Re: <nettime> Unlocking Proprietorial Systems for Artistic Practice | By Marc Garrett.

[Joseph Rabie <joe@overmydeadbody.org>]

Hallo all,

This argument between "things are getting worse" and "things are getting better" comes back regularly - though (on this list at least) the former dominates, while the latter asserts its contradiction. The prevalent view here appears to be that our culture of capitalist, consumerist uber-exploitation, that has its origins in European (white, patriarchal, colonialist) modern technical society, is going to be the death of human culture and civilisation in its current state.

Indeed, while I find this view coherent (and have so expressed myself on occasion), I find myself becoming more and more irritable with its constant re-enunciation... and I am trying to figure out why my hackles are rising against something that, after all, I am in agreement. Perhaps because it is all so repetitive - I no longer read to the end of many interesting posts and articles. Or because it is so negative, yet one has no choice but to compose with it. Perhaps it is because I am unaccommodated by what I detect to be a moralising, self-righteous undercurrent in its critique. Perhaps by the detection of grim satisfaction in the rebuttals targeting the optimists who make out that things are improving. Or by a pervading sense of helplessness. Or by what I detect as being a religiously fervent anger in the naming of villains (the capitalist-militarist oligarchy, etc.).

Perhaps what irks me, fundamentally, is that there is widespread recourse to a denunciatory posture that I find profoundly problematic. This is paradoxical, because there is so much in the current state of humanity and the planet which merits absolute and utter denunciation. Yet the act of denunciation is sterile, counter-productive, and a side-stepping of responsibility. The example for this is the child’s denunciation of his parents for having brought her into the world without her prior consent.

In other words, though one is well advised to denounce the particular actions of groups that cause harm to others and the environment, it is absurd to denounce the human planetary condition as a whole. Our tragic present is the consequence of complex stages of the historic rise of modern, technological, capitalistic society of which we are, whether we like it or not actors, and for which we ultimately cannot escape collective responsibility in spite of our opposition to its terms. Rejection by denunciation is a cop out.

Let it not be forgotten that this is a socio-technico-cultural model so outwardly attractive that when the colonists were kicked out, it was retained by the newly liberated countries (even those adopting Marxist regimes, as China demonstrates). If Thatcher's "there is no alternative" is so poignant, is it not because five hundred years of history, constructing the modernist "Utopia", has at each step eliminated all other possibles in a complex process of ferocious, monolithic evolution based upon destructions and cooptations?

Thus I finish a complaint singularly deficient in answers, where it appears that there is no escape. Yet, countering this with a blanket denunciatory posture seems to me terribly futile: its corollary, a sort of dogma of despair, fills me with dismay.

Joseph Rabie.



> Le 8 juil. 2018 à 15:35, mp <mp@aktivix.org> a écrit :
> 
> 
> 
> On 07/07/18 13:24, Florian Cramer wrote:
>>> 
>>> And yet ... by nearly every agreed-upon measure, the "cultural,
>>> political and economic systems in place" have contributed to what can be
>>> called--with equal understatement--a significant reduction in global
>>> poverty rates. A 74% reduction since 1990 by some estimates.
>>> 
>> 
>> Let me guess - your source is Hans Rosling?
> 
> Peven Stinker spouts similarly. Here is John Gray reviewing:
> 
> John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war:
> 
> "The Harvard psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels
> of Our Nature: a history of violence and humanity (2011) has not only
> been an international bestseller – more than a thousand pages long and
> containing a formidable array of graphs and statistics, the book has
> established something akin to a contemporary orthodoxy. It is now not
> uncommon to find it stated, as though it were a matter of fact, that
> human beings are becoming less violent and more altruistic."
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wrong-violence-war-declining
> 
> &
> 
> "Unenlightened thinking: Steven Pinker’s embarrassing new book is a
> feeble sermon for rattled liberals - To think of this book as any kind
> of scholarly exercise is a category mistake. The purpose of Pinker’s
> laborious work is to reassure liberals that they are on “the right side
> of history”." -
> 
> https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlightened-thinking-steven-pinker-s-embarrassing-new-book-feeble-sermon
> 
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