<nettime> Forget who owns the truth. Just talk about the weather.

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

I don't think the old question about the economic ownership of the truth is
the right one. It's too painfully obvious. "They Rule," as Josh On and the
Future Farmers pointed out long ago. More maps of interlocking
corporate-state ownership will give the same results concerning the
privatization of knowledge. Of course it would be valuable to identify some
particular regions of knowledge production where "they" don't rule - I
mean, some groups or institutions that still produce critical knowledge
outside the agendas of private interest groups. But a giant question
remains: How can ordinary people "own" the truth?

Now I'm using "own" in a different, colloquial sense, where it means live
up to what you believe, take responsibility for your actions. This kind of
truth ownership has suffered beneath the recent onslaught of corporate and
state manipulation. First, because sophisticated techniques of
disinformation and generalized "nudging" have led everyone to doubt what
they read, see and even feel. Second, because institutions of knowledge now
appear deeply complicit in colonial racism and its endgame, climate
change.Shared belief in a secular truth has become almost impossible.
Traditional religion on the one hand, and new variations of old Nazi myths
on the other, are the emergent forms of belief today. This is more
threatening than the old contrast between a "good" Enlightenment public
sphere and the "bad" capitalist interest groups. Truth is not simply under
siege. It's faced with entropic dissolution.

So how to make critical knowledge into truth that people can live by?

My sense is that internally diverse groups have to consolidate themselves
and find a way to "grow inwards" for a while. The notion of growing inwards
comes from the Uruguayan sociologist Raul Zibechi, who used it in his study
of the group dynamics that lay behind the Argentinian revolt of 2001. Small
community and activist groups, according to Zibechi, were able to create
new ways of understanding the world and their place within it, until the
point where they could emerge in public with a sharable common sense for
taking collective action. We need groups like that in the overdeveloped
world today. And within such groups, we need to talk about the complexities
of knowledge and truth in our own highly technological societies.

For sure, hacker groups have been engaged in these kinds of intensive small
group activities for a long time - I admire that. What's more, they've been
able to extend sophisticated discussions beyond national boundaries, which
is crucial. However, my sense is that hacker knowledge remains - sorry for
this next word - too *technocratic* to have relevance on the level of
belief and in the realm of everyday life. To create attitudes and affects
with social reach you want internally diverse groups. It doesn't just mean
people of different races, but also different ages, professions, regional
origins, languages, educational pathways, etc.  Truth has to circulate
socially if it's gonna become common property.

Science and Enlightenment reason are not enough to constitute a truth that
the people can own, not in end times. What's missing are cosmologies of the
kind that Indigenous people have. A cosmology is a way of orienting your
own life - an orientation as intimate as a heartbeat and as vast as the
stars. In the overdeveloped societies, despite the obvious relevance and
prominence of Indigenous thinkers in the Americas at least, we do not yet
know how to put together and share an alternative cosmology. Nonetheless,
we are increasingly aware that the old Cartesian cosmology that elevates an
active mind over a realm of indifferent and submissive matter is a dead
end. With the sudden and devastating surge of drought, flood, fire and
storm, that old cosmology is literally killing us.

Right now the revolutionary path toward a possible eco-state or ecological
civilization requires the risky process of "growing inwards," by sharing
critical knowledge and cosmological questions among face-to-face
communities. It's risky, because that's also what the proto-fascist groups
are doing, albeit in very different ways. But it's necessary, because the
old institutions of Western reason have produced a suicidal world.

If you don't think so - and you think the word revolution is too strong -
well, just try talking about the weather. Try talking about the weather
with friends, family members, colleagues, academics, state officials, etc.
My guess is that the threatening void of the near future, and the
corresponding psychic disarray, will become extremely palpable to you.

The weather comes from the sky above, and from the machines beneath our
feet. To own the truth, form a small, diverse and easily expandable group,
to start talking a little more deliberately about the weather.

best to all, Brian
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