paul van der walt via nettime-l on Sun, 21 Apr 2024 04:53:33 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Swipe, a Smart Phone Movie by Mieke Gerritzen/Next Nature 

Christian,

I'm curious about whether you're making a theoretical or practical point.

On 2024-04-20 at 14:49 +02, quoth Christian Swertz via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>:
> [...] this one:
>> How not to be parasitic to the point of necrotrophy?
> is easy. No car, no airplanes etc. Less computers too, of course. No consumerism.

I understand you're saying that in some sense the practical answer is easy - we know how to get ourselves out of the particular eco-collapse mess.

>> but it's still uncertain whether we can choose not to.
>
> is simple to: No. "We" cannot. [...]

You also point out that realistically, since we have so little (none?) influence being merely single organisms in this "super organism" that all humans form collectively.

Do i understand your argument correctly?  If so, it leaves me feeling like perhaps it's a bit of an intellectual dead end - given these two observations, there doesn't seem to be a rational argument to be made to not live our last days hedonistically, while Rome burns, as it were.  An impasse is sketched, where doom is inevitable and our only influence is over us and ours.

I don't imagine this is your standpoint, but on the other hand i don't feel like i can refute either your "obvious solution" nor the observation that it's extremely unlikely we'll be able to coordinate and implement it, humanity-wide.

Perhaps that's something to just try and make peace with.  It leaves me feeling like i'm missing something, though.  This might stem from my received western-ish capitalist-ish worldviews where everything can be done with enough technology/goodwill/idealism (strike through as appropriate), which is of course a fairy tale.

Kind regards,
p.
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