understand how these hunters are unique individuals that might deserve life. I am of course speaking of this attitude towards humanizing vampires, werewolves, witches and the such to involve them in romances with humans. We are now trying to glamorize their weaknesses and show their powers as tools given to the chosen few to protect humanity ( from itself usually). We could ask ourselves if in our culture, there is not a slow glorification in the media for the sociopath as a rational egoist, which happened to be the perfect human in a neoliberalist system.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> There is a fourth group which I do not want to consider at this time: the ghosts. They represent too many things at the same time ( gods, hunters, different teleologies on life,...). </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Ok, so we have different monsters, and we have humanity. What humanity represents most of the time is a specie-centered group which loses any ideal of being one with an ecosystem. Of course, modernity has disconnected us ( except through different resistance group which tried to present a positive organic perspective of the world) from this reality for the illusion of control. Monsters though show that we cannot control everything. As I have pointed out, big monsters cannot be controlled like sheeps and swarms are by definition overwhelming. Here, the interesting part about control and the environment is that when we have increased our capacity to travel, we have had to write down laws, as norms are not shared for every communities. Laws represents how everybody should act within a given-space. Hunters represents what laws cannot stop. Hunters are far more problematic for humanity because they also represent the excuse for humanity to be unlawful. Of course, in the middle-age, we managed to legally condemned witched through godly trials but we have stopped believing ourselves and now we have no laws to hunt hunters. We do now give them the rights we give ourselves or the one we give animals. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> In a lot of cases with monsters, we become so obsessed with the survival of our species that we do not even consider other animals we used to live with. All the stories turn around the humans and how they confront the new threat. Of course, animal centered stories are not that common. It does show that monsters reinstate the dichotomy human vs. nature. They somehow legitimize our superiority because we can talk about our fear of them and find ourselves as victims ( what christian societies love to see themselves as). It is a human vs. nature where the sign-system disappears. With monsters, who cares that Britney Spears was a best-selling artist. The past and the future disappears, so knowledge of the signs created by humanity get in the background, excepted possibly for the hunters where their weaknesses are often hidden in some old books. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> It is a paradoxical situation, to see that monsters represent the end of modernity and also the end of traditions. Traditions have never disappeared, but most of the time just transformed themselves. When I use the word tradition, I am speaking of ritualized social interactions. This is especially true with swarms. They oblige the humans to be constantly on the move to find an island of peace. This constant traveling, continuous escape, might be actually the ideal-type of true modernity, where no one is bound in a space or a time but has to always reflect. It does of course challenge our ethics, as knowing whether protecting the weak is something the group has to do, as it might put in danger everybody. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The final question when doing a laying down the problematics of a sociology of monsters is the question of the Nation-State. I will repeat the Weberian definition of the nation-state as the entity that has the legitimized monopoly of violence. Of course, this notion is anchored in the Hobbes' prince to whom we give all our force so this prince ( State) can protect us. The Nation-State though has rarely got the power to save us from monsters. It does echo the previous paragraph that states that modernity becomes ambiguous with swarm monsters, but the nation-state problematic appears with all the monsters. If the State cannot protect us, it is also too big to unite us all, it is too slow to pass useful laws and it is why militia appears and it is not even some form of idealized anarchism that takes place. The question of reinstating a State at the end of stories is not even often raised ( the exception <span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I have in mind is Independence day where running the State becomes a hereditary profession). </span></span> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">So, I will stop here with just to never diminish the potential of fiction to question our society and I will dwell into more reflective entertainment now for our next discussion. </span></span> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-83621303706727486662011-09-25T20:08:00.000+01:002011-09-25T20:08:12.230+01:00Distancing Through Clustering Theory<style type="text/css">
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Well, I took a holiday from this job I gave myself to explore personally innovative ideas. I took a holiday from that means that I have arrived in this bleak town of Brussels, started fights with different administrations and administrative comities and read nothing particularly interesting. My life is the life of everybody, minus this blog and some other projects with other people less self-disciplined than I am. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> It is though funny that discipline is not ingrained in me and in most people I know. The few people I know who have a need to be active and productive are people who grew up with limited television time, and my little sister. The rest of the population is easily satisfy by a screen and talk all day long about their failed dreams of being some day famous. I think that there might be some conclusion there about the influence of the television over our lives, but I am not sure. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I am an adept of cinema and find a lot of pleasure of watching most films and I have found what makes an annoying film for me: predictability. This is why I have found in these last weeks lots of pleasure watching Film Socialism of Godard, Habemus Papam by Nanni Moretti, Outrage by Takeshi Kitano and The Housemaid by Im Sang-Soo were all great surprises for me. Of course, those are all well known controversial directors and it is just abiding by the cliché of the pseudo-intellectual for me to advise them to you. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyway, the idea that came up to me recently is the antagonism of the global village theory. As you probably know, most people would profess that the world is getting smaller as the phone connections, the internet, the television and the transports are getting faster. Indeed, an earthquake taking place in Kathmandu in a morning will be known to have happen in the afternoon in the rest of the world. But as much as information travels that fast, I think that we might actually see the growth of something quite opposite to a global village. I do not at this time have a name for it, but by the end of this article, I will have an epiphany. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now why would I say something so counter-intuitive ? Well, it is just that distance is not calculated by speed. Speed is calculated by distance and time. Physical distance is, as far as we know, a component of our universe that does not change on Earth. Now time is something that is accelerating, as it is relative to our lives and we find the need to do everything quicker. Polls show that we get frustrated waiting for our computer to turn on. If time is accelerating, it means that what we are used to take one day, would actually in our mind take longer even if it takes one day. For example, we do get worried when we come back from holiday and our postcards have not arrived yet, when the post has never changed its habits we do find it slower and slower. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course, when we talk about the global village, we do not talk about physical distance, but relative distance is something quite different. Relative distance has different definitions, but I will explain it as the space created by every individuals at the moment. Which means that if you live in a city, you are closer to a lot of individuals, but you will feel more alienated from your neighbors as you do not have the same grounds for social interactions, compared to village folks who do know how to interact and what to interact about. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So as it seems that information makes it way quickly from one side of the earth to the other, you have to observe to what extent people are open to those informations. Here is another component of my theory: information saturation. Information is now distributed by individuals and institutions. More and more information is leaking out, meaning that everyday, every body has to increase its filter to see what they are willing to accept or not. As the filter gets stronger and stronger ( filtering out more and more informations) it means that the information collected will be more and more self-centered. Let's take as an example Facebook. The more friends you have, the less you hear about them all. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What we will see in the future is an increasing price for diminishing physical distance as well, which is exemplified by the rising cost of capital city's real estate price. I do not know if the price of prostitutes has risen as well, but I would not be astonished by it. We are becoming more and more individualists when we can become more connected and this is because we have not reach the balance between the outside and the inside, between in-group and out-group between aliens and friends. Uncertainty brings us always back to positions we know and we are now becoming conservatively hermits. I still haven't found the expression for the theoretical pendant to the global village. I really don't know, maybe the saturated agglomeration. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-19146723802126204932011-09-02T15:16:00.000+01:002011-09-02T15:16:19.728+01:00Short History of Nothing <style type="text/css">
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> History really starts with language and painting. Language provides the common ground for compromises and communication. Sharing was already done materially, but it could not be organized in time. The point of painting is that it provides lasting symbolism. With lasting symbolism set within a ground of compromises we can see slowly the 'real' disappearing. The real is here defined as the organic existence of one human, his tribe and nature. It is the present, but language has introduced the possibilities, hence the future, and painting has introduced the past. At this point did the present and everything that goes with it started it slow death. Here in time, at the end of prehistory, we can find the beginning of a super-structure, the ideologies of humanity, set in rituals explained by language and pictorial representation of the ideas. <br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The second changing process of humanity has been the settlement. Settlement was consequentially the creation of an order different than our primate order, though we did not see the eradication of primate power-relations, we saw growing a different orders in parallel defined by possession, not affected by the physical appearance of the person. Agrarian modes of production meant that there was no need anymore, needs used to be the foundation for the daily problematic of survival. It was not an entirely prosper society as nature would always have its way to annoy humanity, but it was not either a period where someone would tell someone else to do their own job. Everybody had something to do. <br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> In parallel with the development of agrarian society still existed hunters-gatherers societies that would help the legitimization of stronger and bigger countries. The Chinese empire could not exist if it was not for the Mongolian invasions. Same goes for the Greeks cities and the roman empire. No empire existed without its counter nomads society, liberty grew in parallel with necessity. With the prosperity of agrarian societies, humanity also saw its rate of survival rising, meaning a rise in population, then a human surplus that meant that all societies would find the need to expand. <br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Consequentially, surplus of production appeared. Surplus of production is an unintended consequence of our life-style that we have not really managed to control. We produce more than what we need, meaning a few things. First of all, it legitimizes not working for some. Secondly, it legitimizes exchange and gives a new form of power to the one who owes more of what is less, or harder to produce. Necessity of the product disappeared behind the rarity of the product. <br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> As any form of power needs language to save itself as well as material power, super-structure really developed with production surplus. The symbolic legitimization too different forms through time and the most famous one is probably religion. The questions of religious rules and how it legitimizes power are different from region to region, but some are possible to be generalized. Religion created a notion of group beyond the one of the family. Something important as in-group/out-group generalizations would expand in their complexity in time. It could be said that you could include someone in your group or not through language but important language did spread at some point of the other. Religion was rarely something taken for the sake of communication. Religion grew in most civilizations as a leverage to power. It was a branch of power that would try to control abuses of power, when it was not abusing of its power itself. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Religion has managed also to legitimize the present, through its interpretations on institutional scales. Religious messages were not always messages of conservation of the present order, but most of the time were. It might have been the revolution of Christianity if it would not have been institutionalize by Constantin. Of course, there is no difference between philosophies and religions except the question of institutionalization and the degree of adoption by populations. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Largely adopted philosophies or religion were also the way to show dissent to the order of power at a given time. They were always based on a shared belief asked to be the new traditions, though most of the time not yet transformed into cyclic rituals. Rituals are the transformation of the belief into mechanic repetition as a reminder of the foundation of the believes. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Believes, as zeitgeist, are understood in history through art and changes in art forms. The obvious example of an early change in art form demonstrating a change in belief is the art under Akhenaten. As much as art is nowadays considered independent from any religion, belief or philosophies, it is just the proof of the diversity of believes in the masses legitimizing the incapacity for change. As such, we can observe that as much as social movements in the twentieth century appeared to be important and changed slightly society, they never had the expected impact, if any impact at all. The civil right movement was just the process of introducing already established social norms from the north of the United States to the south, the sixties did not create the expected society. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Print created the change in taste and the spread of different philosophies. Taste is an important factor as it is linked to art's form. Reading is though an activity that requires times, and writing even more so. It is the only place where the worlds of possibilities fight each other to represents the truths and future truths of the world. ( nothing is false as we understand it, but only not true in our world at a given time). It has though been hard to understand the effect of reading unto our world, and fortunately, the Lumière Brothers and Edison appeared and got championed to develop their inventions as they lead to television, cinema and radio: ways to distract like reading can but without training our capacity for attention ( hence making our brain more flexible to new ideas). </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> As taste got widespread, ideas conflicted, we managed to spread ideas further and came our capacity to keep big accounts, create big economies and industrialization made its way. The most important factor for industrialization was the development of cities. Cities represented the destruction of local cultures, myths, stories and musics. It imposed a top down approached to art ( and art is the form of the ideology of a moment) so was destroyed anything local that was brought and only the owner of shops who had history within the town got to make the rules of the city. ( the first cities in the renaissance and middle-age where the first places that fought off feudalism through signed charters). </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> They were the places where only shops existed and consumption as a sign of a well-lived life became the way to live for everybody. It was not directly a need for industrialization, it was a consequence of the expansions of cities. New traditions were consumption and as such taste became the tool of domination. Attention, private taste was different from exposed taste. As such, the high-class maintained tastes for old music when any new money tried to impose its style which was since always changed. Taste became an ephemeral tool of domination as if you </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">dress like yesterday, or tomorrow for that matter, you still do not dress right. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course, upcoming bourgeoisies tend to always think that slow change is for the best and always believe that they are good to everybody. This has been the form</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">of 'liberalism' since 18<sup>th</sup> century. It maintains though the need for conformity, and this can be seen through the use of badly drawn humor making fun of anything out of fashion. This desperate need for conformity actually reflects every position of insecurity, as you can see in every countries in a conflict people tend to be more conservative you can see that most of the newly bourgeois get scared of their conception of the ridicule. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> As taste has its constant war, humour starts to be a shared space. This is why we can see that the most successful forum on the internet is 4chan, as it is the place where everybody exchanges their funny pictures. No content is needed, except a demand for freedom to make fun of everything without any necessity. It is of course the strange foundation for a new belief, something for the future where knowledge economy ( the jokingly given name to our 'service-based economy' - as service use to be something helpful and given, and the only knowledge needed is to know how to present oneself). This subject requires quite an extended skill in social forecasting....<br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-18657218772535136512011-08-30T17:11:00.001+01:002011-09-02T08:30:45.572+01:00I see you and Big Brothers watch nothing<style type="text/css">
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A recent research established that a company will have better results if the face of its CEO was larger than average. Well that was the conclusion of the research and the exception established is if the top management does not see the world in a black and white way. People who have a tendency to not discuss generalization obey better to authority, and a large face is actually a sign of authority in our world. Top management capable of understanding relativity do not abide by their CEO's authority constantly. The idea is that people who feel powerful in some aspect of their life will tend to look at the big picture in that part of their life ( yours truly). </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What is the point of that fact? Well that we do live in a synoptic society and that Foucault might have been seriously wrong. What do I mean by a synoptic society? Well, Foucault had an idea that society worked like a prison invented by Jeremy Bentham ( he actually stole this idea from some one else I cannot place at this moment). Anyway, the prison was in a circle with open rooms and a tower in the middle. The guards were in the tower in the middle, meaning that every prisoners could be seen by the guards. The trick was though that the prisoners could not see if the guards were watching them ( because the guards were behind some kind of tainted windows). So prisoners had to behave constantly because they could not hide, as you can hide only from seers you know. Society worked like that in some institutions said Foucault, and people interpreting him thought the expansion of Closed Circuits Television (CCTV) reflects this articulation of power. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Well, it is a slight misinterpretation of Foucault as Foucault's main idea is that we have to self-disciplined ourselves constantly just in case we get caught. It is among the ways that society regulates itself. High society establish rules, that people will feel they have to copy to look good, even though no one is looking. So panopticon is the idea that everybody get watched, synoptic is the idea that everybody is watching someone. And we are effectively in a synoptic society. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">An objection: I thought you just said that we self-disciplined ourselves to look like a high-class society even when we are not watched. Well, yes we do, but not really the high-class society. What we copy is just the class higher than ours, the one we can see and what we see, because we are all trying to enter the club that does not accept us as a member. We do not try though to get into the club that will never accept us as a member. As such, the panoptic self-discipline society is a theory that is not complete enough and I will ask you to see the theories of Bourdieu to understand that the articulation of power are far more complicated than Foucault made it look like. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The synoptic society is though a theory of power that we can all relate to as it is the illusion of responsibility we are all subject to. Not our responsibility, but the responsibility for what is wrong with whatever we see in our world. My first example will be Mr. Mubarak, who's been for more than 20 years head of state of Egypt, as you might have recently learned, and has now been deposed by the army. He was seen as the problem of the country, and his removal seemed like the solution for all the problems. Everything was centered on him. Now, how can a civilian rule a country for so long with the agreement of the army and when some people demonstrate, as they did repeatedly in these decades, suddenly the army drop the arms? Well we don't care. And it is not the news anymore when Mubarak is not head of the country anymore. <br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Would we have been in a panopticon society, we could observe that the son of Mubarak was building contacts with american companies in the last 5 years and there were talk of him succeeding his father. Of course, the problem were the demands from these American companies. What companies generally ask is for a neoliberal economy, which means that the biggest company just walk over the small companies and establish their monopoly on a market. In the case of Egypt, the market was and is still dominated by companies created or owned by the Egyptian army. Mubarak junior tried to dismantle these companies and this aggravated the Army. So came the Tunisian revolution, the army jumped on the wagon against the Mubarak... A panoptic society, everybody is guilty. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A real panoptic society could exist only in a state of constant guilt and public confession. We are in a synoptic society, were the guilty are always the one person on top we like to see as the master of evil. A synoptic society is also the one were the winner is the one person we think is the genius. If we look at apple, we can see that everybody cares one way or the other about Steve Jobs. Do we care only that he had done nothing directly for the changes in Apple, but the real change was only the change in marketing agency for the company in 1999? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What regulates our daily life is the not the fear of being caught, it is just what the people left and right do. The clearest of examples are my home countries: Belgium and Greece. Both countries vote heavily for socialist parties. The problem is that as much as their political ideology hold the name of socialism, both countries' population have no problems in cheating on their taxes. It is not a taboo at all. The irony is of course that it is the political parties that are seen as the root of the problem, when it is mostly the social norm that is problematic. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course, the question is how to change the social norm? Surveillance could work. Surveillance is seen as evil. CCTV in Belgium and in England are soaring, but I know from police source that they are used a posteriori of any crimes, never as preemptive tools. CCTV is evil, as it is really misused, surveillance though does not exist. I do not know. Knowledge and surveillance are not the same and yet there are sometimes intersections. If we could see everything, if we could propose change for everything, be listen and vote on everything we are interested in. It does not work that way. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What I see it is just that we take some individuals as scape-goats, for the worst and the best. The worst though is our fault. It is never one company, it is never one banker. Of course it is hard to judge ourselves and our friends. The solution is to ask for a change, but this goes on the domain of the ethic of consequences, and god knows all the horrors of our world has been done on such ethic ( the greater good). So how to change our bad behavior ? I really do not know anymore. I would just say that when Warren Buffett and rich French people tell you that they should pay more, just ask yourself what they have paid less in the last decade and what percentage of their fortunes it represents compare to what they propose to pay... It is never one person, it is never that person good action that repairs the bad. The only advise I find this time is in the chorus of Dan le sac Vs. Scroobius-Pip</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-70970713570783611462011-08-15T18:36:00.000+01:002011-08-15T18:36:04.675+01:00just be nuts and lay (it) down<br />
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In the last twenty days, I have finished reading books and essays from Lenin, Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Freud and Chuang Tzu. This is quite a heavy mix for the mind and as a result I will blurt out the little conclusions I can come to when thinking about our present times using as an inspiration what they have written a bit less than a hundred years ago ( except for Chuang Tzu). <br />
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To start with a joke, my conclusion with these authors is that I agree with Habermas when he states that the Enlightment was a halfway done job. (Drums) These authors did not help my sense of humor, I know. Anyway, I actually disagree with Habermas to some extent. I think the first point to make is that Enlightment had never started and could never end. It rather got expanded through the Korean invention of print (take that euro-centrics!) and its quasi-democratisation in Europe ( oooooh :'( ) I say quasi because depending of the countries, censure would heavily exist or be ineffective. <br />
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The development and circulation of literature and ideas brought the reverence of eternal arts to the home of everybody. Indeed, books, unlike conversations, can be read and re-read at leisure to find new ideas in new lectures or confirm old ideas. The mind has changed there onwards. Religious clerks, the little priests from the countryside, were not the sole people to hold the cultish ideal of the Word in their hands, but the whole village could have it. Everybody could read, or look at pictures and it did not have this special ideal of being the sole power of the church or the few chosen intellectuals to states possible answers to big questions. It was the not the business of the aristocracy anymore, but also of a rising bourgeoisie and at some point, even the proletariat were allowed the skills to read. <br />
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It was not enough to emancipate the world, but it was enough to destroy some institutions that relied upon the lack of capacity of the people to reach informations. Notably, the Catholic Church soldiers could not wander in their ways and sell VIP tickets to heaven anymore. Would Martin Luther not have told them, someone else surely would have come along and tell them something in those lines, as nowhere in the holy printed book does it say that VIP tickets could be sold by Peter's descendents. The print made the people who read realize how much of a scam the Catholic Church was and, though rituals are important in the sense that they commemorate knowledge that should not be forgotten acquired by humanity, liberated us from this institution. <br />
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Of course, people did not have much to read at the time. That was an important factor. The Bible was the super-ego of society, in the sense that it dictated the rules of society or unto which society ought to abide by. Violence was only the repress sense of guilt of the non-following of these rules. That is why Christian society was as violent as any other society, and probably more, as the rules set by Jesus can be hard to understand and follow. He did indeed set a more than conflicted super-ego, creating a society that did no know whether it should let its instinct go wild or its reason. Secular versus Eternal, Kings against Popes, represents the internal conflict of the mind on a societal scale. <br />
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And society became neurotic a little bit when came the Protestants. Why do I say such a thing? Well first of all, we can observe the internal tension and masochism of civil tensions and exterminations of unbalanced beings that cannot find an enemy outside, but rather punish themselves for not knowing who ought to be guilty. The massacre of the protestants, the catholics, the jews inside our own borders is again a societal psycho-pathology that can exist in an individual requiring rejection to feel that it has a judging father. An eternal god ready to set the rights and wrongs against our instinctive will, something that will be there before and after our mind, to be sure that we exist and we do not make everything up. We did not know what was right from wrong anymore and everything was up for discussion. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is a public debate, which it was, between the forces in power. The unconscious though was stable. The main population knew its place. It was a repressed part of society, the most important part repressed, and represented what should never be in power if we would have to be civilized, except if it could sublime itself. <br />
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Wait a second, it does not seem like society was neurotic, and it seems I am with such writing. Well, both can be true and false. I can represent the state of society as it is now as I am a mega-digester of artifacts, I do not hold one god, I do not have one father. And I know that values are laws and I do not know the laws. <br />
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So back to square one to make sense and make of this article a synopsis of my psycho-analysis, or rather the one of society. Print diluted at first the instinctive response to corrupt civilizing process on a large scale. Print made us realize that the Bible – the transformation of human nature into a sensible story- was not what our human nature transformed it into – the Catholic Church. So what happened is that we were both confronted with the realization that we had a human nature – every day's corruption of values- and we had a way out: the Bible. (I am talking only about Europe and an analysis of China could come later on, as for other civilizations, I do not hold enough knowledge – I could try Japan as it is an interesting counter-example of a strong unchanged super-ego).<br />
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The Bible did not seem to be enough. We did not like it and did not like the multiple interpretations and we were lost. We took it on ourself and so killed some of our neighbors. It was hard to be lost. And it was hard to be without a sense of what is right and what is wrong. So came the idea that we could write what is right and what is wrong and instead of following an oral tradition ( god bless the Hasidim) or a wise-men re-adapted word ( J.C. in da houze) we could make our own in a constantly evolving law. We mixed the idea of an eternal super-ego and a living-evolving ego.<br />
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It worked because people who got to make the laws were the people in power and they had a super-ego of their own in the fact that they possessed everything: eternal knowledge, philosophy and arts. By the way, whenever I use the word eternal, I use it only on a human phenomenological level, meaning that it means it will survive before and after my death. It makes me care for the world before and after me and I do not have to consider the idea that it exist only because I think it exists. Would I choose this later case; I could have gone on a Norwegian rampage with a Colt Peacemaker just for the cheer pleaser of looking like Clint. <br />
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So the bourgeoisies held in their hands education (the capacity to read books) and arts ( the ideology of the eternal), and they could make societies super-ego as their was no sense of right and wrong dictated by one single book anymore ( there was never actually a sense of right and wrong in the Bible, but god forbids we would read the book and get free as J.C. would have wanted us to be! - fuck John and his apocalypse). So they made up, to replace the idea of God on Earth (the Catholic Church), the Nation-State, which held a cult art, a cult history, a super-ego. <br />
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And it was good. Until the ego felt the need to kill that super-ego because it knew that the father was corrupted ( down with Chronos !) or it received a slap from the super-ego because the ego grew too fast. The slap was fascism and the war. It has to be said that the simple super-ego of most of the western world was really good between 1900 until the end of the 1930's. It was bound to go wrong as there was never as much international economic exchanges and such a spread of education. The masses indeed got to know what was unfair in the word through books and newspapers. They asked for system that had more justice for everybody. The practice of the law did not make the justice (go Kafka). <br />
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I realized that when I've learned this week that the most successful in term of votes American elections was the re-election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. in 1936 after he made this speech: <br />
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“...For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.<br />
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We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.<br />
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They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.<br />
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Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.” <br />
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Fear gets our instinct out if we do not have strong eternal injunctions. We forget yesterday's acquired knowledge and what we made of it. More than that, if democracy is the eternal psycho-analysis of our need to have a sense of guilt and shame for our dos and donts, we need to discuss constantly the foundation of our system of justice, of its origins or accept one once and for all and let the rest of our instinct go wild, but we cannot be in a in-between state. <br />
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Of course, the World War 2 was only a small catharsis and it was not over for our history. First of all, it has to be remembered that though some communist regimes were repressive, there economic system did work until the 70s. The 1970’s were the strange period of the world. It was the period where countries and civilizations were close to a break down. The USA got unto imperialism though discreet through shock therapy, Europe got to deal with itself and the different dictatorial system it still had, Russia lost their hope when they learned they could not get on the moon (it is still hard to believe we got there). I do not know why the Chinese accepted Deng Xiaoping reforms, except that they did not accept the repression of their human nature.<br />
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The idea is that art as it is, is the reproduction of our internal tensions. It works for an individual, but for society, art gets a position a priori and dictates whether the tensions have been accepted or not, they dictates or shows the commands we have chosen for ourselves, they represent the super-ego or its lack. Cinema and television represents a form of atheist polytheism where values are saturated, just like law can be, and our values are mixed up to make us a neurotic civilization. <br />
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We are back to square one and we can either accept that the super-ego and where it comes from is wrong, but we need then to know what it is and where it is from. Or we need to accept its slap, in the way the German and the Italians did, but understand that it won't last. We can observe that in both the sadomasochism is emerging as the Germans are the first one to hate them in the name of the ecosystem and the Italians are so as well in the sense that they constantly elect the mafia they used to abhor. As for the American, they have either too much super-ego, in the number of laws that cannot be accounted for or the lack of super-ego in their culture industry. <br />
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Freud said it so himself, it is not only the case to get rid of the super-ego that has been created in our civilization by the holders of the means of productions, and we have to build up our own super-ego and the constantly changing nature of the ego. <br />
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I will state I think what should be the lines unto which a civilization might want to adhere, without making a fuss of making it a cult, as cult have come to be as well the object of discussion and rebellions as every civilization feels sometimes like too much of oppressed teenagers. I will just outline what I want my super-ego to make me feel guilty about and internalize it without having to discuss it too much afterwards: <br />
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'And moreover men are liable to eight defects, and (the conduct of) affairs to four evils; of which we must by all means take account.<br />
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' 1 To take the management of affairs which do not concern him is called monopolising.<br />
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2 To bring forward a subject which no one regards is called loquacity. <br />
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3 To lead men on by speeches made to please them is called sycophancy.<br />
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4 To praise men without regard to right or wrong is called flattery.<br />
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5 To be fond of speaking of men's wickedness is called calumny.<br />
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6 To part friends and separate relatives is called mischievousness.<br />
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7 To praise a man deceitfully, or in the same way fix on him the character of being bad, is called depravity. <br />
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8 Without reference to their being good or bad, to agree with men with double face, in order to steal a knowledge of what they wish, is called being dangerous. <br />
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Those eight defects produce disorder among other men and injury to one's self. A superior man will not make a friend of one who has them, nor will an intelligent ruler make him his minister.<br />
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'To speak of what I called the four evils:<br />
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1 To be fond of conducting great affairs, changing and altering what is of long-standing, to obtain for one's self the reputation of meritorious service, is called ambition;<br />
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2 to claim all wisdom and intrude into affairs, encroaching on the work of others, and representing it as one's own, is called greediness;<br />
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3 to see his errors without changing them, and to go on more resolutely in his own way when remonstrated with, is called obstinacy;<br />
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4 when another agrees with himself, to approve of him, and, however good he may be, when he disagrees, to disapprove of him, is called boastful conceit.<br />
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These are the four evils. When one can put away the eight defects, and allow no course to the four evils, he begins to be capable of being taught.'<br />
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I chose those because I was confronted with them recently, they are not only stubborn to an ethic of moderation and they can be rules of national and international politics as much as rules for individuals. I have written for way too long now, and I need to print these rules for my desk. I did not want to take on any Christian interpretation because J.C. had too much faith in humanity to think that we can handle ourselves without fathers. We will have to come to term though with our conflicting nature ( Eros and Ananke; Instinct and civilization) as we will be the parents ourselves, soon enough, of artificial intelligence, and it would be sad to be horrible parents. I will leave you on a poem I came to love and love to hate: <br />
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They fuck you up, your mum and dad.<br />
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They may not mean to, but they do.<br />
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They fill you with the faults they had<br />
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And add some extra, just for you.<br />
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But they were fucked up in their turn<br />
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By fools in old-style hats and coats,<br />
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Who half the time were soppy-stern<br />
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And half at one another's throats.<br />
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Man hands on misery to man.<br />
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It deepens like a coastal shelf.<br />
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Get out as early as you can,<br />
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And don't have any kids yourself.<br />
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( Philip Larkin ; This be the verse)<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-2195525440855852722011-08-13T10:06:00.001+01:002011-08-13T10:07:17.952+01:00Kaiser Chiefs: The contemporary Cassandras<style type="text/css">
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Well, I guess that everybody will talk about the riots this week and they are right to do so. The riots are not riots. There are no riots, riots is only a question of perspective. Riots, protests and demonstrations are all the same form of destructive ( even in peace, it has a sense of destruction ) assembly due to a common disagreement by a large enough group. What is interesting to note, as always, is not the causes and articulations of the riots but rather the reactions to it. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">First thing first, it has started as a protest against the police and soon enough was this element forgotten by the public and the media. It is repeated that the parents of Duggan ( the alleged dealer who got shot) asked for the rioters to not use his name as a reason to protest and I entirely back up this argument. The police should not be criticized like that on a sole unique example but it should be reminded that a dozens of people at least die each year while in custody, that the police have undercover agent provocateurs for few protests ( caught on camera but never mentioned by mainstream media) and that though we are reminded through a few documentaries every year that policemen are racists. We do not mind that newspapers put pictures of only minority ethnic people on their frontpage for the riots though. The police service has decayed in the last century and this deserves a long lasting demonstration on its own. Also, the fact that the police does not know how to calm down rioters, let them for the first few days go wild so they can afterwards use violent deadly tools does not make the police better. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course, I repeat weekly that it is hard to do some self-criticism especially when it implies the lost of the devil we know for a deep blue sea ( a new system, a new policing service, or anything new is scary) . I am though in the fortunate position to be a self-hating bourgeois in the style of Gramsci and Lenin ( and self-critical enough to know I have no humility when I compare myself to these genii of the 20<sup>th</sup> century). What I observe is the main reaction to these riots as there were for any demonstration in the last twenty years in Europe: we just want to see the worst in them. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Even the 'left' media just centered there pictures and examples on the opportunistic aspect of the riots. Those are riots exploding on a sudden urge, it is normal that they have an opportunistic, unorganized, apolitical aspect. Are we really astonished at that ? The police has let the riots go for two days so we can forget the police shot a man, twice and accused the deceased of violence. They have let the media go on to say that the rioters are undisciplined and destructive so fear can run among the general population. Would it have been any political demonstration, police would have been geared up and ready to direct and hit whoever would have been problematic, knowing that an organized demonstration has in our minds more legitimacy and can overthrow a government. Harry Potter fans can overcrowd Trafalgar square when anticuts protests get kettled. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the Guardian of Tuesday, we can see the happy well-paid bohemians of Tottenham brandishing their brooms to say: 'Yes, we'll clean up behind the rioters' to show their sense of community. On the picture, they were all whites. Those are the people not minding that much the consenting liberal approach of the s ystem. They do not care that money = poverty ( logical saying from The Culture in Ian M. Banks fictions) because they have the money to pay. What were they doing on a Thursday during the day cleaning up the streets when the rioters are required to look for jobs? What kind of system is it where economic imperialism is in theory frowned upon ( all these london bohemians vote 'labour' or 'liberal') but its consequences are ignored? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We all know that these riots have started in places where you find extremes in wealth. The rich lives next to the poor. We all know that the English government at present does not mind such extremes and indeed favors it as it means lower wages for the people owning no mean of production. We have also now more good reasons now to dislike the 'Chavs' and 'hooded youth', even as liberals. The liberals are the blind submissive population of England and this is the conclusion of these protests. When they see racism, they see horror, they do not see that misery creates racism and economic oligarchy creates misery.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We are all aware of the reasons for such riots. The BBC made an interview of a West Indian writer who's grandson was in the riot and lived there ( <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o&feature=youtu.be">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o&feature=youtu.be</a>) and it is funny to see that while he explains in details the frustration of living there, his interview cannot be found anymore on the BBC website. We prefer to see the looting and make fun of it because it either reflects on how much in a consumer society we are, or how stupidly unpolitical the looters are. Doesn't it show the extent to which the society is fucked up?! </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The rioters live in miserable conditions in a system that has crushed any perspective of a descent future for them. Those are good excuses for demanding for a better society, from our educated perspective. Yet, they are not educated and go loot for what they have been taught to want ( result of basic hegemony) and what do we, well educated left-wing liberal thinkers, get out of it? ' Stupid pricks looting the small shops'. If we had there balls, real empathy for their outrage, if we would have an ounce of integrity, we would go down the there with them and go for the parliament, whether with a broom in hand or a baseball bat.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I am not going to extend too much on this because all the media are against them. We all want to see only the violence under our eyes rather than the symbolic violence it stems from.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-60527253580379101782011-08-01T15:54:00.001+01:002011-08-03T11:11:24.951+01:00Why are you Guy Fawkes ?<style type="text/css">
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Not many people will complain for the delay, but I have quite a cool explanations. I was away in Freiburg and I have put up 250 flyers up with printed masks and invitations to join the Anonymous forum whatis-theplan.org. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It took me a while to think about the subject of this article. I know that it looks most of the time as I am just writing it on the go, and I am but it is after I spent time thinking and self-reflecting and very rarely on a sudden urge. The ideas were various and I think I should start with simple questions. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">You take a chair and take out the back-support and armrests, is it still a chair ?</div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There is so much emptiness that under a microscope, two fingers can never touch themselves and yet, why is it so hard to see void ?</div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If you see a bird, and it starts swimming and lays eggs giving birth to fish, is it still a bird? </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If you'd have to, would you kill a sibling of yours to save two strangers? </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Is it natural for a person to change sex? </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If we make a colony on Mars, what will be our definition of a year? </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If you are like no one else, what is humanity? </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">47,9 + 32,6 =..... ? You can touch a calculator, but you can't touch the mental process that gave the answer to that question, so what comes first, your mind or your body? </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">You wait. Is that active or passive? </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I speak French because it is my mother-tongue, yet I made the decision to speak Esperanto to my children. Would Esperanto have been my mother-tongue, would I have made another decision? </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Yesterday, I saw Santa Claus in an empty street and he told me a secret. Do you think this could be true? </div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ok, maybe those are not simple questions and I congratulate you if think they are as you must have accumulated much more knowledge than I ever managed to. I will reformulate by the way the questions at the end of the article I think, just to make sure we are on the same wave. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So let's assume that you and I share a real world, as it is laid out under our eyes. I will ask you by the way not to assume I am too crazy when I say that the world under our eyes might not be it. I just like to nourish some doubts sometimes. I do know the objections to the doubt: 'whether or not it is an illusion or whatever, why does it matter?'. Well, I think I will make a point why doubting sometimes does matter. Maybe it is just that I think we should not ignore our past and recognize that we have been wrong quite a few times so we might as well think we can still be wrong. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But on the reality of our world, let's say that we live in it. As the poet said to the bishop:' Fuck, this hurt – now do you see it's real!'. History did good I think to forget the poet as it was just in profession that he was such, and not in mind. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So the question to ask ourselves after that one should be: why don't we make the world a better place? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyway, we live in a world with other people and we abide by the rules we are told by our parents, our friends and by what we see. Of course we do not exactly abide by every rule and we all adapt them to the circumstances and most of the times we act on them without reflecting on them, not even afterwards. We do reflect on negative consequences to some actions and tell ourselves maybe not to repeat them. But rarely does reflection come unto any significant habits of daily life as we take habits for granted. We have to take it for granted. Otherwise, if we applied reasoning on everything, we would probably go crazy rather quickly. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have though yesterday come to discuss the question of death penalty with someone I had just met. This person had to write an exam where she was to make a defense of death penalty and refused herself to do so. I pointed out that this was as smart as a person in favor of death penalty refusing to write a defense against the death-penalty. Apparently though, the principle against death-penalty is morally superior enough not to be asked such a task when the belief in favor is not. The lack of self-reflection on the matter, the lack of incapacity to find the origins of this sense of moral superiority, was for me the most problematic aspect of her position. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course I am against death-penalty, but I do know why and that is why I can do a pretty good defense in favor, as it does not make me doubt my belief. Somehow, I am afraid that Europeans are still capable of extremism as they judge so easily and are incapable of empathy. Empathy for the devil does not mean you support his actions. It only means that you see and understand his point of view and would you be good at empathy, you would see that it is only frustration leading him, as he was only an ignored second son and not because he is inherently evil. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This latter position is an easy one and truthful as much as the other one, it leads though to no resolution and not possibility for peace. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyway, I am going off my intended path. I am just amazed everyday at our capacity for judging individuals when we are so incapable of self-reflection and acting on those few self-reflections. My point from this last anecdote was that I want to try not to get common sense to hit me too often and allow long defenses for any moral arguments. The foundation for my morality is that tomorrow will be better because yesterday was worse. It is just a belief and I want to work towards that belief. I do not want to act good because of a possible punishment after death, or because I am afraid of society's punishment, or worst of all because I do not know why. I have already detailed this in one of my first posts. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
I was just wondering why there is so much apathy in the world. When were the children in us killed? I do think that we are more insensible than we used to be, but we just love to lie to ourselves about it so we do not have to find the root of this problem. Of course, for example, death has become a great taboo and could be the example of the scared souls we have become, except that sending our dying off to places we do not deal with it is not sensible at all. Students in U.K.went down in the streets and the same day their tuitions fees tripled and they did not get angry. We care for our children, and yet we are fully aware that we will leave them worse off. We leave them to be kids for a while and then we tell them the dreams of youth are gone. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
I am just wondering why we cannot ask for world peace anymore. Why do we have to still have weapon production when history proves that you do not need weapons to win a war? Why does starvation exist when we can travel the world faster than Earth can spin on itself? Why do we think that corruption is not surprising anymore and why are we cynics about it when it is so easy to have a political conscience. I do not really know yet. I am trying to work it out.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
I will say this. I do believe that social movements changed the world for the best every time they appeared. I do want to learn from history and I will use our Christian heritage as leverage for making people feel guilty about the way they have let things go. I have joined Anonymous, which is not about anonymity as much as it is about asking for real change for a better world. If you believe blindly the mainstream media about Anonymous being only about hacking, then you are a mediocre human being blindly accepting serfdom. The hacking is the destructive ( though not physically hurting anyone, as it is a motto of the social movement) part of movement, but if the bullseye were the CIA, the FBI, other armed forces and a lot of military contractors, I am asking you this: Why have so far only eight people aged in their teens been arrested? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Teenagers, let's put an end to this myth, do not have the capacity to do serious hacking. Police just arrest people who have put out their voice to say that they want change and the ones who did not do it discreetly got publicly arrested. Adults could have been arrested in this investigation as well, but the point of the arrests were to morally pressure the whole social movement. You say the soviet union put a bad name to communism, I will ask you please to think what the future generations will think of us! Yes I am allowed to say such things, but I am not allowed to act on my believes. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course, I am just hoping now that out of our civilization’s ashes will come a better one. We are having increasing military budgets, declining energy productions (hence rise in food cost), and we are raging wars we cannot win. We have a deadlocked political system consenting to the owners of means of productions. We have a systemic growing unemployment with a decreasing redistribution of wealth. And we all have a delusion of grandeur, individuals, but a society that is worse off as a whole, thinking that we can survive this great historical recipe for disaster.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I just like to think about the old questions because they do not cost a thing: </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Is an object one object of the assembly of many?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Is the universe a tiny thing in emptiness, or so big that we do not get it? </div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Is any being revealed by its appearance, or the idea of it? </div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Can liberty exist independently from necessity?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Which is more important: reason or passion?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Is Culture emancipation from Nature?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Can Time last forever?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Has everybody got a unique self or is the self similar to everybody?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Are we bodies limited in a time-space coordinate or minds imagining the world, the history and that might be immortal?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What is the difference between being passive or active?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Is a human being’s existence the result of a series of causes or the new start of a series of consequences?</div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Can a lonely individual express objective truth?</div></li>
</ul>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-30973596563054300862011-07-29T15:58:00.000+01:002011-07-29T15:58:16.559+01:00Project for the future<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5a-s9kLo5kaZjZkY2M3ZWMtZTg3Yy00OGIyLWJhMjItY2Q4YjE2N2I3NmRl&hl=fr">https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5a-s9kLo5kaZjZkY2M3ZWMtZTg3Yy00OGIyLWJhMjItY2Q4YjE2N2I3NmRl&hl=fr</a><br />
<br />
This is an alphabet that can be written from any angle in any direction as all the signs are different, which means that it is not constrained by direction as most alphabets tend to do ( see Lara Borodotsky). Great for the dyslexic and for spatial awareness ( increasing spatial awareness increase the capacity for empathy).<br />
<br />
And learn Esperanto.<br />
<br />
<br />
Two projects to add to my constitution as international ways of communication.<br />
<br />
( I have already learned the alphabets, I just need to learn Esperanto)<br />
<br />
The idea is not to have language-based inequality to start with.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-84226391717473456662011-07-26T13:26:00.002+01:002011-07-27T13:44:48.304+01:00Arts and thinking about arts<style type="text/css">
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A few months ago, one of my flatmate had advised me to turn this blog into an art critic blog as well as a social critique one. Somehow, the idea was that showing how polymath I could be in different areas of life would attract readership and show that I am not a stupidly single-minded revolutionary looser. It is true that presented as such, something he did not do by fear of me feeling insulted, I do see his point as holding some truth and I might actually start doing so. It is not easy though to set myself as a critic when I have a slightly universalistic approach to manufactured goods. I will not either be Kantian and declare that the beautiful can be found solely in the landscapes and the complexity of the world where we realize that we are part of something bigger. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The transcendence of the 'what-makes-us-feel-but-we-do-not-know-why' is of no interest for me here. It is though an interesting debate as to why should it not interest me when I say that I have a universalistic approach to the arts when some of the cultures of this world have worked at imitating the world. I am of course thinking of the Nippon culture, that has worked so well at imitating the beautiful chaos of the world. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Well the imitation and the real are two separates objects and it is actually the imitation that will find a defense in this article. Art is purely imitation and imitations should be brought back to the stage as being the center of all that is worthy in art. The real question is how complicated and hidden are the imitations unto which we are going to find some pleasure. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is here that is revealed the slow downturn of our culture in the 20<sup>th</sup> century as observed by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki and Salinger. What the heck am I talking about? Well, Tanizaki's “Praise of the Shadow” is one of the best essays written explaining the essential differences between Western Culture and Far-Eastern Culture at the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. What people have called modernity was not about the objectification of nature ( most social theorist have defined modernity as the phenomenological switch of nature as being a controllable force rather than something in the power of the Gods) but rather about fighting off our fears and to present the obvious as we like to imagine it. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Adaptations of our reality have rarely been as obvious as the one we have found them in the 20<sup>th</sup> century. It is just a fact that auto-biographies and biographies have never been sold so much. Films are re-made constantly so the subtle critics of our reality are in our face with a loud noise so we do not need a cultural context to understand the origins of the music. Sciences are now in the domain of the everyday life as we see no problem at qualifying people around us as schizophrenics, bi-polars, depressed, demented, neurotics or closet-homosexuals when this lexicon is vulgarized in newspapers. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At the same time, while we reiterate all the known-knowns of our world's universal consciousness, we have now this slight tendency of forgetting what are the problems for which we have never found an answer and for which there are always ways to find new ways to illustrate the problematics. We take what we know for granted and do not look back unto how this knowledge has been founded. We watch whatever we do not want to discuss, we ignore the illustrated problems, what are the dimensions of human nature we do not yet understand, what the author might have tried to find in himself and instead get entertained by what we are satisfied to know. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Subtlety. Subtlety of course does not mean that anything produced has to be buried under an arrogant vocabulary and in a saturation of cultural references. Subtlety is best found in originality. “Me, you and everybody else we know” is a film with interlocking unusual stories reflecting on our lives. It is simple, has no special effects and half the cast is played by children, so hardly the Shakespearian trained talent. And yet there are so many grounds for discussion that the point of the film, the meaning behind, cannot be understood. It is not absent. It is just that it shows the known-unknowns of humanity. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course, it is so easy for me to come with my cultural references and shout: “ Be simple but be smart” and then drop a Nipponese author unto your lap and you might feel stupid not having read it ( you should be! [no, I'm just joking- it is in the end just a comparative analysis of toilets]). This is though not the point. The point is that something somewhere did not go right. I will not say that it is the democratization of culture that made ignorance and entertainment the dominant steam-roller of our culture, as did Adorno and Horkeimer hinted at. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I was for a time-being tempted to say that it is the problem of domination in our history. That we have forgotten the secular culture of the people against the high culture of the aristocracy. Brining back everybody to the same grounds so we can equally build from that was the solution defended by Mao should be considered. That is just the antithesis of A&H and it keeps us stupid though. We do need historical references as they show more about ourselves than any modern craft ever can. We do though need to understand the historical contexts unto which every references have been made and constructed to emancipate ourselves from the domination of high-culture. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The problem though might be as Adorno and Horkeimer proclaimed in their theory of the culture industry. The culture industry theory states that the producers of culture are the holders of the mean of production and as such, enlightenment is not in their profit. Why would Time-Warner or NewsCorp. let their public known that they sell just corrupted imitations that do not provide any content that might help us towards emancipation. Even in the mode of production there is something weird and hegemonic: why was Trafalgar square un-kettled by policemen when it was invaded by ignorant zombie-wizards are the release of the last Potter film? No one wonders. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">'Made in Dageham' was declared by all its public the best British film of 2010. It made me cry. Have you heard of it? Now, have you heard of 'The King Speech' ? What did you get from it? Nothing obviously, there was nothing in it, I do not think it is repeated enough. Nothing! More than nothing, it has erased all the interesting psychological aspect of the poor guy not wanting to be King and his little brother not expecting to be king because he does not know what it means. Should I talk about ' The Black Swan' that portrayed women as being incapable of being professional and sensual at the same time for fear of going crazy ?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This corruption of the arts by the producers was made very discreetly through this innovative mode of ideological domination that is the intellectual property. Intellectual property did not exist before the 19<sup>th</sup> century. What this concept, now widely blindly accepted, made is creating a new unlimited resource for production so the limits of capitalism could be extended for a few centuries. It also created the illusion that everybody could make something and gain some money out of it. The film industry though is the clear example that as much as it has developed through capitalism, diversity in it has disappeared because of the oppression of the big studios, the big producers. What about Youtube? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If we do nothing, it will be the same story.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Internet will be controlled because it reduces intellectual property back to what it should have been: the collective patrimony unto which humanity can constantly relearn itself. Museums should be free, of course, but should not represent either the art market of the rich. What is presented in the museums is what has been established by rich owners as good art and some of their painting are kept in sight for everybody so the other paintings they own still holds their value. Paintings should be shared, for free, as should books, as should music, as should dances, as should philosophy. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Why, oh, why, did I mention Salinger alongside Tanizaki about the lack of arts in the 21<sup>st</sup> century? It is just that Salinger heroes always look at the world around them and are slightly depressed that it does not represent all the potential of humanity. The potential of humanity exists only for the un-atheists, the people capable of reflecting about a world before their existence and after their deaths. The potential of humanity has existed sometimes, in parsimony, if the few examples found in its history. I was reading a reference to Kipling trip to the United-States where he was corrected on a reference by a farmer (“It is not Montaigne who said so, it is Monteskiew!”). It made me think of Oscar Wilde's trip where he made conferences on literature and life to interested miners. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The Big Fat Lady exists, somewhere.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They all held the belief that humanity had the potential to see in arts something that can emancipate. But to do so, we do have to be critical and show our criticisms. More than that, we do have to beat ourselves constantly for not looking further into the depth of any crafts, to the point where there is just darkness and try to make sense of the obscure within humanity, of what cannot be understood, because otherwise we are as good as pigs satisfied to live in mud and ready to be eaten when it is too early. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> to read : "In Praise of the Shadow" by Jun'Ichiro Tanazaki, The complete collection of J.D. Salinger ( do not stop at " the Catcher in the Rye" otherwise you will never understand Holden Caulfield but will make me feel like him), Civilization and its discontent by S.Freud ( not an art piece, still relevant), Maps and Territory by M.Houellebecq. Everything, in the end, might be worth reading. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> And do watch "Made in Dagenham" to understand, in relation with the King's Speech, what is wrong with our world. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-2085060370959294192011-07-17T10:32:00.002+01:002011-07-27T08:51:17.608+01:00You and I do nothing to helpWe are all doing meaningless work for a meaningless future. We work to be comparatively ridiculously paid to buy entertainment and stuff we already have, to feel slightly better. Better than the neighbor who has slightly less, better so we are closer to the neighbor owning slightly more. I do not know if we can be proud of ourselves, of what we give to our children. We give the over-production of an earth with limited resources for increasing inequalities.<br />
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Society is built on the illusion that it is, like our portrayal of nature, a system, that works like a machine, that is controlled, that is sustainable by our reasoning, by the fact that we all live our lives. We live in the politics of daily life, in office politics, in family politics, and those are already hard enough without complicated it by taking a step back to understand the whole picture. There is an analogy between the whole earth and computers: we know how to work with them, it does not mean we know how they work. Earth and society are the result of a long history of processes, life world and system world being constantly in relations. <br />
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Society though is essentially wrong, when we compare it to some of the pragmatically perfect societies that we have thought off and keep thinking about. A few people around the world, through time, at least since the French Revolution, have imagined perfect societies, not fake-utopia stuck in a strict space-time, but a few things have prevented changes and these obstacles to the general good are mostly due to the one percent of the population that owns most of the wealth. They get to decide how global politics work, so they do not loose too much. <br />
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It all starts with the illusion of national democracy. Nations having democracies are also the nations have integrated into a global economy. Global economy works by having some organizations calculating a certain output of a country, called economic growth, and depending on this evaluation, will lend them a certain amount of currencies. We have here actually a microcosm of any service company, where all the employees compete against each other, though all in their own private work, to be the one receiving the best title (e.g. manager, partner, associate, director-manager, combined with the belittling definition as junior or senior,...), so the best salary. Nations compete against each other and have to make some sacrifices on their prosperity, as competition leads to sacrifices in the employee's life out of the office. <br />
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The people paying are the citizens of the nations. It is also the illusion of democracy that politicians do not make concessions to rich people. A good example here is England where the media make the politicians, obviously meaning that politicians will have to rub the newspapers' owners on their good sides. American politicians have to rub the different hedge-fund owners, industry owners, intellectual property owners, on their good sides to receive the party contribution to insure good publicity ( paying for posters, T.V. ads, grass root workers). That is also why politicians have been asked to eradicate the word 'working-class' from their speeches, so there are no more distinctions and everybody can feel like a consenting middle-class.<br />
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Why do we accept this? It is mostly for the same reasons that most people do not participate in work-unions anymore: it is the worst way to receive a promotion. What kind of factory owner would accept a worker who is ready to strike for some other worker's right. Solidarity is not productive, and this is how alienation works. Alienation from other workers is the best way to receive a slightly better salary, at the cost of the other poor soul. Same goes for the country… Why would countries unite against banks if they can receive a better estimation of their own growth ? <br />
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“What is the alternative?” is an argument proposed by the overall consenting population against any idea of change. And it is true, history has not proven many alternatives right. Of course, history is written by the countries which destroy the smaller countries. I said that Viet Nam had an interesting system and I was told that a famine in the 80's decimated the country. Of course, Viet Nam liberated Laos from the worst regime history has seen, with the help of the Soviet Union and North Korea. This desperate alliance from Viet Nam resulted in their outcast from the world. As much as there was a famine due partly to mismanagement, and the fact that the Americans created a fake market in the south during the war, the world never apologized for going to an ideological war with Viet Nam and letting them starve for an action that we would all approve now. Any socialist country was forced into poverty by the 'powerful' nations of the world (there are no powerful nations, just powerful owners of production backing up consenting nations).<br />
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We see this same portrayal of dangerous alternative in the image of Iran being 'utterly evil' or Anonymous being a destructive terrorist organization. I participate in some of the Anonymous forums, and I have to say that there is nothing terrorist about them, rather the opposite, they provide information that should be news in mainstream media. As an example, did you know that the mayor of Orlando made food donations to homeless people a crime? Did you know that the American government is legally forcing people to give testimonies against Bradley Manning (Do you know Bradley Manning? The guy who indirectly forced Western Governments to do nothing against the Arab Spring, who is being tortured at this moment in American jails).<br />
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Our capitalist society has produced great technological advancements, I am told. The problem is that even technological advancement nowadays is a decision made by big companies trying to make more profits, it has nothing to do with technological advancements improving our lives. Internet for example, this great invention, is now being reinvented so it will be entirely privatized. Even the dark internet ( the one accessed through Tor, I2P; the one that cannot be access through your mainstream browser) will not exist anymore, so all the big companies, and the nations working for them, will be able to control and destroy small alternate economy systems, like bitcoin. The game industry provides products that make us live faster and made my generation attention-deficit (meditation alternatively makes anyone smarter). Thank You technological advancement for your private transport raising the cost of public transports. Thank You technological advancement for always creating 'new' products where all the complimentary goods cost twice their real values. Thank you technological advancement for winning your battle against open source knowledge. <br />
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The world is now too big, too complex to provide an alternative, is another argument I am confronted with often. And I am afraid that it is true, that I have been brought up in the perfect environment to study mental environments (how do we come to think the way we do), when most<br />
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people have not had this luck. I do try to make most of it though.<br />
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We are all working for someone, and most of the time we do not know whom, even with the best of intentions. The German civil society does not understand they still work for a logical hegemony when it voted against nuclear energy. What they have voted for is lesser finance and support for research and investment into smart nuclear energy. Chernobyl incident killed 47 people since 1986. Why is this fact ( World Health Organization 2006 report) being left out of mainstream media ? The problem with nuclear energy at the moment is that we do not yet how to work nuclear fusion, so there is no waste and an eternal cycle of energy production, which theories actually find possible. This requires major investment, just like building nuclear reactors requires investments. Instead, the Germans have opted for 'sustainable energy'. <br />
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Sustainable energy is the lie of the energy industry, one of the best of the century probably. Why? Well lets take solar panels. Solar panels capacities work with processors just like our computers. Which means that they the industries come every two years with an effectively much better product, which means that all the old ones have to be thrown out and to be replaced. We have now a new consumption cycle for energy bringing in far more money than an eternal energy source could... <br />
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Am I a pessimist? Some politicians do go into politics so the future looks slightly brighter. Politics on the world scale works on compromises with the big companies, always threatening to outsource their industries, their labor, their revenues, or the little taxes they pay. So industries make promises to politicians. Politicians do not tell the people that they received promises from the industry owners about a slightly better future, because who would vote for a powerless politician? We are therefore left with the lies for votes. Or worse, with hypocritical liberals like Mrs.Merkel, having one of the most protective industries in the world, limiting competition in the country, and blaming the Greeks for helping their exports (a low Euro is good for exports...), telling the village Germans that the Turkish low-wage labor they have imported does not integrate well but hiding how much they need them. <br />
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I say nothing new, and yet most of the people I know do not want to do anything. Why? Fear of loss I would say. Of course fear of loss exists in everybody who has got something to lose. We are ready to make concessions only when we are more afraid of what we do not know. Naomi Klein's ¨shock doctrine” is a good example of a tool for change. An example of the shock doctrine is actually the United States, which never had a more conservative way of life (e.g. rate of women firefighter, decline in union membership, the freedom of liberal market,...) since 9/11. And this is not profiting the general population. <br />
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Another sociologist (most sociologists by the way are very left-oriented politically, except the crappy ones like A. Giddens), called Helmut Rosa observed that our society is accelerating. We compete to be faster constantly, which means effectively that we stress more and with stress disappears natural empathy. Our natural empathy disappears because of our entertainment as well. Accelerated games, accelerated films, accelerated television. <br />
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Television was problematic as the intelligentsia of the world for a long time did not accept this institution. It took the New-York Times's critics, and the fact that you had to pay for different programs (best Bourdieusian recipe to make a high-class taste) to make most of the society spend most of their evenings in front of it, myself included. Fact and fiction mingled to create the entertainment we seriously needed to not realize that we are the ignorant working-class, just like the poor workers of the third world, and that we accept our fate because we just do what we do.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-22769920738679401852011-07-08T14:54:00.000+01:002011-07-27T08:51:50.279+01:00PRAGMATIC MEI am not an idealist, though I did in the past claim I was, I now believe with a slight arrogance that I am not more an idealist than anyone else. Idealism is synonymous to religiosity and ideology, as it is just a belief leading the lives of individuals. There is a probably difference in the fact that religious people are effectively slightly more sincere about their faith than the idealism of the lay person. <br />
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Idealism is the stuff of the everyday man everybody, whether they are aware of it or not, is idealist. The ideologies we have seen throughout history lead most of the time everybody to accept the world as it is. Though I am wrong when I say ‘as it is’ since everybody wishes some tiny or important changes in their life or in society. Idealism is hidden in the lies we tell ourselves everyday when we think that some ideas are impossible. That is true idealism, as it shows the ideal of the world we now live in.<br />
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I have somehow discovered an example of problematic hidden idealism in a discussion that often comes to be heated. A multi-party democracy is the regime under which we live now. It is also our excuse to judge in an ethnically-centred use of the Human Rights any other types of regime. This is the idealism I am talking about. <br />
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Now reflecting on idealism, I see suddenly myself as a hyper-pragmatic as I saw all the logical sense of a one party regime against the blind ideology of our system. The argument often used to judge one-party regimes is that they do not allow dissent or opposition. I have now a few questions and observations about both system that could show that both regimes are as faulty in their current states. And we might have no right to judge a regime over an other regime.<br />
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Every party has oppositions within their own party. As an example, some British conservative party members accept that homosexuals receive the same rights as heterosexuals while others do not. Now, because most parties do not want to fall into the disarray of looking inconsistent, they have accepted in the 20th century the dictatorial form of party discipline. This concept of party discipline, as a tool of control, is far more dangerous in a lot of ways than the idea of a one party regime. <br />
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I have a problem with multiple parties as it is still only a social representation of archaic tribal disputes where no one is concerned in the end with the goal of the policies for everybody on a long term, but instead with the concern is on the pure defence of the party lines told to follow. Of course, party members do have the right to vote on the party lines of thoughts but we can now observe today in politics that opposition parties are most of the times against the governing party choices out of principle rather than out of reason. <br />
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Would an opposition party make good arguments, should the party in power normally not admit that it has made a mistake and then accepts the laws proposed by the opposition. Or is the ideal of a multi-party democracy not inherently forbidding accepting the opposition’s point of view as it would mean to admit defeat on some level. “How could we let a minority tribe make a decision!?” is the shock of our regime ideology. The issue is even more complicated as accepting that the other is right would effectively prove that a one party democracy is far more intelligent than the stubbornness of a multiple party one. <br />
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Another level where a governing party cannot accept the opposition’s ideas is because, as I’ve already said, politics nowadays is mainly tribal. I vote left because my parents and my friends vote left. I vote right because my parents and my friends vote right. I vote centre because I have changed social milieu I used to live in and I am a bit lost – it is by the way why Europe finds itself nowadays in an in-between state where all the parties set themselves in the centre as they know that society is shifting - and the centre is the safest position to take as it accepts as many ideas as possible. Somehow a one party regime could let this question out on a public sphere and also let the voice of the extremes at least be heard. Why would extremes be heard? Be extremisms is only relative to the perceive centre set by the main parties…<br />
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I do not have many examples of countries where a one-party regime lives in a comfortable society and where repression never happens. Then again, no country exists where some form of repression does not exist. This is where hyper-pragmatism comes into play and states that the best of everything should be á goal for everybody and not merely accepts what is going on or ask for some slight liberal changes because we deny to ourselves there is something wrong with the system. <br />
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Viet Nam has actually a one-party policy which until the 21rst century did not work too badly. It has sent to prison some of its opponent, some allegedly intelligent dissents not deserving such a fate, some allegedly supported by the American government and its allies, others being just religious nuts wanting to make public what could have been private. Yet, it has a sensible one-party regime where people often vote for the person they find to be the most qualified for the job, and not for the person with the best facial symmetry on the list they think they ought to vote on. <br />
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Also, it has to be observed that Viet Nam does not exactly have only one parliament, but authorizes that passed laws be contested by interests groups like workers unions. This is somehow fairer for the common worker than a system where the majority in both electoral chambers passes a law which affects groups and they cannot go to a higher court to contest it except if it breaches the European declaration of Human Rights. And even in this case, I am waiting to see how long it will take for British prisoners to get the right to vote. <br />
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On the question of idealism and pragmatism, I am now to realize that my pragmatism is actually an attempt at going beyond the ideology in which we are lock due to a misunderstanding of our history. The First World War is often blamed on the accumulation of spending on ‘defence’ budget of European countries. Whenever I ask about military spending, the counter argument is exactly the language one based on the use of ‘defence’. It is though inconsistent as defence in our contemporary western countries means the collection of a variety of ballistic armaments we could not use in our own country for it would destroy our own basic infrastructures. <br />
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More than that, military spending is purely ideological as it is based on a socially constructed fear of being attacked. Costa Rica since its creation almost never had any army and yet has never been invaded. Now, this could mean that it is because it has strong allies pressuring the world not to attack this country. On the other hand, Switzerland has one of the most important army in the world and yet never had to use it at all. Switzerland is more vicious in the fact that even if it has a strong army, it would always anyway support and bow to the strongest whatever the moral sacrifice it means.<br />
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On the other hand, we find heroes of history from which we have learned nothing like Gandhi, who have fought off a whole empire without raising a weapon. Somehow these forgotten heroes of pure pragmatism have not inspired us enough.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-81120844970811725342011-07-06T13:39:00.002+01:002011-07-27T08:52:43.367+01:00After the 90'sWhen was the world what it ought to be? There are so many conflicting ideas, facts that nothing makes sense and no ideal makes sense. Between the two world wars ( the one written in capital letters), there was more global exchange than there is now. There was of course less political interaction, less social interactions and less informations in general on what was going on the other side of the world. Most of the informations would travel as fast as they could, most of the time disappearing in the midst of population who had no interest in distributing the news. All was irrelevant, all was transformed. <br />
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By the end of the twentieth century, we are all link together through phones, internet, television and even newspapers. It was not their own President the French saw in 1998 for the Monicagate, it was Bill Clinton, the man from Arkansas. Informations were finally global and everybody was free to interpret it as they wished. Of course, this is the illusion of every individuals as cultural biased would always reinterpret the information, leading Clinton to be an example for Berlusconi or an unlearned lesson for Wiener. <br />
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The world, by the end of the twentieth century was also a world united to solve all the problems. It would solve the debt in Africa, eradicate the hunger, see the tyrants of the world quiet down and it was in an engaged spirit that humanity would step into its third culturally-constructed millenium. It went alright until George W. Bush won against Al Gore in the elections. It is not a question of being political, it is solely how the democratic process got overruled that was significant for the rest of the world. Its leading power was transformed into an oligarchy of lawyers and judges ready to protect their own interests. <br />
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No wonder then that a band of terrorist acted on our worldly unconscious and taught the hypocritical hyper-nation a lesson that has never been correctly learned. It was somehow looked as a selfish personal attempt at harming the United States by an extremist group. It is the slight insult that we profess and feel guilty about as soon as we leave the insulted. We did not mean to be mean, we did not mean to be destructive and we know full well that it will come back to us in unexpected way. There was though inside our brain, in the back of our thoughts a growing frustration to say how it is, say what we think even when we are not ready to admit it to ourselves. <br />
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The U.S.A. before and after the 9/11 strike, did not believe in global warming, provided minimum help to developing countries and was all in all a great power that would show such a power for good in parsimony. Even the help for developing countries was a form of blackmail and not given blindly. There was a control on the spending ( American goods only) and on the infrastructure of the country ( no competition to the American goods). The U.S.A.had always a lot to offer for the world, and when it was most expected that this generosity which would have meant that this nation no one dared to compete against could have lead by example into a better future. <br />
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We had waited and nothing came but Titanic, Godzilla and the Matrix. Those were the promises of the American dreams. It was a society as stiff as the Victorians, as stupid as lizards and though everybody knew it was just a dream, no one raised themselves against it because America was a blockbuster. Nothing could stand against it, not even the Americans. This was the dream that was slowly coming out, the frustration felt by the world but whom no one dared to think to much out loud, by fear of losing the little they had gained from it. <br />
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What a surprise 9/11 seemed to be for everybody. And yet... nothing changed. Why nothing changed is because the Americans had finally the excuse for not caring for the rest of the world. It was just about rightfully defending their interests. And who would say there is something wrong in that? Except the rest of the world, which slowly started to see that there was something wrong with the whole unraveling of this situation? <br />
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The United States at the beginning of the 20th century had this same self-centered point of view over the world, something that totally disappeared after the world war 2. They did not want to join any global organizations and Woodrow Wilson had to defend the idea of being at the center of the world with a congress that did not give a damn about the world. Obama now finds himself in the same position as the congress is asking him what the hell they are doing in Libya. <br />
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I guess that there is at the moment a global zeitgeist of protectionism of the nation as the world crumble because of a clique of rich and we just like to blame the Other. We do not have yet identified an other, but it would be interesting to see who is going to come along. The similarities with the crisis of the 1930's has not only sprung in my mind, but it the mind of a few European leaders, an example being Sarkozy who in 2010 tried to make the Gipsy's the Other and found himself in an awkward position where the population went ' hey wait a sec' : they have not done anything wrong. <br />
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Hitler found actually the perfect scapegoat as the Jews in his time where holding some of the businesses of Germany and it was understandable to be jealous with a few of them. 70% of the lawyers for example were Jews. The problem was the profession and the system, but instead of saying so, which appears too complicated and intelligent for the general population, he found the symbolic representation of a frustrating system. There is no more equivalent. The families of owners around the world have different backgrounds. Everybody is a winner in the system, except that this is only an illusion, and that comparatively there are still a majority of losers. <br />
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The common grounds for the owners of the modes of productions are that they are from old families and that someone always grow to be a winner in these families and play his cards really well. It is true that there are some losers in these families, but they are eternally take care for until a succession of generations loose the ability to play the hands they have been dealt with. It is though the exception. <br />
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The frustration of the populations over the lies of the system, and the fact that rich families are coming back on the compromises they did with humanity at the end of world war 2 and at the end of the 19th century is not going to help them, but it is because they have managed to alienate every body but the the civil servants who have still a notion of allegiance to the state. The difference between a State and a private enterprise is that the private enterprise has no guilt cleaning up on a monthly basis any elements that is not productive enough to replace it until it finds a good element. The State, by providing the security of the employment has created a sense of protection that does not provide an incentive to work. But material gain is rarely an incentive to work, except for manual labor. <br />
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I do not know again where I have started, and how I should end. I do believe that we have a tension inside us between accepting the system and playing the game, and observing that the game is rigged. It has the appearance of a game, and the people who want to play try to play it well and want to always ameliorate their cards, their chances. Most people at some point tell themselves it is what it is and we should go with the flow, otherwise we loose. It is the fear of losing that blocks any reflection for better change. Instead, we legitimize our actions by looking at our competition and finding problems in their actions. No one likes to judge oneself action or unintended consequences of thoughts. ' We have played the game so we understand why it is played'. But who thinks about who sets the rules, who thinks about what we really want and not what we have been made to think we want ?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7822093314052469898.post-58416953449597561022011-07-06T13:36:00.000+01:002011-07-27T08:53:18.065+01:00Old story, for the EnglishI never thought I would agree on the a political decision with an Archbishop ( being Belgian is part of this anticlerical instinct) but the comment of the Archbishop of Westminster on the Big Society made me retract on my position. The Big Society was the English “Yes you can” of last year, a part ideology, part slogan generating ideas and debates. The opposition and the Conservative Party both outlined their points of view whilst the Liberal-Democrats stayed quite silent. The position of the libdems is understandable. The Big Society is the part of the conservatives' unenviable cuts program put forward, as it was the one that involved the least controversial ideas. <br />
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The plan is to give more powers to communities, encourage volunteering and relegate some of the government services to co-ops. Who could argue with that? People doing it for themselves, direct people helping people volunteering without any of those detached Whitehall “fatcats” involved. The conservatives partner in this dissolution Walz, the libdems, remained remarkably muted on the subject however. So do they prefer a distanced over-powerful central government preferring civil servants to engaged citizens ? It is hard to choose the later, it’s clearly more complex than simple ideology, the problem with the Big Society is in its application. <br />
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The Con-Dem coalition has started its governance by laying out their plans to cut government spendings. The Big Society is the safety-net for all the people relying on the soon-to-disappear public services. That is where we find the first problem for the creation of this Big Society. The government started by cutting public services first, posing a simple solution to those not wanting to see misery around them, get out there and help others. <br />
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It is hard to push people to be involved in their communities, so why not make it an inescapable moral obligation? Maybe an exaggeration but it's easy to see citizens will go down the road to help each other. People have already started marching down those same streets to acknowledge that the cuts are contraversial. We can say that the Big Society is slowly appearing, though probably not the way the Conservatives expected it to be. <br />
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The privatisation of the public services started under Thatcher and Cameron is following her lead. His proclaimed intention is to, when possible; transfer the power to co-operatives and mutualities. It is a better plan than to give the duty of the services to private companies driven only by the need to make profit rather than helping the collective. <br />
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Committees are preparing for a bank to help these communal organisations. The Bank funds will come from unused bank accounts. This idea is interesting. The details are yet very blurry though. The question of interests on the loans for example has not yet been debated. It would be another burden to charge interest on people trying to start a co-operative not only affecting those running the groups but for those that group provides for as well.<br />
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The transfer of powers to localities is an idea that could attract of lot of minds. Empowering localities mean that people would not feel as distanced to power as they feel now. Bristol is a good example of a local government having to decide on a controversial decision such as preferring Tesco over a co-operative. This was before the conservative pledged to back-up co-operatives. The point though is that local governments do not have to abide by the people's will until their re-election is challenged.<br />
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If the Big Society in the last months ( this article was actually written in Mars - and does not mention the resignation of the ' Architect' of the Big Society- due to lack of support from the Government - if that does not prove the lack of faith of the Conservatives I do not know what does ) it is because Liverpool's council withdrew itself from the trial the government organised in partnership with the city and three other localities. Liverpool is led by a Labour councillor, so it might be a political decision to exit this test. The justification for not participating was that the cuts in services discouraged volunteers already on the ground. Attracting new, motivated people to the Big Society while simultaneously cutting and demotivating those already involved is not the best foundation on which to build an organisation fuelled by goodwill.<br />
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This is a point that has been outlined by a few research institutes. To build a cohesive society, there must be a balanced material equality between all its members. Equalitytrust.org is an easy to access and understand research institute proving many times this point. The most interesting graph is the one correlating social trust and equality. The countries with the greatest ratio of equality, the usual Vikings, have the greatest level of social trust. Japan has a similar level of equality of income but not of trust. The difference might lie here in the fact that Japan does not have a history of social trust and has a very competitive educational system. <br />
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Comparative researches have also been done to observe the causal sequencing of trust and equality. The people arguing against a universal welfare system say that if people do not trust each other, why should we be obliged to help everybody. This puts us in a social trap. The proof against this argument though was outlined by a thinker called Bo Rothstein. He has compared Sweden and the United States social trust and welfare systems. The decline of the welfare system in some states of the United States correlated with their decline in social trust. <br />
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It is an important part of the conservative agenda: transforming the structure of Britain to make it more similar to the American. Charity is an important part of society. The Godfather showed that is how respectability is obtained in the new world. Charity is actually a very vicious instrument of class domination. A simple example is that Eton is one of the largest charities in the United Kingdom. Except for donating the current Prime Minister, I’m not sure how it benefits more to society. <br />
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Charity might be the main aspect of the Big Society. Any donation to charities are tax deductible. That is how tax evasion, or defending tax cuts, is legitimized: it is more money to give away. As said before, it is easy to make a charity that serves only private interests. Ikea is owned by a charity for example. So it does not have to share its profit to help everybody. It’s Obligation to society is to expand and make more tax money for the state, taxes that are rarely paid due to large tax loopholes, Boots for examples headquarter’s is a Postbox in Switzerland. Charity is actually far more vicious than the loophole of the rich to escape providing for everybody. Oscar Wilde explained it a century ago. Charity is the way for rich people to satisfy their guilt over poverty. Giving makes them feel good. It is purely selfish as the reason for misery is never questioned. Charity is solving a problem in appearance. Charity is not immoral, but should never have existed. Donating is only pushing on the problem for tomorrow and that is what is never said. <br />
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A few practicable alternative societies have been provided in the last twenty decades. Most of them do insist on localism. They do also insist on a sense of community. All these programs centre their attention to prosperity and eradicating poverty. If we do not pay attention to these alternatives we will reach a real crisis. Equality is of importance as growing income disparity leads to social unrest. A theory approached for the unrest in the middle-east is that the rise in food price has made the gap in income more observable and so more shocking than ever.<br />
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Equality of health, education, transport, information should be essentials provided to everybody for charities to disappear. Tim Jackson was asked by the previous Labour government to outline a way out of the economic crisis. He presented it and the government refused to acknowledge it, it was too good a solution probably. His point was that a neo-liberal economy fed on disparities and competition. Both these elements are though destructive to a Big Society. The only alternative is a deep structural change.<br />
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Here lies the irony of it all: the conservative did provide us with the goal but are working hard at making it unreachable.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524520403019962307noreply@blogger.com0