These are comments stemming from reading specific chapters form the book that accompanied the Reset Modernity! exhibit in ZKM Karlsrhue (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reset-modernity).
Since I feel I get out a lot of bile agianst moderns, I thought of writing this in memorial of Asa Jennings (http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2010/0103/comm/jennings_oneman.html)
1.There are some pieces that I feel close to my heart. Kharkhordin's "Resseting Modernity: a russian version" (rm! pg 381) reminds indeed of the state of Greece, which also has never being "really" modern (though its relation with modernity has been quite different).
References to Frankestein make me think about myself and my country. We are also like 3rd world children running beside the train of modernisation. Or maybe I am a "false problem" for I feel like an Amalgam (Didier Debaise rm! 487)
2. Gerard de Vries "What are politicans for?" (rm! pg 387) had a very interesting discussion about . [POL], which I find an admirable mode of the moderns.
I read: "The politicians are already preparing the defence of the decision the assembly will make. Anticipating discussions that will come after the meeting, they assess the robustness of the basis on which the assembly's decision will be made and balance pros and cons of the forward looking narratives".
But why should they care? Could they not just corner their anticipated audiences by bribing key opinion leaders? Could they not turn to the social psychology or individual psychology for teseted ways of persuasion or ways to bewilder their audiences, to force their (the politicans' ) decisions on them (the anticipated audience)?
[POL] exists if they cannot do this effectively or if they willingly prevent the denaturing of [POL] (if the politicians themselves, or the combination of politicians and active parts of the audience respect the integrity of this mode).
So the motion along [POL] must not be a one-way road. It is not an one-way passing of successive hiatuses as sometimes the Modes of Existence book makes one feel.
A meeting has to take place, a double way motion: the politician "engages" with her audience. She pushes but she is also pushed back, and it seems to me from de Vries piece that what the politician cares for is that the conditions that will be agreed in the closed rooms will leave enough space for meaningful "take and give" to take place with the audience. (the politician has the special taste to distinguish when these conditions are fullfilled).
This meeting of oposing currents is a test for [POL] to come into being (it may not come but at least, if the conditions are there, it might come).
There are two ways I can go from here.
A. The one of course has to do with the relations between the moderns and the others. The moderns are those who end up taking care that [POL] outside modernity has to run under highly deteriorated conditions (because it has to conform with moderns' interests). As a result the others either have to "glue" themselves on the moderns, to really engage with them, and negotiate their own change with whatever change they can achieve by -hook-or-by-crook from the moderns (and fight for preserving their own "salt" which is very difficult) or they are insignificant (too improbable since the quest of efficiency of the moderns and their self descritpion as saviors of the world is difficult to leave anybody outside, or they leave them in such a deformed state that the others plead the moderns to befriend them) or they are forced to comply according to the insensitivity of the [DC] mode
Obviously no way is an easy way.
B. The second has to do with the question wether this double move, this meeting of converging currents, this witnessing of a meeting, is a general characteristic of every mode. Could it be that the image of a hiatus that is passed in an one-way mode has to be changed for the image of a double pass?
The politician proposes but shivers in the face of the response from the anticipated audience and its dynamic. [POL]is composed by dancing moves.
And in a sense politicans are the ways these other people who are not directly present in the meetings enter in the meeting already, even before the policies are discussed in other assemblies. Like the child that is discussed by its parents even before it is born, likewise the meeting is pregnant of the audience-to-be.
In each mode one feels a similar experience with the people who are master trafickers in it: a great sensitivity to the beings that they are used to deal with, an eagerness to tickle them and listen to their response (but often insensitivity and strawmanship towards other beings).
The scientist is building her own [REF] chains but the real trembling comes when different chains meet each other. Will that make sense? Shall there be a "touch", a meeting? (I think this is the main argument of Anderson for the special nature of natural sciences in Anderson, P. W. (2001). Science: A ‘dappled world’or a ‘seamless web’?.Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 32(3), 487-494.)
In [TEC] will the assemly come into being while we move [TEC]nologically? Will it hold together or will it decompose? (what is the price? the surviving technological object radiates consequences that need to be handled). As the technological object's "life-time" starts increasing rapidly is this not like a meeting, like somebody signing the presence of a success (for the participants of the project)?
In [FIC] will the audience participate? Is there an audience for this work? (the presence of the fictional object "in the audience" is like a response to the artist). Or will there be a response on my effort (the person's that comes close to the fictional work) to approach it?
In [LAW] will the whole last once more? Will there be a line of argument that repects both the law in its totality and the individual case we deal with?
In each case HIATUS seem to express an aspect of the ocean of the indifferent-to-our-rationality that we seem to inhabit. The sea of complexity. The moderns seemed to claim that complexity can be transformed into complicatedness (monitored and managed through formal representations and calculations that form seamless cloth). Rm! can be perhaps about learning to live side by side with complexity (this should be very difficult for moderns- how can one trust with no faith for some kind of Providence? . Are not the moderns the people who always divide the world in the "land of trust" and the "land of mistrust"?
In each case a TRAJECTORY has been found (an object of history) that in some cases allows "Witnessing meetings" that we express with the symbols of "BEINGS TO INSTITUTE" (which are not "just out there", but is our way to express the meeting- they are close I think to mathematical concepts). (I used the world "Symbol" here in a way that feels to me similar with "symbols" as used by Voegelin)
Every INFELICITY condition is the sign of fall. I can see of three falls: a) the fall to the sea of complexity (a return to the initial condition) b) the fall into "the powerful members of the constitution of this world". Something that could be expressed by [DC] and c) the fall to the infelicity condiotion of [HAB]
(All this talk reminds me of Luke 16:11 http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr/bible/bible.asp?contents=new_testament/contents_louka.asp&main=louka&file=1.3.16.htm)
2. Didier Debaise, rm! pg 487, worked for me as the poser of "The problem of evil". As I was reading it I felt like listening to an analysis about evil. As if listening about elites who reverse the Christian understanding of power.
As I was reading about materiality and landscapes I thought about this new move of "playing God" that makes the English and the Dutch massively transform quite functional parts of their landscape into new uses (getting the sea out of the land, creating new grand land parts organized in new ways). Like God taking clay to form Adam, Leviathan takes the landscape and gives it new shape in the likeness and the image of what he has in mind. Yet things always move in funny and transverse ways and it is a power of modernity that this was not lost (for modernity is attending to any sign of meaning because of the fear of being overpowered and the longing of overpowering). So modernity husbands people who will "record" meaningfull messages in order to promote what modernity really cares about: the game of power either in the form of direct conflict or in the form of sporty competition. Darwinianism and not enlightenment for all or riches for all is the "type" of modernity: Modernity exists for protecting "valuable ways of life" which again and again end up being "the ways of life in power". Tests of conflict between pure, distilled power are the highest ceremonies of modernity.
And I thought: what makes this cohort of people, working in AIME and rm! feel that they will not do similar mistakes of "creating false problems" or mistakes of bringing evil in this world? (Does this passes in their minds as an option or are they beyond good and evil?) . Is there any reason why AIME and Reset Modernity owes to have no poisonous side effects (only because the participants are "good willing")?
What kind of procedures have they built for that? ( The participants are mainly people from Western Europe and the US, probably well-off both professionally and financially . They are inheritors of the same history and the same thinking traditions and dependent on similar everyday interests probably (for them and their families). If they use other traditions this is mainly done through people of "their own tribe".)
3. Descolla's text made me think: if his categorization of anthropologies holds true, what is the trajectory (in this coordinate system) that Latour asks us to go to through AIME,. rm! and Facing Gaia?
4. Moderns respect power but nowdays they are a) very powerful b) very touchy and c) overseeing everything. Their success diminishes their opportunities for rejuvenation. Complicatedness cannot anule the fecundity of the mud of complexity.
5. The Christian test is prayer ([REL]). The Modern test is survival ([REP])
6. Sometimes I wonder what different hybrids of my tradition like Kallistos Ware (http://project-sow.org/kallistos), much closer to the moderns I guess, would feel about AIME and rm!
Since I feel I get out a lot of bile agianst moderns, I thought of writing this in memorial of Asa Jennings (http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2010/0103/comm/jennings_oneman.html)
1.There are some pieces that I feel close to my heart. Kharkhordin's "Resseting Modernity: a russian version" (rm! pg 381) reminds indeed of the state of Greece, which also has never being "really" modern (though its relation with modernity has been quite different).
References to Frankestein make me think about myself and my country. We are also like 3rd world children running beside the train of modernisation. Or maybe I am a "false problem" for I feel like an Amalgam (Didier Debaise rm! 487)
2. Gerard de Vries "What are politicans for?" (rm! pg 387) had a very interesting discussion about . [POL], which I find an admirable mode of the moderns.
I read: "The politicians are already preparing the defence of the decision the assembly will make. Anticipating discussions that will come after the meeting, they assess the robustness of the basis on which the assembly's decision will be made and balance pros and cons of the forward looking narratives".
But why should they care? Could they not just corner their anticipated audiences by bribing key opinion leaders? Could they not turn to the social psychology or individual psychology for teseted ways of persuasion or ways to bewilder their audiences, to force their (the politicans' ) decisions on them (the anticipated audience)?
[POL] exists if they cannot do this effectively or if they willingly prevent the denaturing of [POL] (if the politicians themselves, or the combination of politicians and active parts of the audience respect the integrity of this mode).
So the motion along [POL] must not be a one-way road. It is not an one-way passing of successive hiatuses as sometimes the Modes of Existence book makes one feel.
A meeting has to take place, a double way motion: the politician "engages" with her audience. She pushes but she is also pushed back, and it seems to me from de Vries piece that what the politician cares for is that the conditions that will be agreed in the closed rooms will leave enough space for meaningful "take and give" to take place with the audience. (the politician has the special taste to distinguish when these conditions are fullfilled).
This meeting of oposing currents is a test for [POL] to come into being (it may not come but at least, if the conditions are there, it might come).
There are two ways I can go from here.
A. The one of course has to do with the relations between the moderns and the others. The moderns are those who end up taking care that [POL] outside modernity has to run under highly deteriorated conditions (because it has to conform with moderns' interests). As a result the others either have to "glue" themselves on the moderns, to really engage with them, and negotiate their own change with whatever change they can achieve by -hook-or-by-crook from the moderns (and fight for preserving their own "salt" which is very difficult) or they are insignificant (too improbable since the quest of efficiency of the moderns and their self descritpion as saviors of the world is difficult to leave anybody outside, or they leave them in such a deformed state that the others plead the moderns to befriend them) or they are forced to comply according to the insensitivity of the [DC] mode
Obviously no way is an easy way.
B. The second has to do with the question wether this double move, this meeting of converging currents, this witnessing of a meeting, is a general characteristic of every mode. Could it be that the image of a hiatus that is passed in an one-way mode has to be changed for the image of a double pass?
The politician proposes but shivers in the face of the response from the anticipated audience and its dynamic. [POL]is composed by dancing moves.
He or she knows that there are people with their own "power potential" they will have to deal with. They are thinking about the common dance, the possibilty that it will not end into disaster.
And in a sense politicans are the ways these other people who are not directly present in the meetings enter in the meeting already, even before the policies are discussed in other assemblies. Like the child that is discussed by its parents even before it is born, likewise the meeting is pregnant of the audience-to-be.
In each mode one feels a similar experience with the people who are master trafickers in it: a great sensitivity to the beings that they are used to deal with, an eagerness to tickle them and listen to their response (but often insensitivity and strawmanship towards other beings).
The scientist is building her own [REF] chains but the real trembling comes when different chains meet each other. Will that make sense? Shall there be a "touch", a meeting? (I think this is the main argument of Anderson for the special nature of natural sciences in Anderson, P. W. (2001). Science: A ‘dappled world’or a ‘seamless web’?.Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 32(3), 487-494.)
In [TEC] will the assemly come into being while we move [TEC]nologically? Will it hold together or will it decompose? (what is the price? the surviving technological object radiates consequences that need to be handled). As the technological object's "life-time" starts increasing rapidly is this not like a meeting, like somebody signing the presence of a success (for the participants of the project)?
In [FIC] will the audience participate? Is there an audience for this work? (the presence of the fictional object "in the audience" is like a response to the artist). Or will there be a response on my effort (the person's that comes close to the fictional work) to approach it?
In [LAW] will the whole last once more? Will there be a line of argument that repects both the law in its totality and the individual case we deal with?
In each case HIATUS seem to express an aspect of the ocean of the indifferent-to-our-rationality that we seem to inhabit. The sea of complexity. The moderns seemed to claim that complexity can be transformed into complicatedness (monitored and managed through formal representations and calculations that form seamless cloth). Rm! can be perhaps about learning to live side by side with complexity (this should be very difficult for moderns- how can one trust with no faith for some kind of Providence? . Are not the moderns the people who always divide the world in the "land of trust" and the "land of mistrust"?
In each case a TRAJECTORY has been found (an object of history) that in some cases allows "Witnessing meetings" that we express with the symbols of "BEINGS TO INSTITUTE" (which are not "just out there", but is our way to express the meeting- they are close I think to mathematical concepts). (I used the world "Symbol" here in a way that feels to me similar with "symbols" as used by Voegelin)
Every INFELICITY condition is the sign of fall. I can see of three falls: a) the fall to the sea of complexity (a return to the initial condition) b) the fall into "the powerful members of the constitution of this world". Something that could be expressed by [DC] and c) the fall to the infelicity condiotion of [HAB]
(All this talk reminds me of Luke 16:11 http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr/bible/bible.asp?contents=new_testament/contents_louka.asp&main=louka&file=1.3.16.htm)
2. Didier Debaise, rm! pg 487, worked for me as the poser of "The problem of evil". As I was reading it I felt like listening to an analysis about evil. As if listening about elites who reverse the Christian understanding of power.
As I was reading about materiality and landscapes I thought about this new move of "playing God" that makes the English and the Dutch massively transform quite functional parts of their landscape into new uses (getting the sea out of the land, creating new grand land parts organized in new ways). Like God taking clay to form Adam, Leviathan takes the landscape and gives it new shape in the likeness and the image of what he has in mind. Yet things always move in funny and transverse ways and it is a power of modernity that this was not lost (for modernity is attending to any sign of meaning because of the fear of being overpowered and the longing of overpowering). So modernity husbands people who will "record" meaningfull messages in order to promote what modernity really cares about: the game of power either in the form of direct conflict or in the form of sporty competition. Darwinianism and not enlightenment for all or riches for all is the "type" of modernity: Modernity exists for protecting "valuable ways of life" which again and again end up being "the ways of life in power". Tests of conflict between pure, distilled power are the highest ceremonies of modernity.
And I thought: what makes this cohort of people, working in AIME and rm! feel that they will not do similar mistakes of "creating false problems" or mistakes of bringing evil in this world? (Does this passes in their minds as an option or are they beyond good and evil?) . Is there any reason why AIME and Reset Modernity owes to have no poisonous side effects (only because the participants are "good willing")?
What kind of procedures have they built for that? ( The participants are mainly people from Western Europe and the US, probably well-off both professionally and financially . They are inheritors of the same history and the same thinking traditions and dependent on similar everyday interests probably (for them and their families). If they use other traditions this is mainly done through people of "their own tribe".)
3. Descolla's text made me think: if his categorization of anthropologies holds true, what is the trajectory (in this coordinate system) that Latour asks us to go to through AIME,. rm! and Facing Gaia?
4. Moderns respect power but nowdays they are a) very powerful b) very touchy and c) overseeing everything. Their success diminishes their opportunities for rejuvenation. Complicatedness cannot anule the fecundity of the mud of complexity.
5. The Christian test is prayer ([REL]). The Modern test is survival ([REP])
6. Sometimes I wonder what different hybrids of my tradition like Kallistos Ware (http://project-sow.org/kallistos), much closer to the moderns I guess, would feel about AIME and rm!
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