Paul David Adkin's Blog, page 48

WISDOM vs. ENJOYMENT or HOW TO START THE REVOLUTION (PART ONE)

In his book “Tarrying with the Negative” Slavoj Žižek makes a very lucid association between enjoyment and national identification. The binding force of the State lies in its perception that the subjects of each nation have a particular way of enjoying themselves. Of course this ties democracy to a hedonistic rock: it is not the good that matters in politics, but the enjoyment that it ensures – or the good is defined by the enjoyment. Capitalism exploits this national inclination to enjoy, unleashing the full power of it by motorising it with it via consumerism’s will-to-want-more.

Of course this unleashing itself is an inherently dangerous act, for under its tenets, in order to have what we want we must have whatever we want – and in order to have whatever we want we need to have the freedom of the Master, and the Master’s freedom is derived through his/her power. This power is sustained by its power over slaves, which is absurd for, in theory, there can be no slaves in our modern concept of democracy, or at least no slaves who are conscious of being slaves. Or perhaps the resolution of the paradox lies in that very unconsciousness: if there were such slaves they must be unconscious ones, likewise driven by the will to want more enjoyment. Each of the System’s unconscious slaves vainly misinterprets him/herself as a master, with a master’s dignity, jealous of the enjoyment of the others.

The driving force of the consumer-will is a breaking apart dynamic with a negative chaos tendency that is undesirable and must be resisted. The consumer-will needs to be controlled, and so we arrive at State Capitalism, which is one step toward a more total control. Žižek was right to associate fascism with capitalism: “the fascist dream is simply to have capitalism without its excess, without the antagonism that causes its structural imbalance.”[1] In a slaveless society of Masters, the norm is that of Frazer’s myth of the King in the Wood.

That story which Frazer used as his starting point for his anthropological study in the Golden Bough is supposedly mainly an invention of Frazer himself. Nevertheless, factual or not, as a metaphor of power it itself is a brilliant piece of unveiling mythology. Its image of the priest-king, sword in hand, stalking the woodlands and lake of Nemi, anxiously anticipating the arrival of a rival who will come and slay him is an extension of the Oedipal myth that dominates the subliminal structure of our civilisation. But, what is the way out of this forest?

Lacan called knowledge “the enjoyment of the Other”. According to him the very function of knowledge is motivated by its dialectic with enjoyment. [2]  We want to know things because we want enjoy things. The hysteric intertwines knowledge and enjoyment and makes it his/her own because the hysteric wants to make him or herself to be known, which they can only do by being desired as something which can be enjoyed.

But if knowledge and enjoyment are entwined, what is consumerism’s relationship with knowledge? Capitalism vulgarises knowledge, reducing it to the simple – if you know it exists you will want to buy it. Knowing is propagated superficially and misleadingly through the medium of advertising.

Yet, what if we were to modify or reinvent the relationship by seeing knowledge itself as the predominant factor in enjoyment. The pleasure comes from truly knowing something, not just knowing of it. Enjoyment now becomes a Sapiens’, [3] authentically human concept. To love it is to know it. And to know it as it really is, rather than to know it in the way we are told to know it. To see it as it really is rather than in the way it is shown us. In Lacanian terms, knowledge is a slave to the Master Discourse of the system, so, in the same terms, what is needed is a liberation of knowledge from the slavery to this Master’s Discourse. In order to do this Lacan gives three suggestions: objectify it; analyse it in a subversive way; or “hystericise” it.

If the Master Discourse which is geared toward maintaining the Master-system’s own power to enjoy whatever, utilises a seduction motorised by a vulgar desire to enjoy, then any analyses geared toward knowing before enjoyment and focusing on the idea that authentic pleasure is found precisely through knowledge, will be essentially subversive. For example, Stoicism, if practised today, would have to be seen as an absolutely subversive philosophy.

What the global, capitalist civilization wants its subjects to know is that language is not enough to tackle the breadth of what she as a system can offer as enjoyment. What is really important to capitalism is that she can be seen as the system of all systems. Through her discourse the whole world should come to know what a precious, invaluable object she is.

Capitalism regards the information age as its own invention. Information, therefore, is regarded by the System as the System’s slave, and, in the most part it is. The revolution, any revolution against the information manipulating Master, must be geared toward turning information into knowledge again. This can only be achieved by making information the Master itself, instead of the slave to the Other Master. Revolution then, as we see it, is a liberation of knowledge.

Once knowledge has been liberated from the shackles of the global capitalist system, it will be able to renew its discourse with enjoyment again. A discourse which can be authentic now, for without the self-interested manipulation of consumerism, it will be free to be deontological and ontological again. Knowledge can be knowledge again, allowing the human to be truly Sapiens for the first time.

[1] Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative

[2] Jacques Lacan, Seminars XVII

[3] See our articles: http://pauladkin.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/what-happened-to-humanity/

and: http://pauladkin.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/the-will-to-necessity-is-stronger-than-the-will-to-survival/

WISDOM AND LAW

“…out of what knowledge does one make law?”[1] asked Jacques Lacan. What knowledge should the System possess that grants it the privilege of making laws? Knowledge or power? Or perhaps we should ask, what knowledge should power possess? Here the should hangs heavily: it should possess lots of knowledge, after all it is making the laws which means it is creating justice, and isn’t justice born out of wisdom? And doesn’t wisdom imply a possession of knowledge? But the should is heavy because this is not necessarily the case. In fact, the correct answer – correct according to praxis – is that power does not need any knowledge other than the dogma of its own ideology. Knowledge is variegated whilst ideology is monochrome. As such, knowledge has to be avoided by power as it starts to stain its own monotonous ideology with colour and this makes it too hard to clearly define one ideology from the others – so important when the time comes to vote. And so we see that it’s the democratic system, and indeed the demands of the voters themselves that creates this turning away from knowledge that seems so characteristic of the System and its Parliaments.

Power gives us laws, and what would wisdom or knowledge give us? A sense of grace or virtue: the acquiring of the habit of virtue. The System based on laws tells us what we must do, even though the demands of power may be a contradiction of real needs. For example anti-ecological, pro-consumerist laws like the commercial laws regulating planned obsolescence (notably the light-bulb conspiracy) at a time when resources are depleting; or laws that regulate abortion or other contraceptive methods in times when demographic expansion is becoming unsustainable. A system based on knowledge and virtue would be able to comprehend reality and real needs. If wisdom were to make laws instead of power, justice might even be possible.

Perhaps we need to take the blindfold off justice and let her see as well as hear.

[1] Jacques Lacan, SEMINAR XVII, XV22

EINSTEIN’S MESSAGE FOR POSTERITY

 

I’d like to reproduce Einstein’s Message For Posterity.

“Our time is rich in inventive minds, the inventions of which could facilitate our lives considerably. We are crossing the seas by power and utilise power also in order to relieve humanity from all tiring muscular work. We have learned to fly and we are able to send messages and news without any difficulty over the entire world through electric waves.

However, the production and distributuion of commodities is entirely unorgansed so that everybody must live in fear of being eliminated from the economic cycle, in this way suffering for the want of everything. Furhermore, people living in different countries kill each other at irregular time intervals, so that also for this reason any one who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror. This is due to the fact that the intelligence and the character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.

I trust that posterity will read these statements with a feeling of proud and justified superiority.”1

How deeply we have betrayed that trust. Where is progress?

1 Albert Einstein, OUT OF MY LATER YEARS, Philosophical Library Inc. New York, 1950, p.18

 

Being in the World

In Dasein, subject and object are unimportant as opposites. One is the subject and the object just as the world is subject and object. I open my eyes and see the world or the world before me is mirrored in my gaze, projected on the screen of my mind. The world outside is within me as projection, within us. We are in the world and the world is in us. But no sooner is it within than our mind projects it outwards again. The mechanics of perception is a vital example of the inextricable bonding of the interior and exterior realties of reality. When you see me I am mirrored in your eyes. You are my mirror and I am yours. We are the world’s mirror created by the world.

ON BEING

We don’t create Being, but we illuminate it through our perception of it. Being, through us, who are part of Being, is able to perceive itself, understand what it is and what it has accomplished. Here may lie the root of all psychological difficulties – for how much does a human mind conform to the needs of Being? In the objectification needed for reason to know, isn’t there also an alienation occurring that pulls us away from the pure experience of Being into the experience of knowing Being? But even if this is the case, that experience must be desired by Being because of the illumination it receives in exchange.

Heidegger expressed this idea when he says that man is “gathered toward preserving, by that which opens itself.”[1] Heidegger’s poetic-philosophical image is that of a world that opens itself before us, drawing us towards it, in a certain sense seducing us. A seduction which is irresistible because the nature which desires to be illuminated by human intellect is the same nature that has created that intellect, and through illumination becomes Being.

From this it becomes useful to separate the concept of nature from that of Being. Existence is that which is whether it is perceived or not, whereas Being is existence fulfilled by illumination.

The human relationship to Being is not the only one, and all life that perceives illuminates, but this is not our debate. The real essence of what we’re saying is that our real meaning for being-in-the-world needs to be found, perhaps even measured, by the way that we can illuminate existence and contribute to Being. From this comes a simple ethical statement: that which illuminates and contributes to Being is fulfilling experience and therefore good; that which contributes to Non-Being is bad.

In this way our relationship to Being can be analysed qualitatively through the notion of knowing. Presencing existence maybe enough to illuminate it, but understanding it establishes a relationship on a deeper level. To be is to be known, but to be understood is to be enriched in that knowing, and it is through that relationship of enrichment that we come to the concept of authentic Love. Through knowing the object or thing, through knowing its reasons and objectives, we enrich it. The search for truth is always a search for authenticity in knowing. Only truthful knowledge can really be enriching for the Being of the object at hand. Only an authentic relationship built on an authentic desire to know and understand can be considered an authentic relationship through the process of being cognised. The perverted love, on the other hand, masks its authenticity in order to be taken for something it would be, but is not. But herein lies the psychological condition of the human being as the inauthentic one, the one who lives behind, not one, but a collection of masks, all designed to embellish themselves before the humanity we are all made to stand before. Lacan’s mirror stage – we face the world and try to become as they would have us. Human psychology, and the cultures and civilisations that this psychology itself perpetuates, drags us away from authenticity itself. Before we are capable of knowing who we are, we are already convinced that we should be something else. But, if this is the case, how can human consciousness ever authentically know anything else? Yet, this question is irrelevant because self-cognition is impossible, and for this reason our cognising of the other is so important. The subject can only know itself through the judgement of the observer. And so we come back to the starting point – our authenticity lies in our being-known. In fact, what is important is not how we see ourselves, but how we are perceived by others. Yet, how should we take this – that the embellishment is good if we are favoured by it? Of course this contradicts our earlier conclusions, or seems to. Perhaps it just describes our perverted condition of continually turning our backs on authenticity in order to embellish our reality. It does not negate the existence of those who through concerted effort through spiritual exercise or perhaps even through what we would call innocence, reject the mask and strive for, or maintain, an authenticity. Neither does it negate the idea of authenticity as an ideal of a goal. Mankind is not forged from metal and the psychological make-up of our natures is malleable, depending very much as Heidegger pronounced it, on the metaphysical perspective of our age. What we are proposing is the alteration of that metaphysic which will have an effect on the very psychological condition of our age.

[1] Martin Heidegger from the essay THE AGE OF THE WORLD PICTURE, in The Question Concerning Technology, p. 131

THE END OF WORK AND THE DEATH OF MONEY

Marx estimated that the introduction of power-looms into England reduced the labour required and subsequently labour costs by a half. Technology as it now stands has reduced labour costs in factories and warehouses to minimal levels – in many cases the only costs are those of the energy consumption of the machines and that of human maintenance of machines. It would not be science fiction to imagine that in the near future machines will be designed and programmed to maintain and reproduce themselves and that renewable energy technology will be developed providing a much cheaper, or even free, power source for machines, eliminating the human labour force in manufacturing completely.

Presently the human labour force is being shifted away from manufacturing into services and sales, design, programming, and maintenance. But with the development of robotics there may also be an immanent invasion of android workers coming. Once dexterity issues are overcome, these humanoid-machines, with more efficient information systems that have been programmed so that they work untiringly on specific tasks, could easily also begin to operate on a wide-scale in services, sales, programming and maintenance, and why not even design.

The immediate problem arising from this would be the realisation that human labour could become unnecessary. In a system like ours, in which all reward and satisfaction, even the idea of fulfilment itself, is subject to the individual’s sacrifices in the labour market, the logical evolution of technology towards the abolishing of labour must be impossible. We are faced with a paradoxical situation: we live in an advanced technological society, but the purpose of technology, which is to substitute the tedium of human labour and create a better world, is not allowed to fulfil itself because such a fulfilment would destroy the system of exchange and rewards for labour sacrifice that are the fundamental basis of our money-making system.

Here is the real essence of the System’s crisis. The relationship between production commodities and labour is one in which the latter is constantly shrinking whilst the former is rapidly growing. Eventually this relationship, which is already impossible through its inbuilt contradiction, will become absolutely unbearable. Full employment in modern capitalist society is impossible without making human labour cheaper and more efficient than machine labour. The current system of exchange – of sacrifice and reward via the concept of the production and purchase of commodities and services – is already obsolete. Unemployment is not the result of bad economics and political management, it is a necessary part of the exchange system as we have it.

The only way to remedy our economic absurdity and all the serious problems it creates is by removing one of the conflicting elements in the contradiction. Either technology has to be frozen or the exchange/reward system has to be radically rethought. Of course the most radical way of rethinking the latter would be to ask ourselves how a human society might exist without any exchange system at all, or how a complex technological society might function without money.