1. I find Chapter 16 moving and revealing. I feel as if observing somebody (a modern) who is asked to do something very difficult: to abandon his/her high moral ground. The Grand calculation of the common good has at this point something very pleasing for the modern: it works like a Cornucopia that produces a constant flow of goods towards the modern nations (as far as care is taken so that the Cornucopia continues to function). What can be the motive to abandon this pleasant arangement? (Would I , who say I am a semi-modern, have the courage to do this?). How difficult it is when the alternative arrangement proposed in AIME demands strong conceptual change (which means that intially it may be incoprehensible)? Why work hard to understand something that makes me more vulnerable?
It seems that the consequences of the current Grand calculation, the one that works on indisputable facts, are disastrous for the Earth and therefore for all of us too. But there are many ways to go about it. Perhaps some modern values have to go to sleep for a while. Perhaps negotiations can start after a period of war (as is often the case): a war among humans mediated by the crumbling of the biosphere.
Are the moderns not getting used already to the idea that it was wrong to set the exchange value of humans in an one to one base-no matter where they were comming from- (something that gets accute now because moderns know now much more and are way stronger, in the extent of the projects that they can undertake , than 40-50 years ago?) ? Don't we (the others) feel that there is gradually built a measuring device (using our memes, our beliefs, our learning prowness, our habits) that measures our humanness, our lives' worth (measured in units of "life of one modern")? That a member of a "companion species" in the proper setting may have much more worth than a human"wrongly composed" somewhere far away?
So there is this other option. Why would moderns go for the way of AIME? Or of Reset Modernity? (though I am nor sure if I do not misrepresent the AIME project here. It seems that there are so many people that feel beyond "humanity" in Western Europe today). As a semi-modern I can only imagine a spiritual reason.
To me it seems that the present situation pushes a devide amongst the moderns themselves. There are people who will go for utility (even if they try to be humane etc) and there are people who will risk the way that various spiritual traditions point to.
2. In AIME "the supreme duty" of every being, and therefore the ground of morality, is at the same time the ground of existence: "[Every existent has a supreme duty, which also defines its existence and "substance"] to explore through what other beings it must pass to subsist, to earn its subsistence, [to be Articulated]".(pg 454)The main duty, the sign of existing, the bond between all existens, is Articulation. Which is not a broadcast towards the void, like us sending a message for possible extraterestials, but it consists of alteration. "Is" and "ought to be" are summoned together in "[counting] how many beings an existent needs to pass through and how many alterations it must learn to adapt to in order to continue to exist".
It is tempting to read the last sentence as soaked by sweat, as a kind of war movie where the hero manages to kill the enemies and find himself in some safe heaven. "Life in the favela". But this misrepresents the splendor of this motion. (Now I am religiously influenced. For me every such aspect of moving alone is a participation in a dialogue with God: though in what I say, "is" is not separated from "being in koinonia")
3. pg 454 "If I exist through the other, which of us is the end and which the means? I, who have to pass by way of it, am I its means or is it mine? Am I the end or is it my end?"
But this is exactly a question that the societies of the moderns do not pose. They are my resources, they are my recruits. They are not my ends!!!
If we consider how modernization comes to us, traditional civilizations, then it comes in two steps:
a) all relations are considered power relations between individual agents and
b) I, the listener of the call of modernity, am called forth to consider others as my means. To be obidient to tradition is the cardinal crime, a dehumanizing act.
It seems that the consequences of the current Grand calculation, the one that works on indisputable facts, are disastrous for the Earth and therefore for all of us too. But there are many ways to go about it. Perhaps some modern values have to go to sleep for a while. Perhaps negotiations can start after a period of war (as is often the case): a war among humans mediated by the crumbling of the biosphere.
Are the moderns not getting used already to the idea that it was wrong to set the exchange value of humans in an one to one base-no matter where they were comming from- (something that gets accute now because moderns know now much more and are way stronger, in the extent of the projects that they can undertake , than 40-50 years ago?) ? Don't we (the others) feel that there is gradually built a measuring device (using our memes, our beliefs, our learning prowness, our habits) that measures our humanness, our lives' worth (measured in units of "life of one modern")? That a member of a "companion species" in the proper setting may have much more worth than a human"wrongly composed" somewhere far away?
So there is this other option. Why would moderns go for the way of AIME? Or of Reset Modernity? (though I am nor sure if I do not misrepresent the AIME project here. It seems that there are so many people that feel beyond "humanity" in Western Europe today). As a semi-modern I can only imagine a spiritual reason.
To me it seems that the present situation pushes a devide amongst the moderns themselves. There are people who will go for utility (even if they try to be humane etc) and there are people who will risk the way that various spiritual traditions point to.
2. In AIME "the supreme duty" of every being, and therefore the ground of morality, is at the same time the ground of existence: "[Every existent has a supreme duty, which also defines its existence and "substance"] to explore through what other beings it must pass to subsist, to earn its subsistence, [to be Articulated]".(pg 454)The main duty, the sign of existing, the bond between all existens, is Articulation. Which is not a broadcast towards the void, like us sending a message for possible extraterestials, but it consists of alteration. "Is" and "ought to be" are summoned together in "[counting] how many beings an existent needs to pass through and how many alterations it must learn to adapt to in order to continue to exist".
It is tempting to read the last sentence as soaked by sweat, as a kind of war movie where the hero manages to kill the enemies and find himself in some safe heaven. "Life in the favela". But this misrepresents the splendor of this motion. (Now I am religiously influenced. For me every such aspect of moving alone is a participation in a dialogue with God: though in what I say, "is" is not separated from "being in koinonia")
3. pg 454 "If I exist through the other, which of us is the end and which the means? I, who have to pass by way of it, am I its means or is it mine? Am I the end or is it my end?"
But this is exactly a question that the societies of the moderns do not pose. They are my resources, they are my recruits. They are not my ends!!!
If we consider how modernization comes to us, traditional civilizations, then it comes in two steps:
a) all relations are considered power relations between individual agents and
b) I, the listener of the call of modernity, am called forth to consider others as my means. To be obidient to tradition is the cardinal crime, a dehumanizing act.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου