« Posts tagged hegel

on nil

August 19, 2011 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, universal nothing / No Comments

(from twitter)

what’s odd about nothing is that there are 3 kinds of nothing: 1.absence of anything, 2.absence of change and 3.absence of a particular x.

in programming terms, this analogizes to 1. null, 2. loops and 3. zero.

what’s further odd about zero is that in languages like php, zero can be the value zero, empty, null or one.  this 0 = 1 is a 4th kind of zero.

i think this overlap has to do with either specific content, the context of expression or the structure of expression —

all of which may be nil.

the most basic nil is in the structure of expression — which is the kantian negativity. context of expression is hegelian negation (zizek)

and of course specific content is what we are most familiar with and deal with everyday. in culture finding the hegelian negation is akin

to finding the “species which is its own genus” as zizek says, the primary case. something i think south park keeps trying to hit.

of course that’s also philosophy’s goal too, to explicate the zero point of structure, find the root of being all that jazz.

the purest case with the simpliest move. we can always tailor our structure to support other items “a priori”, in theory.

 

Zeros in numbers are a purely expressive entity but as such refers to what would otherwise be uncaptured substance.

Saying that is like making digital analogue. An mp3 recorded on vinyl.

The inexpressible is expressible by virtue of the concept of the negative, by voids in expressive structure.

This is not to confuse a deployed camera’s negation with the negativity of blackness on a movie screen.

Where hegel abuts universality in force is like law taking onto account violations by being more strict than necessary.

Or like good design swallowing common human error.

This is what theoloticians may mean by taking about human freewill made compossible with god’s supreme will VIA Jesus, god as man.

 

(post-twitter)

god’s will must encompass everything, including that which is free of god.

that’s where determinism and freewill intermix, in a figure like jesus.  jesus acts as the central binding agent on the way to universality, as petit objet a, the stain of god on man, a stand in for the subjectivity/godhood.

but if jesus is the stand in, and jesus is negative, how can god be negative?  not just in terms of not-man and not-god but also as zero qua one (as stated above).

what’s particularly interesting in this is that in the fullest level beyond universality, hegel still insists on the emptiness of the notion beyond the traditional readings of dialectics.

in a very real way, negation for hegelian dialectics is necessary — one can’t have universality without taking into account that which is not explicated.

joan copjec in her brilliant essay ‘body as viewing instrument or the strut of vision’ takes heed of this when she explains how renaissance painting isn’t simply a field.  the field from the subject projects an idealized viewing point just behind the head of a viewer situated squarely before the painting.  the ‘final’ negative acts as the last suture, by taking into account that final kernel of understanding — rooted from the subject.

this brings us beyond negation into universality — but the step beyond negation qua universality is to consider the totality itself as self-determining — that Emptiness is Godhood itself which can only be expressed as the zero-sum of structure.

once again, we find ourselves enwrapped in a kantian lock-box of phenomenon — only this time there isn’t a noumenality by which we cannot know, for the noumenal is included as part of the structure itself like how phenomenon is structured.

if anything, at this point we’ve aligned the first three nils on one another: content, expression and structure like an empty structured database, or a spread sheet or pivot table without data, devoid of content.  virtually there but inexpressed.  what we’ve ended with is the last kind of zero, where it acts in a higher level as one.

this is simply because while one is a totality when viewed from the outside –from a position of immanence, one is needed as zero to establish metaphysics of presence, marking a structural change from pure absence to a structured presence.  in terms of programming, a zero is already one bit.  a nothing wouldn’t even show up and cannot be considered.

an interesting consequence of this concept of zeroth-ing is to understand that subjectivity itself is the zero point sum, the empty category that establishes the modal structure of renaissance order.  this seems to suggest that we understand others as a consequence of our own singularity.

but this grasp of subjectivity as zero misses the point, for we have a totality as one in subjectivity already.

so where is the nil point that is pre-subject?

copjec talks of the gaze as the field that cleaves and binds; for if the subject is us, what does our presence guarantee?  how does being one equate to being zero?  it is in the consequences of getting to be one that we already assume a zero — in Lacanian language it is the Other that bounces off subjectivity in so as subjectivity requires others.  what copjec calls the gaze guarantees both subject and object and acts as the originary marking place.  they are dual views of the same situation.

therein lies the structural difference by which noumenal and phenomenal are cleaved, inexplicable but also nil.  the ground of being separate must be established before being can be, a crux of psychoanalysis from motherandchild to i and you.  in each point epistemologically, we must have the empty container-notion which can contain it all, and is rightly not anything.  The set of all sets is not really a set, it is the empty set par excellence.

Can we function with an outside on the inside?

July 9, 2011 / posted in art, dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

Recently, the reaction of one homosexual individual who was hurt by the hateful remark surprised me. Her response was simply that gays are common decent folk — upstanding people too — who deserve basic respect like anyone else.  What’s surprising to me was that she failed to incorporate the point of view of the bigot.  But then why should she?  This post doesn’t explore whether or not tolerance is an issue (because it shouldn’t be), but that there are different standards of acceptability.  Granted, standards are due to valuations that individuals generate — that is what makes us individuals — but is it possible that fundamental valuations be generated from a contextual position based off of the larger whole and NOT individual feelings?

I am not debating the content of her remark, but I do find her reaction and surprise itself surprising — all the more because of the obvious evidence that her verbal assailant did not consider her (as a gay) deserving of tolerance or basic respect.  If there is a basic orientation to how one relates to others, it’s through the Lacanian filter of the Symbolic.  The Symbolic order holds for us subjects a variety of different and individual valuations but the main function of the Symbolic is to provide orientation.  The collective Symbolic regime is the resulted of a larger, abstracted social zeitgeist.  How we negotiate the perceived regimes’ changing nature and what we allow or disallow provides the vehicle for politics.  What we do on an individual level, such as towards our hurt friend, matters, however small.  This negotiation of perceived change in the Symbolic forces personal action to be becoming-political.  In a way, the hurtful remark made by the bigot is an indeterminate but discrete step.

Immaneul Wallerstein has provided a grand gesture through his World Systems Analysis which classifies a population’s attitude towards change which may be useful to our exploration: conservative, liberal and radical. Conservatives do not want change, liberals want small measured changes and radicals want a total re-orientation of the norms.  Wallerstein’s classification is useful but it’s only descriptive, not an examination of the production of meaning in relation to the Symbolic function.  To do that, we can turn towards Zizek’s explication of the Lacanian orders through the Gremasian square.

Gremasian Squares are one basic way of determining meaning.

The Gremasian square Zizek draws upon in For They Know Not What They Do, bounces the four positions of basic difference that create meaning surrounding the symbolic function. The four positions are:

  1. all are submitted (S1)
  2. only one is not submitted (~S2)
  3. none are submitted (S2)
  4. only one is submitted (~S1)

Zizek highlights these positions in order to explore different ‘species of judgement’ of a subject are

  1. necessary (S1)
  2. possible (~S2)
  3. impossible (S2)
  4. contingent (~S1)

The basic axis deals with the main difference of Symbolic (S1) and Real (S2).  The Symbolic acts as a universal signifying function, establishing a symbolic network of linguistic meaning (S1) that is necessary for us to organize our world. At the same time, within the Real order (S2), we struggle with the impossibility of such a function existing in the universe as part of the universe.  The outside Real (S2) remains indifferent and incoherent to our manifested meaning (S1).  It is this interplay between impossibility (S2) and necessity (S1) that gives rise to the complexity of the system. In order to facilitate the others who approach us from the untotalizable whole of the Real (S2), we rely on the Imaginary (~S2) to orient us to the Symbolic (S1). It is in the Imaginary that we maintain an interplay of ourselves with others, ultimately enabling us to live together (though Lacan claims this is always through a kind of cross-talking).  Keep in mind that the negated lower pair of ~S1 and ~S2 remain imaginary reflections of the actual complex pair, (S1) and (S2). What keeps us hinged in the necessary Symbolic edifice (S1) is a self-image which represents for us the kernel of our own subjectivity (~S1).  This self-image however, is not the same as who or what we are.  To this end, Lacan rewrites Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” as “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think“.  Nonetheless, it is in our personal investment in (~S1) that makes us dependent on what others think of us.  This external dependence is how (~S1) is structurally contingent, although the actual content is personal and open to discourse. So within this square, it is the universal function’s failure to completely foreclose the Real and prevent distortions of others (or ourself) that highlights the three different reactions Wallerstien segments as a population’s willingness to adapt to or reject change.

So to return to that surprising reaction, I would have assumed that one who rejects some social norms would understand that with this rejection, their position may occupy an untenable difference within another’s Symbolic (S1). That is to say, a conservative who would be unwilling to accept in themself a difference of sexuality without losing that possibility of self (~S1) would definitely reject that difference of sexuality in another or at least locate the unacceptable difference wholly in another (~S2). Our poor friend however, is hurt by the verbal assailant’s remarks as her subjectivity (~S1) is questioned and she responds by reinstating her own position in the necessary order of things (S1) as a public declaration.  The way to read the Gremasian Square is to understand that subjectivity is contingent on both the Imaginary others (~S2) who reject or accept the subject as well as the appeal to the Symbolic (S1) against the Real (S2).  Without the Imaginary (~S2) acceptance of the subject (~S1), there is no subject.  Such a position is the horror that Zizek calls the space between two deaths, when one is biologically alive but ostrasized from the community, publically dead.

The rejection of that desire as considered by the other to be one’s own introduces an element of the Real (S2) into the fragile Symbolic (S1).  No wonder then, that slogans from those who oppose gay marriage include banners that equate one man to marrying another to one man to marrying a dog. The equation doesn’t mean to equate men with dogs but rather, to equate the feeling of beastality with homosexual marriage.  This absurd equation betrays their bend as conservative — a genuine fear that should the Symbolic (S1) be extended, that fragile absolute (another title of one of Zizek’s books) may give way. A recent expression of this comes from David Tyree’s equating New York City’s acceptance of gay marriage with anarchy. One wonders then, at how fragile some conservative’s hold on the Symbolic order may be and if we could ever relate to one another without this Symbolic (as it is a point of reference). For the function of the Symbolic, is it possible to include the Real as a space within the function while maintaining tolerance and social order?  In other words, how possible is it to locate within the Real a minimal relation to be Symbolic — to provide space in the Imaginary for tolerance and acceptance?

The function of the Symbolic order appears more robust than we might think, as it goes a long way in orienting ourselves to external events. South Park, the popular adult series created Matt Stone and Trey Parker, explores various positions people take in relation to Real, unaccountable events. These events, as a rule, come from media presentations and perverse positions, other (~S2) possibilities which must oriented to the Symbolic function (S1).  It is through this accounting that we get a dialectical backlash in South Park between possible configurations of acceptability as the characters attempt to orient themselves within a Symbolic order (usually unsuccessfully) to justify or explain the acceptability of actions. Contrary to most conservative commentary on South Park, the ending configurations of the characters are usually presented to be ridiculous or at least out of proportion to the issue at hand. Earlier episodes in the show’s run were more to the point as to what is a ‘rational’ position ought to be.  Some of the later satires reject an overt explanation and choose instead to settle on positions that maximize humor.  Even so, for humor to function, it must retain a monocum of the Symbolic as reference.  As Julia Kristeva wrote in Powers of Horror, what is humorous is usually only so as the exposure of different signifiers in a novel arrangement create jouissance.  In other words, what is humorous is usually only acceptable as humor because it’s not an acceptable arrangement except as humor. The pleasure of humor is the pleasure of play within the Symbolic (so long as it does not shatter that regime).

South Park, as a satire, functions by simplifying most of their character’s interest in maintaining their own contingency, preferring to underscore instead, our tumultuous relationships within the Imaginary.  (What makes South Park an examination of actual possibilities and not an examination of the Symbolic is the protagonists often not-listened-to appeals to a standard rationality.  The under-grid of Symbolic rationality remains ignored, not questioned.)  To give a real world example of this instability with the Symbolic we can turn to the avant gaarde’s push for new directions.  Such movements are often offensive to some, as such movements often rebuke representationalism.  Representationalism best deploys the Symbolic as over-coding the Real in a 1:1 relationship as though conservatives are less able to handle schisms in the Symbolic.  The more extreme the over-coding, the stronger violations of the Symbolic invokes a bodily reaction to events that reveal the Real’s incoherency. The adherence to such an over-coding is what establishes our societal ‘grand gesture’ which in the 20th century was known as Modernism.

Modernism philosophically started long before the 20th century, but as a social movement, Modernism came together in the late 19th century as a style of presentation and coherence that in some ways matched the singularity of world orders like the United Nations. Modernism as a whole, however, is best digested as a rejection of traditional aesthetics, an establishing of new parameters of how we are to experience and relate.  Modernism marks the single largest and far-reaching break in tradition.  For the life-world, Modernism became coherent as new human existence for a current Now. This emphasis on ahistorical values arises as an absolute order without an outside, the best example being Formalism.  In other words, if you are not within this absolute order, you are nowhere to be found.

In the larger picture, while Modernism can be connected with capitalism’s ever expanding market, market capitalism is but one expression of the ‘make it new’ of Modernism. Other expressions of Modernism include Stalinist and Maoist totalitarianism. So while many philosophers such as Lyotard claim that Modernism is dead in favor of Postmodernism, Modernism continues as a grand narrative, under the guise of Postmodernism. Under Postmodernism, deployment of new expressions continues as an ahistorical re-framing of historical contexts.  As such, Postmodernism functions as a hyper-modernism, co-opting the small other to illicit a homogeneous world order.  Despite the many disavowals of the I and the kowtowing to small others when recognized as legitimate, any and all contacts with global capitalism usually means the destruction of alternate Symbolic configurations in favor of our global capitalism.  Any sensitivity of context is a sensitivity necessary in a Postmodern deployment.

I bring this up not because it has anything to do with the dignity that our homosexual couple insisted on, but rather because our current Symbolic order displays an absolutism — that relationships and transactions be concluded through a narrow regime of Symbolic association.  For instance, one of the main modes of our Symbolic relies on the filters of money and legal documentation, two contractual basises which form the bridge of our current Symbolic Regime. Fights over gay rights, or the slutwalk occur within capitalism because the market has not established a preference either way (unlike say, stealing). As time persists and capitalism benefits from the religious right and the spending power of the homosexual left so both will continue to contest one another in the public space at the expense of other policy decisions. Most likely though, capitalism is not incompatible with homosexuality and ultimately marriage will be expanded to include homosexual arrangements as this does not hurt global capitalism.

This brings us back to the original question — in terms of our current grand narrative of global capitalism — is the Symbolic completely mutually exclusive to the Real?  Is there a psychial configuration that would allow us to better tolerate instances of the Real? Why rely on the contingency of others as deal with ourselves and each other in the imaginary spaces of (~S2) and (~S1)?  In seeking to find a philosophical method to explain going beyond the Symbolic edifice, we run analogous to Buddhist thought on enlightenment.  Enlightenment serves as a psychial position that exceeds the worldly concerns that structure subjectivity.  Now as the order of the Symbolic operates more as a referent than a set content, so a re-centering the four positions can be best understood by retooling the Gremiasian Square through an analogous the structure in Buddhistm known as the Tetralemma.

The Tetralemma is a four fold step introduced as a logical exercise in Buddhist doctrine to expound the doctrines of two truths.   Put simply, the two truths at hand are conventional truth — the common place wisdom of existence having substance, and the sacred truth — the emptiness or non-existence of substance.  The four lemmas of the Tetralemma involves the precepts:

  1. x
  2. ~x
  3. both x & ~x
  4. neither x & ~x

In dealing with the concepts of existence (x) and emptiness (~x), through the exercise of the Tetralemma, we step beyond having just classifications of the conventional existence of substance and the philosophical existence of nothing.  In other words, the goal of the Tetralemma is to gain an understanding beyond the distinctions of ontology, of which emptiness is a exposition of the formal constraints of ontology.  This is different from the Gremasian square in the sense that the Tetralemma works as a delimiter rather than as a position.  The goal is to avoid all four positions, whereas in the Gremasian square it is the orientation of the positions that provide meaning.  Nonetheless, used in conjunction with the Gremasian square above, we can utilize two Tetralemmas of emptiness and substance with the two indexes from the Gremasian square as the actual (S1) and (S2) with substance and the reflective (~S1) and (~S2) with emptiness.  In the first Tetralemma:

  1. There is a Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S1)
  2. There is no Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S2)
  3. Both (S1) and (S2) apply
  4. Neither (S1) and (S2) apply

In other words, we are dealing with the grounding of both existents and nothingness.  Arguably, the social schism introduced by Modernism killed philosophy’s search for an ontological life leaving us with nihilism.  Nihilism, like early postmodernism, insists that the formal constraints of ontology are not applicable anywhere, leaving us with nothing (to fit the bill with).  Rather than a full blown rejection of the system itself, nihilism involves an adaptation of the system of meaning and its consequential failure to cohere meaning.  Nihilism does not mean that there are no systems, only that the metrics we use to find valid systems yields no content.  In this way, the third step and fourth step both appear to be alternative universalisations that happen when the symbolic function fails to yield an appropriate conclusion.  Nihilism occupies both positions such that we have the system but no ontology or we reject the system and still do not have the authenticity of ontology.

This position reflects the same underpinnings as dialectical nihilism by at first insisting on a universal position although it goes beyond dialectical nihilism by in fact not sublimating the structure of the Tetralemmas at the level of the Notion.  It is through the Tetralemma’s four precepts that we gain a richer understanding that unlike conservatives and our gay couple above, it’s not simply enough to be within the function and to desire collapse the Gremasian square to gain a tolerance of the Other so as to live with them (to insist that what I imagine to be the other’s position is in fact where I am as well, that (~S1) and (S1) and (~S2) and (S2) are in fact all super-imposed, without difference… the way to read this desire is that the conservative judges the homosexual to have a desire the homosexual then denies having).  The Tetralemma instead goes beyond this to reject both the system and its content reserving neither Notion nor internal distance to uphold this desire or its judgement.

A rejection of the distinction of both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) constitute, in traditional terms, a confusion between how we are to understand our role in the world and how to basically orient ourself in the world.  How can we make sense of what we could do vs how things happen to us and what we should make of them?  Both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) rely on specific instances in order to provide actual interactions.  It is in the application of the function in the imaginary spaces of (~S1) and (~S2) by which we run across the negative Tetralemma.  Without addressing the application of the orientations inherent in (S1) and (S2), we run into the profound difficulty of skirting the regime of madness:

  1. There is no self that is I (~S1).
  2. There are no other subjectivities (~S2).
  3. Both self (~S1) and others (~S2) do not exist.
  4. There is neither no subjectivity (~S1)  nor are there no other subjectivities (~S2).

The main difficulty in this Tetralemma lies in the lack of orientation a rejection of the application of possibility and contingency implies.  Within this regime of non-applicability, we run into pitfalls similiar to those who do not socialize properly.  I speak of some criminally insane who do not genuinely understand others, nor read on others the desire and pain, both reflective and independent of their own subjectivity.

What marks the difficulty in deploying an orientation of these concepts isn’t in their conceptual nature.  We should not assume that the proper position within the Tetralemma involves a rejection of their concepts as such, but rather a rejection of the desire that navigates these polemics and binds us in these orientations.  Movement within the Tetralemma isn’t accurately a dialectic, although I have used the term.  Dialectical movements within the Hegelian traditional involve a progression of positions within an order to explain their meaning.  The Tetralemma instead involves the limits of expatiation.  When we abut a lemma we encounter a failure to grasp the Tetralemma as a whole.  This is how the Tetralemma also is not a Gemasian Square — it does not rely on static positions from which we can garnish meaning from the other three positions.

So for applicability, let us return to our original example, it is not that the knee jerk response of our friend is in fact inappropriate.  She is correct to understand that her subjectivity is contingent on the external circumstances of others who accept her, legitimatizing her place in the Symbolic.  But the most the Symbolic can guarantee her or anyone else is a position of contingency and tolerance.  Acceptance within the Symbolic does not assure her of the dignity of her subjectivity, it only imprisons her within the confines of the possibility of authenticity when continually confronted with others.  This is the nature of contingency (~S1).

The ‘way out’ as espoused through the dialectical and radically transformative nature of the Tetralemma isn’t in the sublimation of the Tetralemma the way Hegel might want us to distance ourselves from the Notion in order to better find ourselves within it.  The key of the Tetralemmas is best expressed through the Real, as the Real remains the threat for all other positions.  What makes the position of the Real ‘Impossible’ (S2) is not only the ineffectual application of Symbolic order on a shifting and vague desire — but, from the point of view of the Real, the union between any of the other three relationships are impossible because of the shifting and vague nature of desire undergridding each.  When we seek to legitamize ourselves, that legitamcy is in fact never permanent, being contingent.  When we seek to understand the other on their terms, it is impossible because we must resort to imagination — we can never know their radical difference, only read on their difference a reflection of our own difference.

This insubstantiability of position that all eight lemmas deploy disallows one to fully invest in any position, opening the door to the Real as it were without casting one fully into it.  We acknowledge our own insubstantiality inasmuch as anyone else’s.  For instance, in neither accepting being submitted to the function or outside of the function, one rejects both the absolute madness of emptiness and the contingency one might always bear.  One can be oneself, as it were, all the while allowing others to be themselves without that reflexivity or demand that one be ‘with it’ or not ‘with it’.

The Violence of Subjectivity complements our Lack of Negativity

May 5, 2011 / posted in dialectics, life as we know it, manifesto, Theory, Universal non-all / 2 Comments

There is an inherent violence in being a subject.

AS what Slavoj Zizek calls the universal exception, our subjectivity each, is an exception of the unbreakable rule of the universal.

This subjectivity must be “non-all” an untotalized whole which prevents the universal from foreclosing.

Part of why I think so much continental philosophy goes on and on about subjectivity and cannot bridge the gap between subjectivity and society remains in this gap between the “non-all” and the universal.

A great part of why modern philosophy starts with Kant is that Kant provides exegesis on subjectivity — but only does so at the expense of the noumenal.  Kant sacrifices the rest of the world, the external world in exchange for securing subjective phenomenal experience.

Hegel tries to fix Kant.  The genuis of Hegel is that he wrote on the extra subjectivity, the becoming-universal of particulars — he tried to bridge that gap with his dialectical absolutist system, to totalize the non-all and unproblematize the subjectivity by enfolding it back into the Notion.

Whether he succeeds or not is up to debate of course, but no other philosopher has come close to his achievement.  This is why Hegel remains for both Marx and Lacan (in fact even today), the godfather — Hegel provides the only comprehensive system of talking about the universal qua society with an eye on the particular.  He does so by nearly sacrificing the subjective, but saves it through a kind of transcendental rambling.

By comparison, Deleuze and Guattari don’t even talk about subjectivity; they make it irrelevant.  Graham Harman also side-steps this Cartesian mutualism by going via the Object with Merleau-Ponty and his notion of flesh.

But I’m not going to go in depth to examine others.

What’s so damning about Hegel is that through his particular becoming-universal he found the universal on the particular, through a kind of metaphysical “raising” of essence.  This is obviously what Deleuze and Guattari do with various meta-tools, like territorializations and refrains, the difference though is that Hegel does this raising through negation.

Negation eliminates what does not fit that form.  To emphaize my point, Kristeva attributes negation as a concept to Hegel — the specific making of a negative (something).  Contrast this with Kant and Kristeva points out that Kant only discovered negativity — the absence of what we are looking for.

The negation of Hegel allows us not only a radical de-subjectivising but also the clearing of room to make way for the *trumpet sounding* throne of one particular to rise up to the throne of universality. In contrast, Kant used negativity in order to make room.

Where violence comes into place is our rejection of the negation.  Our supposition as a subjectivity must come about through social effluence — we stand up to this symbolic universal by declaring our relevance against our own negation by this universal.

We tear out and subjectivise what would be an object.  We would do violence to universals and other would-be universal small-others through our radical Otherness qua subjectivity.  Think of the violence today perhaps in Libya and Egypt

Think of the French Revolution.

Think of all the expressions of free-self organization that the U.N. throughout the 20th century and up till today have stamped out, and how small-other Universals qua government seek to legitimize their claim on what would be a universal expression of their own brand of subjectivity… we return to State Democracy its own Jacobianian Excesses in the form of our own self-subjectivisation which then must always be violent.

This is also how Hegel is also the first modern philosopher-statesman inasmuch as the first and only true philosopher on modern Universality.

Unfortunately we seem stuck on this in Continental Philosophy and unable to articulate other forms of universality. We can’t articular a society let alone conceive of one. And no, ramblings of a disintegrated body of objectivity does not a society make.

So no: the radical pluralism of Deleuze and Guattari do not count simply because while they clear our the space for alternate forms they are too reactionary against Hegel to be useful in constructivism.  It’s also questionable as to whether or not we are at a point in which there is enough space for anything else to be constructed.

from Social to Universal, what comes after a Monetized Economy?

April 29, 2011 / posted in Business, images of being-human, life as we know it, rational choice theory and homo economicus, rules, Uncategorized, utility / No Comments

I’ve written about the failure of our economic models to account for our happiness and welfare in the work place. I want to go into a little more detail about what an alternative view for our society might look like post-money, but first, some more general news about the failure of our economic models to register real value outside of the work place in terms of the Global Economy.

 

Current Opinion from some Economists today…

…expresses a criticism of the FED. At the Roosevelt Institute there recently was a panel on the Future of the Federal Reserve, a large debate surrounding the current actions and criticisms of the Federal Reserve as well as panel talks about the FED’s current program, the so called QE2 which is scheduled to be halted by June of this year without a clear date (or even plans) for a better and more effective QE3.

It seems that the general consensus agreed upon by everyone except the Fed and the government is that QE2 was in fact too conservative to be a success and was in fact a failure. QE2 did not generate the jobs people hoped for nor did it spark the economy with low interest rates.

The FED becomes an easy target in current debates as to why the economy is at risk as to why haven’t job growth happened and who is to blame. I am not an economist, so I will spare you the details, but I am very interested in the subject. If anything, we are plagued by a systematic failure of the existing financial infrastructure. The problem comes from huge debt. In order to handle many of the national and international debts that are due this year entire nations will have to get debt financing. The question, of course, is who do they get it from?

If the government that prints money has no money to pay for its debt, then who does it?

The current bailout situations and the burst of that financial bubble earlier in 2008-9 resulted in monetizing private debt as public debt. A short term solution seems to be simply to do the same thing again. If that happens, loser in these transactions will be individuals who have saved up money. It will eat away at the savings of the American public — in fact of the rest of the world since the US dollar is known as “reserve currency” meaning that people in other countries will use the US dollar to transact business because their own government’s money is not considered stable enough. In fact, China has the largest amount of US currency in reserve, totalling an astounding 3 trillion dollars.

But of course, decisions the FED stem directly from situations here in the U.S. and not of the rest of the world.

This might stave off the problem for another time, but the debt problem persists. Interest rates will mount and at some future point an even larger debt will be incurred, things time with our public economy and our private savings exhausted… our credit exhausted…

So what is the solution?

If you are not sure if you can trust the reserve currency, the idea is to switch to a currency you CAN trust. In this case, GOLD and SILVER. SO you see that the price of gold is to break $1,600 for a troy ounce by the end of 2011. Additionally companies that mine metals are a desired commodity as well as indicated by China’s repeated bids to buy foreign mining and farming companies. In fact there are rumored talks among some of China’s officials to reinvest their U.S. Currency into Gold.

So why aren’t U.S. officials fazed? Everyone’s doing the same dance right now — everyone’s still using U.S. currency. At some point there needs to be an exit strategy. According to Max Keiser, Goldman-Sachs officials have started sipon money from the stock market into commodities and alternative currencies. One such online company, Zynga, wildly successful for its which had made a move last year in Oct 2010 to create its own currency. With the investment of Goldman-Sachs officials, the Fed is investigating the matter. According to Keiser though, Goldman-Sachs is siphoning money from Wall Street all the while keeping the bubble of pricing up through the use of computers that trade. One of his evidences despite the Dow’s recent record high even in this bad economy stems from the drop in VOLUME even while the PRICE is high. The idea being that the unwitting American shareholder will be left holding the worthless shares when this new bubble bursts.

 

Holding the bag means holding… what?

So my judgmental sentiments aside, it seems that when the economy “downsizes” in value because of inflation — because the monetization of our economy creates excess value, value based on speculation of the future value of money — the system will implode. Much of this is doom and gloom. One fair indicator of when this will happen in the near future is the fall of the United States as an economic power — passing its economic torch to its largest landowner, China as soon as 2016 according to Chris Martenson.

This of course may not happen, 2016 still is over one presidential term away, and who knows maybe Bernanke will wisen up and the Financial overlords that bombed a 65 trillion dollar world economy to personally make for themselves a few million will find themselves in jail…

But if that doesn’t happen, there’s a good chance that we homo sapiens will have to reorganize into a new resource distribution system. Doubtlessly, this will involve money, as people have always had money, but it may not involve capital as the primary exchange for labor.

This is a little beyond the scope of this post, but it’s perhaps important to note that democratization of private industries is not the key to establishing a more free society.  The logic of freedom, as Zizek put it eloquently:

the key to actual freedom resides in the “apolitical” network of social relations, from the market to the family. Here the change required is not political reform but a transformation of the social relations of production—which entails precisely revolutionary class struggle rather than democratic elections or any other “political” measure in the narrow sense of the term. We do not vote on who owns what, or about relations in the factory, and so on — such matters remain outside the sphere of the political, and it is illusory to expect that one will effectively change things by “extending” democracy into the economic sphere (by, say, reorganizing the banks to place them under popular control). Radical changes in this domain need to be made outside the sphere of legal “rights.” In “democratic” procedures (which, of course, can have a positive role to play), no matter how radical our anti-capitalism, solutions are sought solely through those democratic mechanisms which themselves form part of the apparatuses of the “bourgeois” state that guarantees the undisturbed reproduction of capital.

He continues on here, citing how violence is the inescapable and inevitable truth of the States’ impotence, and that extending the logic of the state into new regimes is a needless production of the same. So rather than dwell in violence and democracy, let us instead move back into the apolitical communities where most of us are heavily invested and are infact, as American sitcoms like to show us, largely apolitical.

There are perhaps an infinite number of possibilities but I will cover only one form, Peer to Peer Networks, which, instead of being an extension of state democracy, or state anything, rather is an extension of the communal commons “space” by which most of us interact anyway… (even if it’s not recognized by our current global the economy as such.)

 

Introducing Peer to Peer Networks

The rosey scenario of so called Peer to Peer Networks comes from a computer analogy but it carries with it a sociological ideology of individuals interacting as individuals and not through the manifests of corporations. Peer to Peer interaction gets a great deal of exploration through P2P Foundation, a utopian organization that seeks to explore the very real possibility of a new form of distribution closer to the maxim ‘think global, act local’ in which interested individuals interact with one another in mutually beneficial ways. If you think this is radically different from Homo Economius, you’re absolutely right. This organization tends towards the touchy-feely-poetics but one article likens the difference between spiritual self-suifficiency vs interdependent interbeiningness via “spiritual collectives” vs “gurus” with the emphasis on collectives as being more wholesome since we are socially interconnected.

There is much to be said and in my opinion (not said) about how P2P is beneficial but as presented here, the impetus is to take a larger view of who we are as human beings and offer a human solution rather than one concocted through the confines of “Rational Choice Theory“. The thinker I would like to cite for this line of thought is Hazel Henderson.

Henderson is a grown-up hippie. Her main attack on the economy today stems from what she sees as two critiques:

  • Seeing monetary exchange as the only meaningful measurement of production
  • understanding human beings as theoritical economic creatures that seek only to maximize utility and reduce cost

    • She points out of course, that people are not so perfectly greedy, although greed is a part of who we are… and that over half of all the meaningful production occurs through the work of women. The PTA meetings, the cooking, the cleaning, even helping your neighbor paint their house on the weekend — these are meaningful acts of production that are not measured in any form of monetary exchange. Likewise, for her, financial instruments whose only purpose is to change a tax status or promote speculation is not a meaningful act of production, although it carries with it a monetary cost. Many of the ‘goods’ we enjoy, like the environment, likewise cannot be monetized, valued or taken into the consideration as a cost inherent in any kind of business plan. As such, the environment is generally worthless and meaningless according to economic theory. Also, our hanging onto the notion of GDP as a meaningful measurement of economic health makes no sense, especially since new cars may be exchanged between two countries and then counted as GDP for both countries.  Structurally her critique means a few things:

    • Money fails as an indicator of meaning since it fails to objectively capture what we value
    • On the producer side, a variety of interactions exist without any consideration of money (they are valueless, even if those behaviors maintain the quality of life for all)

    Our attempt to organize our society around economic theories of value is a terrible thing, resulting in incredible amounts of waste and human misery. We work too long to support those we love who we never see because we have to work.  An extensive video of hers can be found here: The Alternative Economy of Hazel Henderson.

    If you are like me, then I apologize, because the only thing I find somewhat grating is that she calls it the “Love Economy”. All the same, her suggestion is not to remove money, but to de-center it.  Instead of money, we would find meaningful metrics in the healthiness of society through several different axises which are not tied to the market.  She cites thirteen separate axises of human need.  For instance, the quality of clean air will be measured by environmental engineers on a scale relevant to their industry, not to a dollar value which can then be compared to other monetized “goods” and found to be more or less valuable than other goods as an ‘objective’ dollar amount.

    The Love Economy however, is just one expression of P2P. In the larger picture, the Love Economy stems from a trying to arrange society in order to maximize it values, something which is largely impossible to maintain if you hold that the only value is the collection of money.

    This would mean the end of the cost-benefit analysis and ROI for decision making. (If you would like to glance a governmental body of text related to the work I do on a daily basis for businesses, take a peek: Cost Benefit Analysis for Americans with Disabilities Act 2010, in particular “side transfer for water closets 602.3”.) Even if this text puts you off, I am afraid most of us would not be able to function without these kinds of “objective” guidelines.  How would managers or committees decide any course of action without a financial basis to limit and define meaningful activity?

    It’s most likely too, that the destruction of money as the primary signifier/coupler/de-/re-territorialisating agent will signal the end of corporations. The injunction of corporations as legal entities that benefits key players in the corporate hierarchy must end.  Corporations as entities of ownership and resource control were seen by Marx as a form of communism and collective ownership, but modern corporations are concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a relative few:  I forget where I heard this but something like the top 34 corporations in the world have more GDP than all but the top 8 countries, of which the corporations are “members of”, but you can imagine how long that would last, especially with a weakened US dollar.  As reported by Lenin’s Tomb this class struggle is comparable to what’s happening in other countries like the middle east because it’s a class struggle, even if the stakes are somewhat different.  If corporations throw their weight around, of course local governments that can’t follow them need to provide conditions for those corporations such that a corporation will understand that it makes monetary sense for them to stay.  This is perhaps ironic for those of us living in the United States, as our material wealth in the 50s – 90s had come from corporation’s exploitation and the oppression of other nations for the US’s material interests, as pointed out by Keith Hart.

    But now that the corporations have become increasingly powerful in a global economy, they have the option of forcing by design or accident local changes to their favor.  It’s not too far off then, that Corporations can be considered the dominant species on the planet.

     

    from Social to Universal in a Global Economy

    Given such a dramatic statement, for us individuals to understand our place in the world we cannot rely on simply being just a citizen of a nation or a worker inside another corporation.  We have to understand our role as producers and consumers, first and foremost (since that is how we meaningfully interact with a value-system of money).  This switch from citizen to consumer/producer fuels much of the current revolution in Search Engine Optimization.  Most of the industry is still mulling over how social networking influences online presence.

    Online presence includes all the online discussion in the 3rd dimension of consumer to consumer (the first being business to consumer and the second being consumer to business).  The freedom of information on the internet has eliminated the days when corporations had control over their timely product unveilings, or their press releases.  The internet has allowed companies to have a better feedback of what works for their customers and what doesn’t.  Since the speed of information is so much faster, companies need to release products that aren’t perfected in order to remain competitive or deal with informal press releases better.  Both Apple and Coke have proven adept at providing expression as their main marketing maneuver rather than the more traditional marketing which aims at offering consumers impressions.  The influx of twitters and facebook “likes” and “shares” have proven to have an increasingly huge but causally unclear influence on search engine ranking.  Already all the major SEO companies have begun to recognize that in good marketing relationships with customers online, your cusomters produce your best (and worse) content.  More often than not, relationship building online and instantaneous information flow has allowed each of us to become both consumer and producer.

    Which brings me to back to the original point, the producer-consumer dichotomy. One interesting point, among others, that came from an interview with Rachel Botsman came from her observation that we generally think of ourselves as citizens only, or first. That kind of view will need to change in the near future when we have to reorient ourselves as simply participants. In a peer to peer economy, we will be both consumer and producer, not just consumer. We will be directly responsible for our individual interaction and participation as to how resources are transacted. Her example is eBay, in which strangers can participate on equal footing for remote merchandise that is bought without examination.

    The philosophical implications of this are many.  The internet has provided a new objective, recordable voting mechanism for companies to be ranked even before consumers open their wallet to “vote” in economic transactions.  A blogger can collect a valuable audience which then becomes an asset to marketers.  Facebook is an extremely intelligent implementation of this kind of collection of information, perhaps one that rivals even Google, with it’s long term information hoarding.  This kind of objective interaction with the Other verges on an interaction with the Universal.

    Arguably this kind of dichotomy was marked by the first modern cosmopolitian philosopher, Hegel.  Hegel reverses the formalism of Kant by extending Kant beyond subjectivity and as Zizek says, Subjectivising substance devoid of content.  By the imposition of his dialectical process, Hegel reaches the notion of the Universal, garnishing a multitudinous rambling along the way.  Any contemporary philosopher who seeks to tackle the universal must address Hegel, even if it’s by avoiding the Hegelian Dialectic method.

    The most traditional conception of the universal is best expressed through Lacan’s (read Zizek’s) Real in which madness, phantasms and partial objects cannot cohere into a meaningful subject.  Is this rhetorically not the perfect analogy to describe the unlinked disorder of the internet where we reach 404 and partial hits on keywords — such as when I search for one word and get something completely different that I click on?  I don’t want to go into schizoanalysis or anything like that.  Rather I want to point out that our relationship with the universal, especially as monitored through the internet is mediated by a direct attempt by a corporatized other to impose universality on each of us small others through a medley of law (and other paranoiac applications).  Whether this be through the paranoid discourse of the state (legality) or through the internet’s opposing hysteria as expressed through Bing’s initial video campagin today we have the increased injunction from the Other Enjoy! and Obey! simultaneously.

    This is not a new injunction.  I won’t blame this on Hegel, but increasingly in an more ethnic world with global trade, everything becomes relevant for examination — starting with culture and human rights and ending with intellectual property and intangible costs.

    Overlawyered.com‘s author, Walter Olson has written extensively about how the legal system has developed into the political monstrosity it exists as today.   Apparently attorneys before law school were more pragmatic, trained on their job in apprenticeships.  After law school invoked a liberal agenda to use the legal system to argue for change, everything became a matter of litigation — what was perhaps previously a personal dispute between you and your boss now became a matter of employee and employer for all to bear witness to.  Increasingly individual concerns have become scrutinized, first through totalitarian states like Stalin and Maoist Communisms, but more recently in the overlawyered culture that exists today — anyone can sue anyone for anything, right or wrong.  The influx of attorneys qua politicians (up to 30% or 40% of politicians are attorneys, I believe) comes from the desire to use the court room as a place to change law, which it isn’t supposed to be.  Legislation is supposed to change laws.

    Anyway, in many ways, the injection of the internet into the intermix of what is accountable (accidential emails, even blogging about belly dancing can ruin a divorce settlement).  This kind of dissemination of all aspects of human life even a humorous but somewhat mostly true guide on how to live with your philosopher-relative or life-partner becomes fodder for the voracious paranoia (followed by aimless surfing/hysteria) leaving footprints of human desire and meaning objectified even if this wealth of information doesn’t lend itself directly to meaning.

    Don’t get me wrong, participation in the world is definitively more meaningful than retracting into rigid rationalism, i.e., Hegel is more relevant than Kant, who can’t even leave his house without a God as a universal-guideline.  After all, isn’t that what WW2 showed Sartre?  Young Sartre stopped writing so much and took his place as a public intellectual, held himself accountable for his actions and attempted to take his message of humanism and authenticity in the face of an ever-growing global economy of maginalization and monetization of human meaning.  After all, old Sartre knew that meaning was in social interaction not in transactions.

    Social interactions is something people complain about losing, in an environment with too many people, when we can be alone in a city of one or fifty million people.  Companies are finding out that we got choices — as with any sales person today has to answer to each of their clients: “Why should we buy from you?”

    Just like companies are discovering that collecting Facebook shares and re-tweets is the truest indicator of actual meaning.  And that meaningful relationship will lead to trust, reliance and transactions.  Given this article, that social networking produces the same chemicals falling in love, perhaps I should rescind my statement — that love economy isn’t so far off…. only perhaps “economy” is outdated.

    Perhaps we should call it the love network.

    on Testing Cheetos in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf

    February 10, 2011 / posted in art, Business, images of being-human / No Comments

    Economics and market behavior is a huge area of study — the best business minds are all interested in it — so rather than try and make an exhaustive account, I would like to point to one particular event.

    A northern European group that started off making fictional zines and theorizing on ‘happenings’ called monochrom created a few years ago a last bastillion of Soviet culture called Soviet Unterzoegersdorf.  What started out as a village in the Austrian countryside ‘remade’ into the last Soviet Country (with tours available) became so widely popular that monochrom could not in good conscience continue to give tours.  Having three times the population of a 500 people village swamp the village for a weekend would be potentially devastating.  Eventually, in order to further the experience, monochrom created an ‘adventure style’ video game.  I won’t go into detail about the game here, what I am more interested in is how this experience interfaced with the economy.

    It seems that with capitalism, we desire experiences, the novel experiences things can give us. There are plenty of Marxist thought about this — but what is interesting, although perhaps difficult to assess is how these novel experiences become translatable into other Cultures, of other peoples, and even of one’s past cultural experiences — which become commodified into a new kind of hybrid experience entirely, neither of the past nor of our ‘normal’ experience, but wholly of the present.

    Monochrom went on to have various installations such as the Unterzoegersdorf computer (which ran on a coal furnace one had to shovel continuously in order for another person to be able to play Tetris) as well as various Unterzoegersdorf installations.  There was one especially interesting moment when they were kicked out of a computer convention as the Unterzoegersdorf representative with the Unterzoegersdorf camera man was borderline-trolling party-goers, perhaps offensive to Disney officials running the convention.  The Unterzoegersdorf representative also, for purposes of art, had the wild experience of eating a glob of wasabe ‘not knowing what wasabe is… and deciding that it was capitalist posion’.  Of course, one assumes the Unterzoegersdorf camera man was using a modern camera, something the Unterzoegersdorf representative did not even seem to notice as being astounding.

    One particular event they did was particular applicable to this discussion.  The website boing boing hired Monochrom to do a viral video for Cheetos, paying them a sum of a few thousand dollars.  Monochrom saw a prime opportunity to further explore capitalist relationships with their very anti-capitalist characters.  The results are below.  I invite you to take the time to watch all 6 segments.  It is delightful.

    Unterzoegersdorf/Cheetos Campaign

    While amusing, one cannot help but think that the compete rage of the Soviet Unterzoegersdorf characters, in part jest, at being ‘tricked’ and ‘used’ to promote a very Capitalist-foodstuff but in part seriousness — for Unterzoegersdorf-ians to find their livelihood but a ‘colony’ of the Global Economy.  While Cheetos is featured heavily in the dialogue as the center of conflict, the nature of the Monochrom’s tension is more on the side of Unterzoegersdorf-ians trying to figure out what to make of the raw junk of Capitalism.  It may benefit Cheetos only to be repeatedly mentioned and pondered — we laugh because the weird orange coloring DOES smear all over our hands.  In fact, we are reminded of Cheetos and that may be enough to make our mouth water (or wince) in association.  Larger questions remain largely unexamined What should we make of our own economic proliferation?  How should we come to terms with ourselves?  In an exploration of Unterzoegersdorf we come to face ourselves as Other — perhaps in what only great works of Art do — reflected back to ourselves our own values in negativity, as dissymmetry and excess, the best non-linguistic analysis of all, something even Emmanuel Levinas refuses to see — when he preaches of the acceptance of the Other but cannot accept those ‘asiatic hordes’ which surround Israel… and refuses to deal with them as citizens of humanity…

    I’d hate to think that if I were to continue on and on, I would end up swallowing myself into a Hegelian synthesis of some sort, negative and particular made universal, more or less.

    I also strikes me that this entry is applicable with the previous On Testing IRL although creating such a viral meme does not in fact have a control group of any sort. One is immediately hypnotized in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf our own image, as fascist as they are in our unthinking allegiance to our own ideology, something which accepts Cheetos as blindly as they reject it.

    Dialectical Nihilism

    January 19, 2011 / posted in life as we know it, manifesto, Theory / No Comments

    Many of the entries I have posted on here are an attempt to try and find a rational application of ideas, or the imprint of massive theories onto the chaotic transgressions of daily life. Theories themselves when applicable to meaning, society and culture, prove effective when they

    1. can justify or explain a particular situation — why things are
    2. grasp the relationships of various categories as they function by highlighting a fulcrum upon which meaning is generated.

    For this reason, it may be incoherent or disjointed to present a theory simply as a theory for its own sake. Such theorization is an artifice of academia and not at all pragmatic. Nonetheless, I present below a theory I batted around a bit a few years ago in order to try and make sense of what I was doing. I am not going to apply the theory here, but simply present it as a point of reference.

    Forgive me, if this seems too academic.

    Dialectical Nihilism

    we have heard of dialectical materialism — and dialectical idealism. the former is used to describe the adoptation of hegelian dialectics by marx… an explanation of production (the formation of history through class struggle). the latter i have heard as a reflective description of hegel, when in fact dialectics itself in general is associated with hegel, although at its root we can get socratic dialogue. fine whatever, classical blahblah. but can be mix traditions? nietzsche and hegel don’t go together. but let’s try:

    what about dialectical nihilism?

    step 1. simple nihilism in-itself. we have the reactionary nihilist who claims “i believe in nothing”. this is coupled with what you might call evangelical atheism in which this nonbeliever poo-poos everything that is “meaningful” — claiming such people are idiots. let’s take the example of God. such a nihilist would eagerly either make fun of or try and convince believers that there is nothing instead of God.

    incidentially this form of nihilism is what i associate with self proclaimed atheists and nihilists, which is why i do not take up such a title. it’s an obscene sort of behavior which is hypocritical.

    step 2. negative nihilism. most atheists do not reach this point, or atleast if they do they are quiet about it. this is where nihilism recognizes that while “i believe in nothing” this has a negative bearing in extension. such a nihilist would see believers of God and say, “well good for them. at least they are happy… i guess”.

    step 3. nihilism for-itself. such a nihilist can go to church because of the pleasure of other people’s feelings. of the beautiful architecture, of the pleasantness of the hymns and the freshness of goodwill — and enjoy the simulacra of religion and not see any contradiction because while there may be nothing, what does it matter what others believe in? let’s enjoy this nothing in its nothinghood. perhaps sartre…? most people will never reach this level ethics in their life, this adherence to a productive principle.

    step 4. this is where nihilism itself is a notion. what to call it? if this was truly hegelian it would be the reversal or what sartre might say as nihilism in-itself-for-itself; but such a mode is often found in either the 2nd or 3rd step, not the 4th. here a nihilist can claim that “there is nothing for me to grasp; why shouldn’t i believe in whatever? at least i am happy… i guess”. what makes this the 4th step is in the empty form of the notion — which of course in hegel’s 4th is like this 4th — a divorce of content from the empty pure form (reality). in this example it is expressed as a separation of belief from reality… a point at which some christians i have met have attained.

    at its core, we have a resemblance of nietzsche… in the form of hegel. not to say that nietzsche is synonymous with nihilism. certainly nihilism is a simplified form. what might make this nietzschiean is in how we divorce a position’s normal “expected” valiance from its expression… not just that we deal with nihilism and therefore must deal with the origins of values. we have a movement into the origins of the seed of belief in that 4th nihilist claim…

    so but basically this can be understood as a justification of christianity or whatever through nihilism.

    On Capitalism: A Tragedy1

    December 20, 2010 / posted in life as we know it / No Comments

    Amusing ourselves to Death

    I recently watched Capitalism: A Love Story a documentary made by Michael Moore at a some good friends’ home. Capitalism: A Love Story, argues that capitalism does not work nor does it work for people as a whole. Alternatively, Moore claims that socialism is better because people need to be protected from mechanisms beyond their control. Moore presents the common individual as someone who is happy to wake up, go to work and do what they do. All the complications of the financial work — the nitty gritty of the stock market — are beyond the scope and intelligence of the common individual. Moore’s utopian dream is to usher in a kind of 2nd Bill of Rights straight out of Franklin Deliano Roosevelt’s term — to guarantee the common American a decent job, a decent wage, a good house and food on the table.

    This kind of debate is as old as the end of Monarchy. Various utopian ideas from transcendentialism to utilitarianism, socialism have all been offered by thinkers, social critics and philosophers as the answer to the human question: How should we all live together? While most of these ideas have fallen to the wayside, Immanuel Wallerstein in World Systems Analysis offers us a single axis on which to locate people’s political alignment: openness to change. His arguement stems from a loose analysis of the French Revolution — an event which he likens to the social turmoil in the 60s. Wallerstein believes that there are three categories of openness to change: the conservatives, the liberals and the radicals. Only when two of the three groups work together can there be change or the lack of it. To repeat his analysis is more than what I want to get into right now, but it is the fear of change which prompts strict laws, and it is the fear of change which keeps the status quo. This fear, of course, is aligned with those who have the majority of the power.

    None the less, fear of change aside, who wouldn’t want everyone to have a home, a decent job and a good wage? What conservatives would claim is that the masses, if given this kind of “Right” would taking advantage of those who genuinely work hard to achieve what they have. They would cite that providing all this would invoke an imbalance of the economy… and that if the “basic necessities” were guaranteed as a right then people having no incentive to work at all.

    Personally, I believe think the 80/20 rule works here… 20% of our population basically run the rest of the society so that 80% of us to have our mundane jobs. in a way there’s already too many people around and not enough jobs. As technology becomes more effective, the job market will tighten. Americans work more hours than any other culture in the world because of intense market competition (and the echos of a Protestant work-ethic). Would it possible to spread some of this work around? Furthermore, while competition is often claimed to lead to efficiency, anyone who looks at the current market place will see a large amount of redundancy in our society. Markets may be able to sustain four or five fast food joints in a local area in a big city, but if they are all comporable, do we really need three burger joints each with four or five worker working minimum wage? Other cultures have been amazed at the vast selection of material goods that we have available to us. Is having rows and rows of different toilet paper made by different competitors in a free market really efficient? Do all the different kinds of toilet paper really sell?

    This kind of market choice has been touted as a equivalent to our personal freedom. But five or fifteen different kinds of cereal isn’t really the same as an authentic choice. (I could get into this too but that’s time for a different entry!). My point is that, in a way having this kind of market excess is really redundant. If we could take all the brain power that was sunk into making iPods and iPod rip-offs and other mp3 players… it’s conceivable that we could make a super mp3 player that won’t be such a waste. because all the products that don’t work… well, it’s junk. we make a lot of junk. Many of us have what was once the ‘latest gadget’ which is now junk in our desk drawer? What about planned obsolescence? How efficient is that? How good is that for the environment? When money becomes the metric for efficiency, as economists and cost-analysis by political departments are oft to do to justify their policy decisions — then what happens it that money becomes the only item that is ‘generated’ from implementing those decisions.

    But capitalism itself has other virtues, right? To create one central “Soviet-esque” department to make iPods would force a single directive, or a single origin for what would or would not be produced. This could destroy our ability to create and be innovate. Furthermore, having such a department that isn’t under any external pressure (such as market pressure) would eventually cause the department to become less efficient. Even still, look at newer information sharing models, such as the open source model that works so well for Firefox in competition with the monolithic Internet Explorer. This model could theoritically be applied to our market economy. So just because things have been done in a certain way so far, and that we have gotten so much ‘progress’ and ‘stuff’ and ‘development’ doesn’t necessarily mean that we should continue in this infrastructure.

    But I really don’t want to argue this stuff. I’ll probably end up sounding like Alvin Toffler in Power Shift. To get to issue directly, let’s just jump ahead a hundred years to where our hypothetical Socialist system works and then compare it to Capitalism as we have it..

    So let us assume that we we jump to where we work out all the bugs — all the major ones anyway, and people live lax lives because there’s too many people — and technology lets us work so efficiently, so people can work very little and have a minimum. To keep innovation and purpose, I suppose we could introduce a tier-system where people could work harder or more responsible jobs — climb a kind of ladder — and in the process become rewarded by getting more food selection or get more privileges, like being able to have babies… Not to mention that being higher in this rung would engender for them elevated status in the eyes of their peers.

    Even still though, we have the same problem don’t we, like the comic linked above by Stuart Mcmillen. In such a world like the one we live in, where we are divorced from daily survival, where we have free time and the technology to insolate and amuse us, in our free time we will always choose to have more of something enjoyable — to the point at which if no one stops us, we would become paralysed by it.

    It’s clear in Moore’s film that he takes the position that most people want to work and not care too much about the big picture. While Moore doesn’t suggest why but if you take McMillen seriously is that we are don’t care because we are blind sided by the things we love. Now, I don’t think it’s so much that we have become blindsided by materialism — we are in fact blindsided by materialism — but I think we always have been distracted from what’s going on in the social milieu. Since humans begun to band together and live in settlements and colonies to maximize our ability to distribute work we’ve collectively had the opportunity to have free time and create. While most of our history is undocumented (since we were so often struggling to make ends meet) — only recently in the past 5,000 years have we begun to really flourish as a species — our death rate is historically low — it’s kind of amazing just how uncreative individually we are. New creations in the market place are often offered as solutions to problems — problems in the market place, problems with products — but just as often the majority of us aren’t creative at all. As human beings we all face very similar problems and we respond to them in tired ways.

    While much of what we do is very different today than what our predecessors had, the massive still remain at the mercy of those in charge. And those in charge will do as people do — help those who are closest to them. Over time, those relations are bound to crystalize and become inbred… This is where what’s great about capitalism becomes apparent — through the market place. In the process of being innovative and bringing value, there stands a chance for the very poor and disenfranchised to become wealthy and successful too. We do have a system but it’s relatively loose. This is also where capitalism’s weakenesses as a system also become apparent: while plenty of people have made large amounts of money — most of them have not kept it. The value they give society may not disappear, but if money is a metric to social value — should they have not gotten a chance to prosper forever? In our hypothetical system, people would still benefit from the merits of their own achievements. But families would not be able to inheirt and competition for climbing the social ladder would have to be much more rigid. People who want to go off and do their own thing wouldn’t really be able to; there may not be a market for them. You might also add that this is a valid fear: if people have very little rights and very little in the way of being autonomous then they become vulnerable for those in charge to subvert the system against them… because they are uncoordinated and without the means to protest.

    Just like what happens in Moore’s film.

    Moore doesn’t seem to find fault directly with greedy individuals. And he doesn’t find fault with our government. He finds fault with the system itself, a system that rewards greed in as much as it rewards innovation and successful marketing. A system and a means of distributing wealth and resources that seems to just have popped out ahistorically. Moore’s gripe is not about a particular attempt at world domination, after all, people in charge have tried to get more and more and more all the time. (Moore begins his film with a voice over about the fall of Rome, drawing connections between the United States and a decadent Rome.) This is what more gets at: he named his movie about capitalism — he’s questioning the value of a money driven society. as a patroit, he finds human rights synonymous not with capitalism but with individual quality of life. Gandi’s quote could work here: “a nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members”. Today we are to be insolated from weakness. We don’t see our weakest members. We don’t even die in our own beds. The sick and dying are wisked away and the public is segregated from everything horrific or uncomfortable… Even if this horror is in our own bodies. We are an anaesthesized culture. This is our pervasive attitude towards pain and discomfort — why wouldn’t there be?

    After all, if you could avoid pain and go with fun things, why wouldn’t you? If you could live your life in comfort, pleasure and feeling good everyday… why wouldn’t you? Huxley seems to think most of us would. I would agree. Most of us do. Television and entertainment is a huge industry. We decide everyday how we want to live, and most of us to some extent, spoil ourselves with distractions. Video games can be a rewarding experience, the thrill and excitement and relatively low risk involved. The low risk may be the deciding factor, after all, in video games, the work and effort we put into it amounts to very little that’s translatable to the world we actually live in.

    And about the world we live in?

    Of course, we are integrated into our surroundings. Much like our so advanced cell phones — if taken away from the system it’s invented for — it becomes useless junk. Likewise, we can’t really go back. We can learn to make fires, hunt under the sun and eat wild berries, but it’s questionable how long our soft bodies and our soft processed-food digestive systems can last. we wouldn’t really want to go back either — unless it was temporary ‘fun’.

    So to save ourselves, Moore’s film ends with a call to arms against the powers that be. This seems kind of obvious — that we need to do something for ourselves — although his film might have been better said for the masses to awaken and stop being so self involved.

    The biggest issue, I believe, with ceasing self indulgence has to do with our general sense of purpose. As a people, there doesn’t seem to be a very strong regard as to our sense of meaning or well being.

    Many different contemporary thinkers have wondered at how “in flux” meaning in our day and age is, aptly but ineffectively bringing up a multitude of explanations, none of which have any strong certainty about them. Contemporary thought has bred several giants in our day and age who attempt to give voice to our ennui. Lyotard is credited with coining “Postmodernism”. Derrida wrote tons of books about “Post-Structuralism” of which the most famous phrase is “The center is not the center”. While there are many different ways to ponder why this is, it’s best to approach this issue historically to address the “how”. Philosophy for a long time was a kind of secular theology basing its structure around the structure of theology. So, in a poetic way, it makes sense that the lack of religion today means the end of the master signifier. Without a single signification to anchor how we should approach meaning, our world becomes increasingly fragmented. This makes sense culturally as well, since in an international village where a variety of voices are given credit, there can’t help but be a multiplicity of views. In terms of ontology, we can turn to the last great Ontologist: Towards the end of his life, Heidegger wrote an Introduction to Metaphysics. The last part of the book discusses the “ought” of which Heidegger credits Kant with bringing up — the last kind of being is split into values and ontology. People’s values support an ontology that expresses how people think things should be. Historically this is fitting. Heiddeger wrote this in the fifties. Perhaps still reeling from the end of Facism, the world was split into two major camps: Capitalism and Communism — both of which had several different modes — and all of which vied for what they thought life should be. That Heidegger should see fit activity with ontology — and how ontology should be justified — seems a frightening thought. Perhaps this was his attempt to incorporate what he saw happening — but could not make understandable within an ontological system.

    Nonetheless, his prediction about the justification of values proven almost too true. Today, between political parties and pundits, revolutionaries, terrorists and foreign diplomats, our current media explosion of meaning and dialogue isn’t a response to a lack of meaning but exactly what Baudrilliard writes about — Hyperreality. Signification works on its own level to justify itself to an abstracted sense of the universal even if we do not know what a universality is between people: What rights should be, or what kind of humanism pervades culture, even if we have an offering of a variety of points of view. In a very real way, this fourth ontology is lost among the massive amounts of dialogue. Hyperreality affects ontology as a suspension of the ontological metaphysics of presence, making the question of ontology almost irrelevant.

    I don’t concur with Baudrillard’s brand of nihilism (even if I agree with his lack of universal content). More importantly though, we have lost the ability to decide for ourselves what should be as this network of significant obscures our ability to attain any kind of Metaphsics of presence. While Moore doesn’t have this level of dialogue in his film, Moore seems to think that we should have a Second bill of Rights to guarantee our middle class lifestyle be available for everyone — and it sounds good at first — but in terms of an ontology and the production of meaning, this doesn’t make sense. Now granted, his film’s purpose isn’t trying to decide for us the meaning of life, but it is trying to suggest how it is we should live. And how we should live directly connects with how we access universal notions of humanity, society and productivity.

    The last bit about productivity is off of Heidegger’s beaten track. To address productivity, we can turn to Marx and Wallerstein. Both write that the middle class is the key to engendering a stable society. The middle class act as ‘managers’ to production, ‘oppressing the poor’ and acting as the body for the ‘rich’. If both writers are are are correct about the role of middle classes — then making everyone middle class as Moore suggests would be the end of our civilization as well know. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean the end of civilization — just the end of what we know. After all, if there were truly only 2 classes, the workers and the rich then civilization should collapse because the workers would see that their leaders had everything. Of course, if we are imagining a hypothetical future, then why not have robots (ala the Matrix) do all the hard work? but that doesn’t really solve the issue of people becoming complacent or themselves robotic qua workers. Already we get the common complaint about our cubical brothers and sisters — who go in during the morning on a coffee high and then work themselves into another coffee stupor in the afternoon only to go home, celebrate the latest tv show and then pass out in bed. So while productivity can be suspended it does not directly addressly the issue at stake:

    Even if we were to recognize that our society was stolen from us, who would care? Without an originary access to the universal there isn’t any reason for us to do anything. If we don’t ‘get’ how things should be and we are not embodying that metaphysics of presence, then there can be no purpose to doing one particular thing over another. All our distractions — our toys, our drugs and our entertainment become so much more satisfying only because any direct connection to a satisfying life isn’t possible.

    This brings us back to the original thought… and Moore’s title the thought about money.

    Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus wrote that money is the master signifier. Taking Marx one step further they demonstrate in a more direct way that the cycle of money, M-C-M and C-M-C can’t be broken. Money is the ultimate commodity and money is exchanged, ultimately for itself since the value of a thing is its monetary value. Theoritically nothing is changed but everything is different when Marx wants us to short circuit the cycle and take money out of the equasion by taking it directly out of the hands of the managers. But first, a quote from Deleuze and Guattari

    Let us return to the dualism of money, to the two boards, the two inscriptions, the one going into the account of the wage earner, the other into the balance sheet of the enterprise. Measuring the two orders of magnitude in terms of the same analytical unit is pure fiction, a cosmic swindle, as if one were to measure intergalactic or intra-atomic distances in meters and centimeters. There is no common measure between the value of enterprises and that of the labor capacity of wage earners. That is why the falling tendancy has no conclusion. A quotient of differentials is indeed calculable if it is a matter of the limit of variation of the production flows from the viewpoint of a full output but it is not calculable if it is a matter of the production flow and the flow on which surplus value depends. Thus the difference is not canceled in the relationship that constitutes it as a difference in nature; the “tendancy” has no end, it has no exterior limit that it could reach or even approximate. The tendancy’s only limit is internal and it is continually going beyond it, but by displacing this limit — that is, by reconstituting it, by rediscovering it as an internal limit to be surpassed again by means of a displacement; thus the continuity of capitalist progress engenders itself in this break of a break that is always displaced, in this unity of schiz and flow. In this respect already the field of social immanence as revealed under the withdrawal and the transformation of the Urstaat is continually expanding, and acquires a constitency entirely its own, which shows the manner in which capitalism for its part was able to interpret the general principle according ot which things work well only providing they break down, crises being “the means immanent to the capitalist mode of production.” If capitalism sis the exterior limit of all societies, this is because capitalism for its part has no exterior limit, but only an interior limit that is capital itself and that it does not encounter, but reproduces by always displacing it….”If the movement does not tend toward any limit, if the quotient of differentials is not calculable, the present no longer has any meaning….The quotient of differentials is not resolved, the differences no longer canel one another in their relationship. No limit opposes the break, or the breaking of this break. The tendency finds no end, the thing in motion never quite reaches what the immediate future has in store for it; it is endlessly delayed by accidents and deviations…. Such is the complex notion of a continuity within the absolute break.” In the expanded immanence of the system, the limit tends to reconstitute in its displacement the thing it tended to diminish in its primative emplacement. [Anti-Oedipus 230 – 231]

    In other words, the there is no end for the system to reach either for the nation-states (peripheral or center as Deleuze and Guattari go on to talk about in a very Wallerstien-esque way) or for the workers within capitalism first who find their life blood sucked away first into dollars per hour and salaries before then finding that same earned money sucked away from them in the form of commodities. On both ends, does m = m + surplus value or, in other words, our lives in exchange for pleasures, with no end in sight. We might be wearily working our minds to the bone typing away at work staring at a monitor (the labor of which is then subsumed by corporations) or we might be wearily working our minds to the bone staring at the vast internet or satelite television… in the big picture, we pay for our own creations (which is the impetus for revolution)! But alas, it makes no difference. If money continues to be the master metric which defines all our efforts like some Mastercard commercial that enforces to us that what’s priceless — i.e. without price (being worth so much it can’t be comodified, or worth so little it can’t be comodified) then that kind of master metric we give to our lives signifies that our lives have no absolute no value themselves being priceless. Each (hu)man according to her talents, perhaps, but also according to her discipline to get up in the morning, to the job opportunities available in her local area, to the assets she already owns (work clothes, a car, a place to live… shower and get dressed) we become useless to the job market without the things that surround us. a computer to find a job, a car to get to work, money for the bus, clothes to wear to work, an education, a common language

    Never before have we found our lives without intrinsic value. Perhaps that is the true horror of measuring everything by money. in Moore’s film he has a segment about workers who are insured by their companies — who continue to profit from their employees even when their employees die. This segment is tragic to their families because it shows them directly how much (or how little) their surplus value really is….

    Breaking this cycle is perhaps impossible, given our current ontological sophistication. It operates as a kind of stand alone complex. Marx was unable to explain where capitalism came from. He’s also unable to explain how it might end, except through some kind of miracle Proletariat uprising, which won’t happen as long as people remain hypnotized as vanishing mediators for the passage of money. we might have drank ourselves to death in past nations, but today we sit ourselves — bore ourselves — to death. Without a universal content there remains no impetus for us to do anything. Moore might appeal to the highest law in our nation. but that won’t work, you realize. the system would have to collapse to shock us out. A sudden disruption of the cycle of M-C-M and C-M-C cannot be stopped, by natural disaster as people will just build it back up. In a way, the system has to grind to a halt like surplus trash such as in Pixar’s Wall-e although even then, people continued to exist in some kind of suspended techno-world of hypnotized pleasure.

    Kojan Karatani in Transcritique examines how Marx and Kant are related — but he also offers this advice for us to step out of M-C-M into a zero sum system of barter and exchange. it’s not enough to awaken workers into Proletariats but also the same individuals need to waken as consumers and choose not to participate in the cycle: the parallax gap that splits production into the two modes of M-C-M and C-M-C needs to be consciously undone. In other words, let pork become pigs again…. and let employees stay human.

    I think what’s at stake here, if you don’t follow, is not just a question of how we should live. If anything Moore’s position actually doesn’t go far enough if only because he is still enamoured by STUFF, a house for everyone, a car. The utopia upbringing he talks about from growing up in — that he wants to bring to everyone — is a 50’s daydream — the epitome of being-consumer. Solutions offered to the problem in his film (but not in his film) do exist. But it’s not enough to complain about our loss of freedom or to strive for small government. While our civil liberties are definitely important just like the poorest of the poor’s standard of living — what’s at stake is far more important because our very meaning in living and being alive is what will initiate and maintain any kind of revolutionary change in society. This kind of revolution in consciousness is not something we can easily conceive of because it requires we jump axises. Our current state of legality — like philosophy — marks of our inability to coalesce our subjective differences. It’s not so much as Baudrilliard claims that the multiplicty of meaning destroys any meaningful referent itself — but that as a people, we can’t choose between the many meaningful referents. We are too distracted. Given any political event, like the advent of wikileaks or Russia’s refusal to disarm nuclear weapons — there arises any number of commentators who would have us believe contrary things. Our paralysis — our inability to select just one — becomes our inability to select anything — which then becomes our inability to care. After the news we change the channel and forget about what’s at stake. Conceptually we may reserve the universal ‘citizen’ as the person we are all slotted to be — legally or otherwise — the limit to what is an allowable subject. But when given so many choices in the free market, like so many comments, we can no longer find justification for our daily lives. Why this hamburger? Why this restaurant? Why/what Feminism? Why drive this car? Why choose this life partner? Why have children? Why this clothing store? Why are we alive? If we always choose to do things that make us feel good and look good, we lose sight of what is actually good. Now, I don’t mean that like wall-e we should forgo our technological slumber in favor of walking on our own two feet and cleaning up the planet ourselves (rather than letting robots do it).

    Ethical responsibility isn’t in particular actions — and this is especially where Karatani’s Transcritique becomes useful — Marx misses ethics and Kant misses the ability to talk about our every society in concrete terms– ethics is in EVERY action. Any (non)action IS an ethical action. We are not abstracted subjects or even consumers. We are human beings who embody our own resource production and distribution and our lives are statements not just for ourselves but for how we should all be. We can carry the weight of the world. Every action IS a universal action, not in the multicultural sense of (“imho” or “for me”…). This is the gap where Sartre entered after he stopped writing. He began to do rather than just write. Most of us often shrug and say what can we do? Think globally and act locally. Slogans do abound — the answers are right in front of us — if we can distinguish them — but postmodernism as a lifestyle or a philosophy is harmful. Living in a world where everything is equal and a Presidential Administration can claim they are victors and say they write history even before any material change has occurred is not the world we should embrace. We still do have a choice. I don’t mean a choice between paper and plastic, I mean a choice as to how we want to live. Unfortunately such a real choice may no longer easily exist as an option for many of us, as long as we continue to work, buy our food, and drive our cars.

    Choosing to uninstall a program isn’t the same as not using a computer… even though not using a computer means wasting more trees… The answers don’t lie within an axis of money or no money or between small or big government but within the values we choose to have and the responsibility and accountability we embody to our fellow human beings.

    1 Mostly edited by my good friend Mabbish. Thanks!

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