Max Herman via nettime-l on Mon, 1 Apr 2024 15:27:40 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Persuading China; and, of the Necessity of Knights-Errant |
Some say it is best to let things collapse in all realms of society severely, starting in 2024 and continuing for the next few decades, before trying to salvage or rebuild them. This applies to any number of areas, like democracy, the climate, culture, and world peace, because after all you can’t push the string. Others will see and hear those people talking and will prepare for the worst, that is, invest in it, perhaps with sums that are too large not to succeed. This is often how unnecessary wars and misery happen, too much tit for tat, not enough comedy of the commons. Too much tragedy, more than is needed, more than is good for the health. Many leaders, so-called, fall into these two groups. When they reach a critical mass they prevail; all things fall and are built again, and those who build them again are gay, their ancient glittering eyes are gay. In today’s terms, this dynamic of best-middle-worst possible outcomes centers on, as usual, war or peace, what some call the Peloponnesian dilemma: a rising power China and whether it will war with extant power the United States, and if so, how badly for how long. Whatever is spent on this war, by both sides, perforce won’t be spent on the climate, eco-preservation, art, human health, and so forth. Much human waste historically occurs when one group decides they have to topple a stronger group on principle. We call it waste when the toppling isn’t necessary, doesn’t succeed, costs a ton, makes a big mess, and would have been better avoided, like the US-Soviet Cold War and many similar wars. How long must the “weaker half” of the planet pool its resources to overturn the “stronger half,” endlessly pursuing a reversal of fortune which even if attained would help nothing? Forever? +++ Persuading China to take a different path than this automatonic classical one, should it by some fortunate chance be accomplished, will require words, ideas, images, and who knows maybe even (as with the Soviets) music. It won’t just be accomplished by money and guns, and if only money and guns are brought to bear they are likely to just throw gas on the fires of combat, injury, and hate. The consciences and better angels of each side must also be brought to parley, to parlement even, and try their best too just as the collapsians and rebuilderbergers must try theirs. This is all as it should be and as it always has been. Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha, was such a one as these, by which I mean, one of those who try with words, images, songs, and ideas. He lived, albeit only in people’s imagination, at the start of modern times (1605) when two other large groups, Europe and the Ottomans, stood locked in combat. In many ways that fierce battle formed the modern world in which we still live; conflict between Europe and Asia (or thereabouts) was then as present as now. What did Don Quixote say about war? Well, he spoke often about the word “experience” for one, an open secret code word (I’d aver) for secular art and science in those early modern days, and in fact the true allegorical name of La Gioconda, La Joconde, the Mona Lisa: Esperienza, which Leonardo called circa 1503 “the common mother of all the sciences and arts,” “the interpreter between humans and nature,” and “the one true maestra,” pledging himself her “disciple” and vowing “as maestra, to acknowledge her, and in every case call her as evidence.” Cervantes uses “experiencia,” Spanish for experience and experiment, a full 38 times in Don Quixote, and mostly (but not always) in the most bold, modern, humorous, and philosophic passages of his epic. This word is, I must continue to assert, the exhortation, by mirror if you will, of humans to learn by means other than war and might-makes-right. (Learning also means geometry, the measuring of land, and the shaping of society, among other things.) It started in Latin as “experientia” but revived in later medieval times to join modern language when modernity started to think about being born. For example, “the Countenance” said to the quizzical and somewhat ambivalent poet Don Lorenzo: “Many a time,” replied Don Quixote, “have I said what I now say once more, that the majority of the world are of opinion that there never were any knights-errant in it; and as it is my opinion that, unless heaven by some miracle brings home to them the truth that there were and are, all the pains one takes will be in vain (as experience has often proved to me), I will not now stop to disabuse you of the error you share with the multitude. All I shall do is to pray to heaven to deliver you from it, and show you how beneficial and necessary knights-errant were in days of yore, and how useful they would be in these days were they but in vogue; but now, for the sins of the people, sloth and indolence, gluttony and luxury are triumphant.” “Our guest has broken out on our hands,” said Don Lorenzo to himself at this point; “but, for all that, he is a glorious madman, and I should be a dull blockhead to doubt it.” +++ And what is it that such knights-errant do? “So far,” said Don Lorenzo to himself, “I should not take you to be a madman; but let us go on.” So he said to him, “Your worship has apparently attended the schools; what sciences have you studied?” “That of knight-errantry,” said Don Quixote, “which is as good as that of poetry, and even a finger or two above it.” “I do not know what science that is,” said Don Lorenzo, “and until now I have never heard of it.” “It is a science,” said Don Quixote, “that comprehends in itself all or most of the sciences in the world, for he who professes it must be a jurist, and must know the rules of justice, distributive and equitable, so as to give to each one what belongs to him and is due to him. He must be a theologian, so as to be able to give a clear and distinctive reason for the Christian faith he professes, wherever it may be asked of him. He must be a physician, and above all a herbalist, so as in wastes and solitudes to know the herbs that have the property of healing wounds, for a knight-errant must not go looking for someone to cure him at every step. He must be an astronomer, so as to know by the stars how many hours of the night have passed, and what clime and quarter of the world he is in. He must know mathematics, for at every turn some occasion for them will present itself to him; and, putting it aside that he must be adorned with all the virtues, cardinal and theological, to come down to minor particulars, he must, I say, be able to swim as well as Nicholas or Nicolao the Fish could, as the story goes; he must know how to shoe a horse, and repair his saddle and bridle; and, to return to higher matters, he must be faithful to God and to his lady; he must be pure in thought, decorous in words, generous in works, valiant in deeds, patient in suffering, compassionate towards the needy, and, lastly, an upholder of the truth though its defence should cost him his life. Of all these qualities, great and small, is a true knight-errant made up; judge then, Señor Don Lorenzo, whether it be a contemptible science which the knight who studies and professes it has to learn, and whether it may not compare with the very loftiest that are taught in the schools.” “If that be so,” replied Don Lorenzo, “this science, I protest, surpasses all.” “How, if that be so?” said Don Quixote. “What I mean to say,” said Don Lorenzo, “is, that I doubt whether there are now, or ever were, any knights-errant, and adorned with such virtues.” It was to this Don Quixote replied per above. +++ Poet and scholar Mary Baine Campbell has a fascinating recent essay from 2010 about the early modern quest for a “homunculus” and how it relates to both science and metaphor. It is titled, “Artificial Men: Alchemy, Transubstantiation, and the Homunculus.” She writes: “My recent research into the issues of parthenogenesis, homunculi, and the Jewish golem is focused on the seventeenth and even eighteenth centuries, where the mythical and alchemical combine with the biological in ways that establish the ground of current commercial and ethical debates about cloning…. My hope is that this article can not only consider a new avenue to the dominant place of metaphor in this transitional period, but also open further the question of what is differentially at stake in xenophobia and homophilia and their related but separate monstrosities. Can we learn something about the fatal instinct to project a monstrous other, from hypertrophic signs of the instinct to propagate a monstrous same? A look at the history of European aspirations to the artificial production of a man may tie the art of alchemy, at least in its popular and allegorical forms (but perhaps even in its more pragmatic metallurgic form), to the history of the fate of metaphor—the supreme figure of early modern European poetry.” Early modern poems and metaphor “establish the ground” of “current commercial and ethical debates”? Curiouser and curiouser! This would however agree with our itinerant Cervantes, former prisoner of the enemy for five long years, and his encyclopedic sense of mission not to mention his ability to see the legion adversary of all human conscience in wind-driven grinders of grain. Campbell very likely knows historian of science Pamela Smith’s exploration of “artisanal epistemology” as in her books The Body of the Artisan (2004) and From Lived Experience to the Written Word (2022), both about early modern alchymistry; and Campbell continues into the even more topical “little human” of AI/GPT: “Of course, software programs, artificial intelligence and now even so-called artificial life have been a major interest of philosophers as well, and the issue of autonomy an ethical problem that can only increase in interest and urgency under the pressure of work like Jordan Pollack’s (see note 22).” Was there ever a metaphor to counter, oppose, or defy the mechanical logistics, network and otherwise, of such homunculi, Machiavelli’s means to every end, the machine-learning of evil capable of conquering a planet, which is to say, the all? Who is there to break a lance, scribble a pen, or daub a brush, and in defense of what Dulcinea? On what possible grounds can we even hope or begin to hope that amor non malum vincit omnia? +++ Cervantes, or I should say, the actual author of the history -- Cide Hamete Benengeli, “Arabian and Manchegan,” somewhat of a hybrid himself -- is not so stingy as to deny us an answer. He tells us flat out: “Experiencia itself, the mother of all the Sciences.” In this he sides with his jolly band of other early modern innovators, improvisers, authors, and adapters, such as John Redford’s 1530 “Play of Wyt and Science,” Montaigne’s final essay “Of Experience,” Dante’s Paradiso I & II, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale (whose first word is "Experience"), Roger Bacon’s “Of Conjecture,” and Francis Bacon’s 1620 Novum Organum (which uses “experience” thirty-odd times, declaring it “our sole resource” and the only stable foundation of the sciences). There are dozens if not hundreds more. Today, amid quite modern authors, one may find meaningful mentions as in Benjamin’s echo of Kant’s echo of Bacon and the first’s “new system of philosophy” based on experience, or in Benjamin’s German, Erfahrung und Erlebnis; John Dewey’s many book titles include “Experience and Nature,” “Art as Experience,” and “Experience and Education." But let us read the more Quixotic, that is to say, vernacular expression of our hero’s ethos: The goatherd took it with thanks, and drank and calmed himself, and then said, “I should be sorry if your worships were to take me for a simpleton for having spoken so seriously as I did to this animal; but the truth is there is a certain mystery in the words I used. I am a clown, but not so much of one but that I know how to behave to men and to beasts.” “That I can well believe,” said the curate, “for I know already by experience that the woods breed men of learning, and shepherds’ huts harbour philosophers.” “At all events, señor,” returned the goatherd, “they shelter men of experience; and that you may see the truth of this and grasp it, though I may seem to put myself forward without being asked, I will, if it will not tire you, gentlemen, and you will give me your attention for a little, tell you a true story which will confirm this gentleman’s word (and he pointed to the curate) as well as my own.” To this Don Quixote replied, “Seeing that this affair has a certain colour of chivalry about it, I for my part, brother, will hear you most gladly, and so will all these gentlemen, from the high intelligence they possess and their love of curious novelties that interest, charm, and entertain the mind, as I feel quite sure your story will do. So begin, friend, for we are all prepared to listen.” One mystery yet to be solved, for those of the lock-picking profession, is what “Hamete” and “Benengeli” mean for the name of the author. I offer this: “hook or messenger of good angels.” After all, the Quixote is all about the “bad angels,” enchanters and shape-shifters, who seek to divert and confuse the knight with their devilish illusions, and the “good angels” among whom one might say Don Quixote counts himself: those who try their level best for good. And what is a pen (supreme, suspended, or otherwise) but a line, and what a line but a hook to engage, the Latin vocative “hamate,” and who is Leonardo’s “ermete filosofo” but the alchemistry of Campbell? Who can help us choose from among the good angels and the bad bad baddies, which to praise and which to resist, which to heed and which to armor ourselves against? Only Esperienza, Dulcinea, Experiencia, the mirror; that is, the metaphor of learning which is itself learning, philosophy moral or natural, which is to say the love of wisdom, its honor and its defense. +++ Yet further, Experience carries onward to our very day, time, and political scene or stage. Blake got it from Dante, and saith in All Religions Are One (1788) “the true faculty of knowledge must be the faculty which experiences; Of this faculty I treat.” He wrote from time to time about the mystical chymistry he used to etch his metal plates for printing words and pictures; he understood metaphors, let’s concede. Hamilton started his Federalist Papers, advocating constitutional democracy in 1787, with the four words “After an unequivocal experience...” and ended them in 1788, quoting Hume in their final paragraph, using EXPERIENCE in ALL CAPS: “These judicious reflections contain a lesson of moderation to all sincere lovers of the union, and ought to put them on their guard against hazarding anarchy, civil war, a perpetual alienation of the states from each other, and perhaps the military despotism of a victorious demagogue, in the pursuit of what they are not likely to obtain, but from TIME and EXPERIENCE.” Can all this early modernism about homunculi and errant poets move China to learn? One might counter that they, like every autocracy which has ever been, are “all in” on Machiavelli – it is better to be feared than loved – and the digital homunculus of facial recognition, social credit, cognitive conformation, and goodness knows what else. Party thought which blends Marx and Confucius can often seem immune to conversation. Yet we must not despair, because as el globo de plomo sang in their by far most alchemical song about Jacob’s ladder, “yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run….” And remember too the rural Chinese agricultural reforms of 1979-1989, when the miraculous central control by computer of the largely biological process of growing grains from soil nearly starved the nation until they reverted to human intelligence, the knowledge of the huts and woodlands: Kelliher’s 1992 book “Peasant Power in China” tells the tale. We might see such a flowering of knowledge, and of the knowledge of knowledge, yet again. Indeed it is guaranteed that we will, just not when we will. And China, like even Russia, has poets of its own; one might well say they are everywhere and that they have nothing but poets. Would they only become knights-errant! Yet again, as sage Don Quixote said: “…[As] it is my opinion that, unless heaven by some miracle brings home to them the truth that there were and are [such things], all the pains one takes will be in vain (as experience has often proved to me), I will not now stop to disabuse you of the error you share with the multitude. All I shall do is to pray to heaven to deliver you from it, and show you how beneficial and necessary knights-errant were in days of yore, and how useful they would be in these days were they but in vogue.” There is also, perhaps, the alchymistry of ancient China to lend its voice, the philosophers’ stone (both plural) or Cintamani of Buddhism, the Elixir of Life of Lao Tzu, the mighty I Ching of changes and chances, the knights and knights-errant of ancient Eastern emperors, epic journeys to the west, and poems, and paintings, and music. There is horsemanship, farming, and meditation as medicine. Nothing in principle requires that moving in the direction of rights and laws, which some few portions of Europe have painfully and grudgingly attempted in the past despite their stubborn nature, is not possible, nor that it cannot be honorable and even glorious. One might think or suppose that China is too far gone, too chained at a molecular level to the foul homunculus currently inhabiting its neighbor, a monk-like demon of despair to the northwest whose ignorant abjuration of decent goodness is its professional qualification – to lie and assassinate, the chief arts of every spy and secret service, the opposite of to tell the truth and negotiate – and being thus chained must perforce sink like a millstone to the very bottom of control’s abyss. Nothing could be further from the truth! Sir Leo of Tolstoy remains in the field to battle by words regarding both peace and war, with sword and shield unmatched by the monk’s Machiavellian factories and software; and the path of decent responsibility and honorable trust in peace is never beyond reach. “Prepare as thou must for the worst, but take care thou kill’st not the best in fear or haste.” This too is the story told us by arch-alchemist Faust, the Marlovian one, whose magic makes for him a wish list of today’s global tech goods and services: FAUSTUS. How am I glutted with conceit of this! Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please, Resolve me of all ambiguities, Perform what desperate enterprise I will? I’ll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl, And search all corners of the new-found world For pleasant fruits and princely delicates; I’ll have them read me strange philosophy, And tell the secrets of all foreign kings; I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass, And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg; I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk, Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad; I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring, And chase the Prince of Parma from our land, And reign sole king of all the provinces; Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war, Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge, I’ll make my servile spirits to invent. +++ Written that same year, or thereabout, 1604-1605, we might thank history for, is our friend and comic hero the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. He tells us quite plainly to observe, and learn, and understand: They now came in sight of some large water mills that stood in the middle of the river, and the instant Don Quixote saw them he cried out, “Seest thou there, my friend? there stands the castle or fortress, where there is, no doubt, some knight in durance, or ill-used queen, or infanta, or princess, in whose aid I am brought hither.” “What the devil city, fortress, or castle is your worship talking about, señor?” said Sancho; “don’t you see that those are mills that stand in the river to grind corn?” “Hold thy peace, Sancho,” said Don Quixote; “though they look like mills they are not so; I have already told thee that enchantments transform things and change their proper shapes; I do not mean to say they really change them from one form into another, but that it seems as though they did, as experience proved in the transformation of Dulcinea, sole refuge of my hopes.” Therefore we can try to persuade, and must, lest the willing be not persuaded. As with the vernacular metaphor of early modern improvised evasion of bureaucratic party monopoly in Europe, we might pay heed to the power of ordinary individuals and groups within the autocratic bloc to make changes and might also encourage them at least verbally, when possible, in doing so. As Kelliher writes: “Here, then, is the puzzle. Peasants using the same methods to manipulate policy won in the case of family farming but were stalled (after great gains) in the case of marketing. And in containing this peasant effort to loosen the marketing system, the state reversed policies that had brought it spectacular success in its basic domestic program. Why did peasant power falter? And what drove the state to this Pyrrhic victory? “The reasons for the backlash of 1985 derived from the anxieties lurking in the heart of the state’s relationship to the peasantry. The conservative reformers who forced the backlash were driven less by reasons of state than obsessions of state: obsession with finance and control. In finance, conservatives believed that rising farm-good prices jeopardized both industry and the central state budget. This turned them against the peasantry, for the administrative structure of the economy locked the state into a financial alliance with industry against agriculture. And in the question of control, the conservative reformers were obsessed with central suzerainty over peasant labor and decision-making.” (Kelliher, p. 141) This historical narrative can be contrasted with the current revival of a Mao-era practice sometimes called “the Fengqiao Experience,” in which local communities enforce party doctrine from within on a somewhat decentralized basis. This practice has recently been used increasingly to replace local elections, which had been encouraged to some degree by Deng Xiaoping and others around the time of the above-mentioned agricultural reforms. This revival is sometimes called “New-Era Fengqiao Experience [Jingyan]” incorporating digital and network aspects such as computerized learning, and its greater promotion has accompanied the increased central power recently observed to have made conscientious verbal expression by individuals more needful. +++ Olivia Cheung of the University of London writes in her 2023 book titled “Factional-Ideological Conflicts in Chinese Politics: To the Left or to the Right?” in Chapter 7, in the section titled “Spiritual prosperity: Promote the Fengqiao experience”: “Besides material prosperity, the other pillar of Xi’s common prosperity programme is spiritual prosperity. To promote spiritual prosperity, Xi reinvigorated the ‘Fengqiao experience’ of social control, which originated in Zhejiang historically. Mao commended Fengqiao as a party model for class struggle in 1963. It was recorded that Fengqiao’s party leaders worked very hard to indoctrinate the residents with Mao Zedong Thought. This resulted in strong socialist consciousness among the masses, who would willingly report to the Party other residents who they suspected to be ‘class enemies’ (Bandurski, 2013; Wang and Mou, 2021). Xi was not after reviving Maoist class struggle. He interpreted the Fengqiao model as a strategy of conflict de-escalation: grievances against the party-state should be detected early and pre-empted if at all possible. To this end, he advocates using digital technology to achieve precision social control. As the home province of Fengqiao, Zhejiang is a powerful symbol of the Fengqiao experience. It was also an early adopter of the social credit system, an automated system that uses artificial intelligence to monitor, reward and punish residents.” Clearly any successful attempt to persuade China of the value of peaceful economic and political development will require some kind of rapprochement or interface with this program of spiritual prosperity. Or in other words, as Cheung writes in her Conclusion: “As the ideological and factional spectrums evolved over time, so did the types of factional models on display. Political theatre models were the dominant type of factional models in the Mao era. They featured the use of theatrical techniques to carry out ideological indoctrination. Residents of the models were mobilized to carry out infrastructure construction in a campaign style (see Chapter 2). The opposite of the political theatre models were rightful resistance models, which were cultivated by the Party’s Right in the transitional period from the Mao to post-Mao era. They appealed to common sense and pragmatism instead (see Chapter 3).” All becomes clear when we peruse Chapter 3, as I just now have, finding an auspicious note to end on: “Regardless of how we might see it, Wan defended his vision to be socialist on the ground that collective land ownership was maintained. Market-oriented socialism underlined Wan’s campaign for the HRS [Household Responsibility System] – a major challenge against the rural party line. Throughout the process of promoting Anhui, Wan eschewed attaching any ideological labels to his actions. In fact, he couched his campaign in an a-ideological discourse. Specifically, it was the discourse that was purveyed by the conservatives since late 1977, namely that ‘practice is the sole criterion for testing truth’. It asserts that no policy is right or wrong a priori, even if a particular ideological perspective says so; moreover, it is only through trial-and-error that the best policy can be discovered (Baum, 1994: 58–65). The slogan originated in Mao’s writings but the conservatives and Wan used it to attack Mao’s socialist vision for rural China (see Chapter 1).” That writing is, not completely without coincidence, as follows, from Mao’s 1937 “On Practice”: “All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.” Mao then wrote in 1948, as if to square the circle, in “On the Policy concerning Industry and Commerce”: “Only through the practice of the people, that is, through experience, can we verify whether a policy is correct or wrong and determine to what extent it is correct or wrong.” In any case, to my novice understanding of Wiktionary, the four component characters of the Chinese word Jingyan (experience) are, right to left, roughly: all + horse/knight (meaning to examine, test, check) then flow + silk (meaning classics, sacred book, pass through); and do not these four elements taken together mean, if you think about it, a cognitive network in temporal motion? April, 2024 +++ Max Herman The Mindful Mona Lisa at Leonardo.info/blog ExperienceDemocracy2024.org/experience-democracy-is/ Commedia Leonardi Vici – free PDF of MS available on request +++ Links: https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/779/pg779-images.html -- Marlowe’s Faustus Don Quixote -- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/996/pg996-images.html Campbell article -- https://arcade.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/article_pdfs/roflv01i02_02campbell_comp3_083010_JM_0.pdf Blake -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Religions_are_One Federalist 1 – first sentence -- https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2014jeff21562v1/?sp=17 Federalist 85 – last paragraph -- https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2019amimp21561v2/?sp=380 Kelliher -- https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300105650/peasant-power-in-china/ Kelliher --https://books.google.com/books?id=orTPbQ8neCAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false Novum Organum -- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45988/pg45988-images.html Janeway -- https://www.oecd.org/naec/events/doing-capitalism-in-the-innovation-economy.htm Jung on alchemy -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_and_Alchemy Newton’s chymistry site -- https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/ Chinese alchemy -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cide_Hamete_Benengeli review of Peasant Power: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2949842 another review: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2058879 CSIS report translation of CCP doc -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep28757 Olivia Cheung chapter on “Fengqiao experience”: https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.5053561.13 Chapter on HRS -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.5053561.9 Entry for Jingyan (experience) -- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B6%93%E9%A9%97 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/16475/pdf -- article on Cide Hamete Benengeli https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci +++ -- # 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: https://www.nettime.org # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org