I am in agreement with:
“that this accident must become our necessity, a necessity whose impure technological, but also social, economic and political conditions are alone what make possible the exercise of collective intelligence, belief, wisdom and decision. The temptation is always to say that freedom and democracy are the fundamental requirements for making good collective decisions, and yet the absolute failure of the West over the past two years means that these ideas must absolutely be subjected to critique, where the latter is never a denunciation, but an interrogation of their ‘pharmacological’ limits"
I think is built from the post-WWII/post-Cold War mythology in which the Democratic Capitalist Neoliberal Military-Industrial complex and its excess of wealth borne from those conflicts became dogma for the future. But that unchecked neoliberalism, along with a similarly unchecked Californian Ideology in creating a technocratic hyperplutocracy that created a faux algodemocracy through social media call ideology back into question.
This may sound like a reductive questioning Western Democracy as if 1: it has not had a morphology over history, and 2: it is homogenous throughout the West. Conversely, I have wound up in Facebook conversations that have devolved into epithets with personages like Baruch Gottleib who almost uncritically state China is the future, with its glittering cities, while I have met the Dungan and Uighyr who fled to Eastern Kyrgyzstan. From my standpoint, Stiegler’s observation of (American especially) democratic failure was seen clearly from my standpoint in Arabia, as Trump was deftly manipulated by much of Asia (which America does not comprehend, let alone understand) from MBS to Kim Joon Il, and the UK’s suicidal move towards Brexit.
What has resulted is a dark molecule umbrella-ing much of Asia under Russia and China, with the latter engaging in financial colonialism in Cen tral Asia and Africa, such as the usurpation of the port of Djbouti and the new Silk Road initiative, signalling that America’s strong-arming against nations like Iran. Will work fiercely against its own interests.
What this screed attempts to illustrates the truth of the above, but then not being quick to castigate the West in favor of far more restrictive system(s). Social Media, in its necessity for more attention-capital, privileges the lunatic fringe under the framework of faux populism shaped by plutogratic Algorithmic manipulation.
What are the indices out of the predicament? Leadership, yes. Consensus – this assumes privilege and status for those with enough information to make a “saving” decision, which, of course, “seems” like the rational, logical dec ision, ignoring the age of disinformation.
This comes back to leadership and vision and the ability to steer/command the resources of nearly 8 billion people, including a developing world that feels it has not gotten its spoils yet. On the other hand, the result in not achieving this is the realm of the necropolitical, or merely moreso, as humanity may be in the position of a necessary decrease in order to survive.
In the end, I agree that while democracy in its current forms have to be re-examined, the automatic alternative is NOT authoritarianism. Perhaps the Dutch model, which assumes a certain sensibility not held throughout the world, or new paradigms, which will emerge in the coming decades. I agree what the Western paradigm must be questioned in its unsustainability, but at this time, it seems like no major paradigm is sustainable.
I muse back again on Deleuze and Foucault and mechanisms orf power to critically interrogate the West without throwing the proverbial baby out with the democracy.
Patrick Lichty
website: http:://www.patricklichty.com
email: voyd@voyd.com
instagram, twitter: @patlichty
From: <nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org> on behalf of Sean Cubitt <sean.cubitt@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 4:45 PM
To: "nettime-l@mail.kein.org that this accident must become our necessity, a necessity whose impure technological, but also social, economic and political conditions are alone what make possible the exercise of collective intelligence, belief, wisdom and decision. The temptation is always to say that freedom and democracy are the fundamental requirements for making good collective decisions, and yet the absolute failure of the West over the past two years means that these ideas must absolutely be subjected to critique, where the latter is never a denunciation, but an interrogation of their ‘pharmacological’ limits"" <nettime-l@mail.kein.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Covid and the crisis of neo-liberalism
thanks for circulating Patrice
there's a great piece responding to similar issues by Daniel Ross (aka Stiegler’s translator):
https://mscp.org.au/plague-proportions/this-pandemic-should-not-have-happened
a flavour:
"Anthropogenic climate change and the systemic limits with which it is associated indeed define the fundamental emergency situation with which we are confronted today. The possibility of facing up to this emergency depends on recognizing
seán
Seán Cubitt | He/Him
Professor of Screen Studies
School of Culture and Communication
W104 John Medley Building
University of Melbourne
Grattan Street
Victoria 3010
AUSTRALIA
scubitt@unimelb.edu.au
New Book: Anecdotal Evidence
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/anecdotal-evidence-9780190065720?lang=en&cc=au#
Latest from the Lambert Nagle writing partnership
https://books2read.com/u/4NXA1W
<snip>
The comprehensive crisis of neoliberalism may have unleashed creative intellectual energy even at the once-dead centre of politics. But an intellectual crisis does not a new era make. If it is energising to discover that we can afford anything we can actually do, it also puts us on the spot. What can and should we actually do? Who, in fact, is the we?
As Britain, the US and Brazil demonstrate, democratic politics is taking on strange and unfamiliar new forms. Social inequalities are more, not less extreme. At least in the rich countries, there is no collective countervailing force. Capitalist accumulation continues in channels that continuously multiply risks. The principal use to which our newfound financial freedom has been put are more and more grotesque efforts at financial stabilisation. The antagonism between the west and China divides huge chunks of the world, as not since the cold war. And now, in the form of Covid, the monster has arrived. The Anthropocene has shown its fangs ? on an as yet modest scale. Covid is far from being the worst of what we should expect ? 2020 was not the full alert. If we are dusting ourselves off and enjoying the recovery, we should reflect. Around the world the dead are unnumbered, but our best guess puts the figure at 10 million. Thousands are dying every day. And 2020 was a wake-up call.
Adapted from Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World?s Economy by Adam Tooze, published by Allen Lane on 7 September
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