Re: <nettime> Should use mobile phone data to monitor public health

[Joseph Rabie <joe@joetopia.org>]

Dear all,

Continuing from Brian:

> If anyone is looking for a core problem in philosophy or political science
> to work on over the next few months, maybe this is it. I reckon the
> questions above are not exclusive alternatives. Instead they begin to mark
> out the contested/consensual space in which the new social paradigm will
> emerge. No ready-made answer on the basis of preexisting concepts and
> attitudes can fill that space.


In terms of the social paradigm that characterizes current individualist liberal society, here are three transformations that have contributed to it over the past several decades:

1) The end of obligatory military conscription:

In many countries, "manhood" began with military service. Beyond the particular defense needs of certain countries, this was seen as a "debt owed to society". Conscription ended, however, when military technology evolved from a "cannon fodder" mass army model to one based on highly trained and technologically equipped professionals. In France, for example, military service ended in 2002.

The correspondent mindset, the acceptance that one's country had the right to call upon you to renounce your individual autonomy, has faded.

2) Easy money:

I remember, as a child, going into a bank. There was a comic strip on the wall, inciting clients to parsimony: it patronizingly narrated how someone who wanted something should spendthriftingly save up until he (in a male dominated society) could afford it. Spending money one did not have was considered morally reprehensible.

Now people are pushed to take out loans to buy consumer goods, in the interests of corporate profit. One's social value as an individual is judged by one's capacity to consume.

3) A reversal in the family balance of power:

In the old days, children honored their parents (for better or for worse, one might add). This role has been reversed: the family unit revolves around the child's material needs well beyond food and lodging (for which parents expected respect and obedience in return). Perhaps this came about when advertisers realized that children constituted a bridgehead into their parents' wallets.

For many hyper-individualistic millennial children, parents appear to play the role of an "after sales service".

Perhaps the lesson this virus will teach, is the need to reassert the collective's prerogatives, certainly insofar as the coming fight against ecocide is concerned. Though this will in all likelihood be much more a question of the collective against the corporations, than the collective against the individual.

Stay safe (from locked down France) -
Joe.




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