| John Hopkins on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 22:35:40 +0200 (CEST) |
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| Re: <nettime> England leaves Europe |
On 26/Jun/16 10:50, Brian Holmes wrote:
The ruse of History exists, and with it, all possibilities for speculation. Britain as piloted by its ruling classes through all kinds of reversals and shifts has always been able to draw a new figure of imperial power from the accumulated reserve of past experience. Shaxson's core idea that the "treasure islands" of transnational finance represented a bid by postwar elites to organize a new system of plunder after military decline is brilliant. Who can doubt that a new and as yet unthinkable attempt will be made to hoist the old ways to new strategic heights?
I dunno, Brian -- the 'ruse of History' -- it's clear that humans repeatedly behave in very certain and predictable ways -- competition for resources, killing, well ... Machiavelli and Sun Tzu would have long ago been forgotten if the predictablilty and stultifying repetitiveness of History wasn't gradually apparent as one spends more and more years on the planet.
I'm not quite sure what you mean with 'ruse' unless it is simply the fact that we are all unable to escape that denial of reality called 'hope': paraphrasing Paul Valéry, that 'hope is only man's mistrust of the clear foresight of his mind.' Pragmatism and critical thinking, brought by life experience and/or rare educational contexts is in increasingly short supply. So we segue back to the doom of repetition of the old ways. Again. The 'newness' of the strategic heights is only that the myopia, minute attention spans, and unprincipled edutainment of the population makes the same old shit smell sweet -- or, makes the smell of shit a novelty not experienced since the last bowel movement which was, when?
So it goes.Here in small-town-right-wing(nut) Arizona, I will go to 'the world's oldest rodeo' on Tuesday next to record audio, and make portraits at the 4th of July parade a week from Monday. I will report back. The last time I did the portraits, a few years back
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/45754I came close to being roughed up by a group of white-haired veterans who angrily asked whether I was "from the New York Times"... this was after sitting opposite Sen. John McCain at a pancake breakfast that morning and thinking the whole time 'thank-fucking-god he didn't become president!'
Any words I should share with him next week? Like, "You've got the principles of a (fill in the blank)."
jh -- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ # 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: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: