brian carroll on Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:02:59 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> nettimespace unentangled - part 2 |
[i've been informed the originating post on abuse was not in reference to me, yet the follow-on posts did seem to extend this to my work so i am going to continue with making the case about the status quo in which ideology has constrained what is possible, and the role of ideas in reasoning beyond this, where everyone is on the same side of the situation, even if having widely differing viewpoints] --- * what if the price of thinking were considered in terms of the 'conflict' of ideas, conflicting ideas as part of the cost of doing such business - that this is a natural condition for mediating ideas, which may be juxtaposed even opposed, and it becomes a question of how this is going to be mediated and the success or failure of doing so - in terms of the ideas themselves, would also be accounted for in some way. that is, that maybe there is a burden involved in all of this, that includes engaging the problems of thinking and the difficult aspects, not just the cheap easy and free use of ideas for other agendas, and instead, the responsibility of ideas to the foundations upon which they are built, in truths developed over lifetimes, of substance, and greater worth than any individual thinker alone. then, what if this aspect of thinking and sharing of ideas, concepts, views, beliefs, speculations, was to not be grounded in a common language, in a common logic, in a common truth or reasoning-- that is, everyone can be talking and saying things, yet there are no bridges between the ideas, the thoughts, the truths espoused, necessarily. and instead, as with relativism, each thinker can recreate a worldview even universe unto themselves, and if divine call this infinite and preach such a gospel. that is basically the situation today, in the extreme, because without a common foundation for relating across viewpoints, on shared issues, the reasoning is fractured to points of view which are based on bias and distortion of individual points of view that have no empirical relation in which to build a larger perspective. and, it is questionable as to the 'ideas' being considered, how accurate they are to modeling a larger reality than that of any given individual if they are not checked and balanced by other (external) views, which may contradict claims or beliefs which are said universal. in this sense, the unconnected fragmented pursuit of ideas devolves ideas into simplistic ideology in which, regardless of external facts truth or evidence to the contrary, one's point of view is supreme, which tends toward divine despotism. this is also entirely privatized thinking, which may itself function in terms of market economics no less, that if others believe in the model being presented, however subjective or distorted or biased, that a private empiricism (and even Empire) can rise around these ideas which are largely not related to outside points of view of fact, logic, reasoning, open debate, etc, which would obligate the ideas to be grounded in relation to the claims being made as a result. that is, the ideas as ideas could be short-circuiting in terms of truth, logic, facts, reason, yet it would be unnecessary to have to acknowledge such a situation, based on the exploitation of this privatized position of power in hierarchical structures (education, institutions, groups) which can use privileges of authority (positions of power) to circumvent checks-and-balances, transforming the public review of ideas based on empirical facts, argument, into one of a belief system, which if one does not like it then one can simply make another choice as to their (private) beliefs, or leave school. this then turns the process of reasoning ideas, which has gone on for centuries, into a private affair which functions only at the limited or constrained levels which are available in the thoughts, as they are believed to exist. which effectively is to say, questioning has been answered within an ideology. "i believe this idea means this". (external: 'what about this?') "that is not how i see it..." ad adsurdum. i.e. anyone can say anything about anything, yet it not mean anything to anyone else, i.e. babble. this is the curse of relativism, in which every facet becomes tangential to every other viewpoint, and in the denial or ignoring of the common geometrical connections, the larger in-formation is unseen. without a grounding in common facts, truth, logic, and reasoning which is public - this can become a finite limit and boundary for 'ideas' which are interpreted by private thinkers, using private language, private logic, private viewpoints or identities, and private reasoning that only people who can engage or accept ideas on these terms (of private engagement) can partake in this private empiricism, and thus build up an empire of such private thinking by which to then go on to declare larger truth which is not 'public' truth, and thus held in contest and competition with the other private worldviews and viewpoints in the 'marketplace of ideas' - which is largely being exploited in capitalist terms to keep things functioning just as they are today, which is beyond a doubt absolutely corrupt and broken and short-circuiting -- and even fascistic in its development and means of limited action -- all of which is directly related to the role of ideas and their success and failure in modeling the nature of reality, in the terms they exist and not only as they are believed to be, -- that thus there is some issue of the responsibility of ideas to be grounded in relation to a greater truth, reasoning, shared viewpoint that today is absent in thinking that is institutionalized and professionalized -- which now is only ideology. * this is to say, the loss of 'reason' in ideas, in thinking, in the education system, in government (congress, senate, legislation) -- this is ultimately a loss of the ability to think, and thus the ability to act, effectively, in relation to what exists, based on (enlightened or responsible) reasoning which is a failure of the assumption that this remains the basis for the Western worldview: public reason is not guiding the affairs of state: this has been entirely privatized, and in particular, by those in academics. this is to say, empirical reason that is public has been lost (through historical failures of issues to do with philosophy and their not being resolved) to devolution brought on with paradigmatic changes in the 20th/21st century transition, which has been mediated online, through the metaphysics of theory, oftentimes, yet which requires 'grounding' which has ceased to exist in the old and existing approach and that this is demanded, necessitated, absolutely 'critical' to engaging situations as they now exist and failing to do so is supporting, instead, the further automated (cybernetic) development of these conditions which give rise to fascist decision- making, of state machinery out of control, and people who serve them, including unthinkingly in academia which feeds this system through its denial of empirical truth, logic, and reasoning within its own systems, and beyond checks and balances just as the .US Congress ceases to represent the citizens, so too, educators cease to foster public truth. 9/11 is the result. the War in Iraq is the result, having no ability to publicly, empirically _reason that this ambiguity is not acceptable at the levels of checks and balances, versus what is being claimed. that this was largely based on a 'theoretical' premise: not a hypothesis which is speculation, not a thesis which can be disproven, instead, 'theory' which is making laws which are universal statements which, from a private relativistic perspective can be argued as absolute truth, given the privilege of perspective, and because of these language games (based in private language, private logic, private identity, and ultimately the privatization of reality itself) there is the situation today ::: which is directly tied to the 'thinking' of today which exists beyond empirical truth, shared truth, which is free-floating truths, subjective, untethered, without responsibility to a greater perspective of this questioning and only on the terms and within limits that this private viewpoint makes as conditions for engagement. why is there problem with .US legislation regarding 'climate change' or 'global warming'? because, it is called 'a theory'. that is how the ideas which are empirical and legitimate are being dismissed, by the status quo ideology that is completely privatized and without checks and balances, and can be exploited by power which then becomes the overriding determiner of truth, by its self-representation. who is to blame for this 'theory excuse'? is it the Bush Administration who is responsible for this? no. it is those in academia who allow this to exist as an environment which is antithetical to real thought, and not some make-believe fantasy which can be delusional, despotic, mad, and outright abusive. of power, privilege, right, responsibility, which is being exploited by private people - who happen to be teachers/educators - over the public good - who happen to be students and citizens. the trade-off of this exchange in the university system is that public ideas lose to private ideologies and this occurs in a hierarchical system where ideas have become detached from their grounding in (objective) 'truth'. this is to say, oftentimes, in the existing academic system that a private belief system (akin to religious ideology) may be the terms in which 'ideas' are being mediated, between teachers and students, as to progressing with 'ideas' in this system, which has become saturated in ideology. that is, the role of relativism, private realities, subjective reasoning, opinions, ungrounded speculations. then, the student is to be graded as to how they perform with the pursuit of their own goals in relation to this status quo, which is in essence a question of how well they engage or are able to fit into this indoctrination into a private worldview, as it exists, from the perspective in which it exists. this is essentially making a public student conform to a private teachers limited, biased and distorted worldview in order to succeed to the next level. that is, it is the submission (student) and domination (master) of ideas to ideology, of the public agenda to its privatization, of empiricism to Empire, etc. the responsibility to public truth, public facts, public knowledge, empirical evidence, peer review, of any acknowledge of any of these is optional at best, if not outright ignored because of the ideology of choice, and its exploitation in service of power, privilege and privatization of perspective which leads up to the abuses that are exported elsewhere (Iraq, etc) that have become the status quo by which young minds are being formated in what amounts to behavior animal training, ala Skinner, Pavlov. "nothing gets the ignorant salivating like theory" because all responsibility to ideas is disregarded for the cheap easy and free thrillride of exploiting institutional mechanisms via absolute privatization of the mind, which serves well the ruling corporate ideology, which has become government (corporate democracy) which has led, through its self-representation, to a corporate dictatorship, the status-quo educational system feeding this mindset, developing it as an action, from start to finish- responsible for it, in terms of how ideas are grounded in the shared world of facts, whether it is ignored or not. thus, the failure of the .US government is actually also the failure of the .US education system, which while people may say they *stand against* this latest incarnation, are actually contributing to its very necessity by going to work and doing what they are doing within the system, day by day, as common functioning of this status quo-- in the realm of applied thinking that has become relativized, and thus subsequently privatized, without grounding in the larger public realm, which self-evidently exists in the dying of humans at the hands of other humans, _beyond reason, which is the responsibility of thinkers and academics and so-called 'philosophers' to uphold, that is, the relation between ideas and truth and reason and logic and reality, and not merely make-it-up-as-you-go short fiction. * thus it is not merely a "chip on one's shoulder" to dissent and stand against the educational system itself nor educators whose responsibility to greater truth has been abdicated, which in turn can take away the public and constitutional rights of students, to pursue a public reality and public issues, for the private divine dictatorship of teachers who can limit and bound anything to their perspective, and in turn, students may be called on to adapt, and if this is to do with thinking it can become peer and social behaviorist pressures, in which engaging this unfair and short-circuiting system : the status quo functioning is deemed sane and rational while the student is considered insane and irrational in not being able to conform to this situation, which is the opposite of truth and absolute hypocrisy. a student may have to take psychiatric pills to try to conform and subdue their oppositional thinking, their conflicts with these ideas which would require reasoning to work through, not mere submission to the authority of institutional and ideological power. in effect what can happen is that the schools are not serving the students and their growth and instead the students are serving the institutions and their growth instead, which is no longer the growth of new ideas, only the refinement of existing views and their extension as ideology. which, becomes a business model in terms of the privatization and branding of knowledge in markets which are largely controlled and monopolized and outside of public checks and balances in relation to claims being made versus what more actually exists. that a student may try to sue an institution because of this breach of rights depends on lawyers who can successfully reason this being the case, which could end up not being possible. and even those who are true educators may tell a student that if they want to work on their ideas they should and must leave the University, with several such teachers repeating such a phrase making it clear that this is the way of ideas, out of this environment, and into what amounts to the cost of such pursuits. what this amounts to is that, when a student who is capable of public reasoning enters into such an environment which has been privatized, they may try to reason from within such a relativistic and fragmented state of affairs, and yet find no one to reason with in public terms, in logic, facts, truth which extends beyond private individual points of view, which then condemns reason to failure in the institutions of learning, which instead becomes rote mechanization of ideologies, which either are to be conformed to, or the participant is rejected by the system for not being able to adapt. imagine, for instance, if someone was presenting ideas online today that are expert-level understanding based on empirical facts, truth, logic, and public reasoning, yet this same thinking in the University was judged unfit by experts 15 years ago in the same particular field in which it was based - not because of facts, truth, logic, and reasoning and instead: private beliefs and ideologies, which took away the constitutional rights of a student, denying the truth of public ideas based on public thinking, because of institutional failures of reasoning which may not be an issue of free-will for the teachers, yet the cost to the student was equivalent to being cast into true hell, as a result. the teachers, it may be said, bear no personal responsibility for this, though it could be argued that they are culpable as all others for accepting this as the status quo, which is fascistic at the level it dehumanizes people into mere things, natural resources, animals and machines which can be treated as such, abused as such, and treated as unfit or even more: labeled as 'insane' for pursuing public truth and public reasoning based in public facts, public logic, and public perspective, within the supposedly public though thoroughly privatized educational system. from this POV it is criminal. that is, to exist as a sane individual and be labeled as schizophrenic, given psychiatric drugs by which to attempt adaptation, to fail integration, and then, essentially, to be broken til adapting to the system. it is this aspect that 'education' becomes 'state oppression' in that this is where the thinking of ideas is turned into the larger acts of the collective state. this denial of thinking and its policing by way of (the philosophy of) psychiatry is an enforcer to this private oppression of private subjective ideas which can ignore a larger truth, context, or empiricism, which has become detached from actual truth. and surely enough, if every system fails a citizen, they too will eventually fail themselves, by short-circuiting, yet this may not be an issue of free will and choosing to do so, and instead, having all options that were once available being whittled down to fewer and fewer until there are no other choices, and one is helpless to the situation and can only submit, doing so only in terms of survival. so, others may mock or look down at these failures, personal and otherwise, using this as advantage in the realm of ideas, where those that succeed institutionally are somehow more fit, while those which fail these systems are somehow less real, less worthy, less valuable, in terms of the claims being made versus what more actually exists. someone may discredit a public argument or idea based on bigotry or prejudice which has become institutionalized and 'professed' such as: "well, you're a schizophrenic... therefore..." which, also, is part of this privatization and exploitation of the role of private identities in defining what is real, true, good, etc, for those who are not the weaker, lesser, meeker, among those institutionalized. the point being, the educational system feeds this dynamic and lives off of the creation of these problems, which function ideologically and against ideas which are based in human interests and responsibility (to truth, say) and instead it functions in the interests of unintelligent bureaucratic machinery which seeks its own evolution through enslaving people to this worldview (who willingly volunteer), to submit to what amounts to machine values, machine ethics, and a machine worldview devoid of actual grounding in a shared world reality that is based on human knowledge and insight and governance, versus the cybernetic machinery of today. this fascism informs all that it enables to be enacted, as an ideology based on assumptions related to ideas, questioning of which can be 'ignored' in this cybernetic (feedback-based) system, which if it does not have the actual feedback it needs ("this is fascist!"), it will only continue to refine itself in these terms, which is of private corporate machinery run amok, universities being the training center. the lack of responsibility to uphold the checks-and-balances of ideas, based in empirical truth, leads to this cybernetic mechanism being able to evolve beyond the boundary or responsibility to this fact, which in turn, facilitates the creative science fiction of theorists, unbound by public responsibility to the empirical grounding of their ideas in a shared reality, by which to check and balance arguments, versus the creation, by venture (intellectual) capitalists as 'optional futures' by which to evolve this larger cybernetic mechanism (the state itself and all minds formated by given ideology accordingly). in this, there is complicity in the status quo for how educators educate and institutions function, as if on autopilot in relation to these corrupted practices, which is then seen in the policies of state which are also, likewise, unbounded by constraints of rule, law, fact, with regard to public reality as it is then privately interpreted and represented (believed or not) so as to pursue power through politics. in this sense, academics are paving the way for this as a methodological approach to the creation of ideology by which to apply as a means-to-an-end, regardless of any truth that may stand in the way. that is, academics are equally as corrupt as the politicians today - only moreso: for the mirror is not yet on them, and this can all be ignored as if out of place, another subjective opinion, in poor taste. dissent of the educational system, in terms of the institution of the reigning fascist-breeding ideology, is not to dissent the role of academics in public ideas, thinking, reasoning, it is to dissent the lack of this as being a principle by which institutions now perform and fail to perform their duty: to ideas, to the truth of what exists, and not the theology of belief systems and faith in assumptions proven wrong yet repeated anyway, because there is no personal expectation or responsibility to uphold this truth, this *accounting* of philosophy, of ideas in relation to a reality they model and are to represent. this is to say, the University culture is no different than Enron and other *accounting scandals* - not in terms of money -- in terms of ideas and their private use and abuse in the application of power. the failure of the education system necessitates the cybernetic short- circuiting of 9/11, by which the state as cybernetic organism requires so as to evolve beyond its existing limits and constraints which it is required to, as an automated machine - beyond the question of free will, if it is _limited in options by which to proceed-- and this failure is one of thinking, of minds, of ideas grounded in a shared empirical reality, that has been discarded in academia for _fictions and privatized reasoning and relativized perspectives which cannot allow the sharing of ideas, because of status quo ideology. that is, the system of checks and balances within educational system have been lost. it is a corrupted system, it is doing more harm than good, with respect to what is claimed versus the actual results of this education: imagine, you have 9/11 and an entire educated of 300 million people cannot come up with a better argument than 'terrorism' by which to proceed to engage issues as they actually exist. is this really the failure of the .US political system if what is 'represented' actually represents this very ignorance, willful even if cynical, is this not actually an effective 'democracy in action' which is most effectively representing 'terror' as an ideology, in policy, as an ideology, and a success in being able to do so, in terms of placing these ideas into action, to program the software of the collective state and millions of minds, that yes, this is the subjective argument, the private reasoning, the relativist slice of the infinity we can reality, incorporated, and this is what exists, how, and thus making it so. 9/11 is not an aberration, it is an extension of the loss of public reason within academia that leads to the loss of public reason within government. it is the loss of public reason within individuals minds, as they are being indoctrinated into privatized thinking by ideologues in what amounts to indoctrination, which has led to the imbalances at larger and smaller scales. psychiatric diagnosis in individuals, say with fragmented views unable to be made whole (empirically grounded) are not the failing of people, it is the failing of institutions to allow this to exist, which then scales up to a schizophrenic state, in which such fractured thinking is said to represent reality, to the point of madness as state policy... * therefore, in this more complex consideration of ideas and institutions, the public view would be a bit different than that of the ideological status-quo and, an example of this being 'conservatives on campus' who rail against this very dynamic between teachers and students, where teachers will not allow certain thinking to enter into consideration and will limit what can be pursued within education. they are absolutely right in this claim, yet this is not a partial issue of a particular group or cause, this is about human rights and representation and constitutional rights, the right to think, the right to one's own beliefs and not having to submit to those of a teacher, in order to get ahead, etc. that is, there exists a dilemma which transcends all the existing portrayals in that they are shared human conditions which are relevant for everyone, as human beings, in relation to this cybernetic machinery which has become fascistic and works against human interests and those of a larger shared state. to deny one person's rights in an educational institution is ultimately to deny everyone's rights, if it is a human right that is being denied. because, what ultimately is denied is a human idea, a reality which is needing to be engaged so as to evolve (and survive and thrive) and thus, without these ideas in this institutional context being free to exist and grow, the actions which they would enable would also die out, go extinct, through this malfunctioning of those who would rather serve machinic monsters devoid of spirit or human purpose. that is, people have given their rights over to an automated machinery, which enslaves us and trains us through behaviorism and social darwinistic techniques, by which to evolve what amounts to robots and apes and machinery (cyborgs) while we lose our humanity as a result of this trade-off of ideas for status-quo ideology (which is now dehumanized). * for instance, imagine if there was an unjust if illegal global war which went about snatching up people who it represented as enemies of the state, democracy, which then proceeded to put these humans in cages without trial for years on end, and submitted them to all forms of pressure, in which to break them, including torture. for years. without human rights. without constitutional questioning. without international conventions, rules of war, rights of prisoners of war. disregarding conventions. imagine that some of these humans may be totally innocent, yet have been treated so badly as to go on mass hunger strikes, to protest and seek outside intervention of this situation. to the point where, if dying, these people would be strapped into restraining devices to force food down their throats so they may be sustained as a living organism, as a natural resource, so to maintain this situation in the terms it exists, as machinery based on policy which represents said government and its people. now imagine if in all of this situation there is utter silence and then, 3 people commit suicide and what is said to have happened in this instance is that these human beings 'commited an act of war' in doing so, in killing themselves, against the needs and desires of this machinery and how it is represented. that, of the 300 million citizens, no one can successfully argue in their 'democratic' government why this use of torture, indefinite imprisonment, potentially false charges, are not against the principles, the very ideas which constitute the democratic state itself? i.e. that torture has somehow become equivalent to a personal prerogative of one's person's rights over another, in order ot have freedom. that is, one person's private freedom is allowed to take away another person's, based not on shared (open and transparent) fact, truth, reason, logic, and instead, on a relativistic accounting of 'reality, inc' as one sees it, as it is represented in the status-quo which operates this way in its every action. that is, how could an educated country not reason that torture is not freedom, that tyranny is not democracy, that privatization is not simply public interest, that relativism is not so easily universal? if there were total silence would this not indicate the *failure of educational system* to enable such basic thinking which is grounded in a shared public reality - and its absence an indication of the total inability to reason, empirically, with regard to occupying this shared field of endeavor, responsibility, that the education system has fundamentally failed in *accounting* for the truth of this situation, in terms that should enable any citizen to stand up and successfully reason why this is unacceptable and must be condemned and *does not represent* the human public, and instead only a private view which has become that of private dictatorship that wields power beyond and behind the constitution. this Guantanamo Prison uprising happened, people died, the rest remain, and this 'war of terror' will be able to continue until *the responsibility* of citizens is given to _public ideas, facts, truth, logic, and reasoning, by which to counter this existing and ongoing privatization, versus existing in the shelters of hypocrisy that only further validate the culpability of individuals who have conformed, that it is this thorough and total corruption within systems that also effects and influences individuals within them, that the price of this should not, must not, and cannot be one's very soul: or can it? it now becomes a choice whereas it may never have been before, to have another option than the status quo, even if it is to suffer the consequences of dissent- and that is, to speak public truth to private power, and this is to include the divine dictatorship of the self which can meld reality to its own liking regardless to the facts or the effect is has on others, which can be disregarded and dehumanized, allowing people to only exist as apes and machines, even if the evidence is otherwise, complex situations demanding it if reasoning ideas and not simply ideology. this sliding scale of experiences and judgments being quite humbling to any all encompassing and all conquering worldview which ultimately can turn one's eyes into mirrors, instead of windows, which then can blind one to one's own internal absolutism and subsequent hypocrisy, which if truly believed, would be a state of madness so extreme as to be dangerous. * this may be the basic condition in which, through a short- circuiting of public reason, the ability of private power to represent total reality is placed as a potential future, and may inhibit each individual who tries to navigate via a decentralized process of empirical reasoning, the conflicts which arise between points of view, which compete in terms of competing private worldviews unless grounded in a shared realm, which places everyone on the same side, as human beings, with varying aspects of what this means in a world of machines and states and different needs, goals. that is, the price and burden of engaging in ideas, as ideas, may require or necessitate a submission to this public reality, public logic, public thinking, public language, public identity that is shared, so as to engage these issues, which otherwise have been silenced within this status-quo. that is, to share in the larger reality would mean to become engaged with ideas beyond existing ideology, to serve the truth not power firstly, to allow paradox and complexity to exist and be humbled by empirical reason, and rewarded for doing so by its opening up unbounded exploration and infinite insight into the workings and mysteries, and to pursue such ideas as human beings (public and private) though from this shared perspective, as a foundation, which can be shared at the scale required for engagement in this day, for the issues faced, in the context required. as a psychology which sustains human reality. what is gained is public reality, what is recontextualized is everything, empirically, albeit with changes that are dynamic, validating truths where they exist and discrediting those that should not be given any more credence than they are due: this would enable an *accounting* to occur between public ideas and private ideologies which would overturn the old paradigm, through education, and invert this situation to one where what is being held back, sustained yet in silence becomes an advantage, for this public reasoning that is suppressed, held back by these false limits and private conjectures will be torrential when shared as a public reasoning, based in a common and public humanity, that by nature and default, belongs in this position, observer and observed, and must now be claimed... [cont.] brian thomas carroll: research-design-development ~e-list -- groups.google.com/group/electronetwork-l # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net