Re: <nettime> Ocular facts

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

The French language has a wonderful phrase for a narrow escape: "On l'a
échappé belle," they say. Yes, it was a beautiful day when the lessons of
plain eyesight prevailed, Biden stepped down, and suddenly the fascist
future no longer seemed an inescapable destiny. I'm told there was a
similar feeling when French voters barred Le Pen's path to a parliamentary
majority.

The Democratic party rapidly moved to squelch any chance for an open
convention, where candidates would have to put their visions for the future
into words and formal platforms that could be assessed by the citizens. So
there will be no chaotic and acrimonious selection of a failed candidate,
no replay of Chicago 1968. In an era of political incoherence, generalized
alienation, unlimited guns and inflammatory social media, everyone
including myself was relieved. The question now is whether liberal euphoria
will again put off a reckoning with the inescapable dilemmas of our time.

The overarching challenge is obviously climate change, with catastrophic
consequences that are "baked in" for this century. But climate change has
two powerful corollaries, which are already driving political conflict. The
first is the impending collapse of profitability for the core
twentieth-century industries (cement, steel, fossil fuels, mass
manufacturing). The second is mass immigration to the countries that have
concentrated the world's resources while destroying its ecological
balance.  The turmoil we have experienced over the past ten years derives
largely from these two domains, and yet it's just a foretaste, not yet
directly attributable to climate. Profitability in the US, the EU and Japan
is threatened by the rise of China at the center of a new and potentially
hegemonic South-South trading bloc, which is sweeping Western firms out of
its way. Massive immigration to the US and EU is mainly due to the collapse
of local and national solidarity systems under the abusive reorganizing
forces of capitalist globalization. As ecology intrudes on economics, both
these crises will worsen exponentially. How exactly are we supposed to
prepare for it?

Denial is useless. But that doesn't just hold for climate change. A
collapse in the profitability of extractive industries does not only affect
their owners. Entire regions are impoverished, along with populations whose
way of life and culture have coevolved with those industries. Mass
immigration is even more destabilizing, as we can see in the rise of
fascist parties over the last decade (or on UK streets right now).
Political elites need to put forth a developmentalist vision for CO2
drawdown and climate adaptation, a vision that can engage the entire
population, but differentially, composing different activity spheres and
cultural worlds in a common effort that elicits mutual respect. Such an
effort can extend beyond national borders, through co-development programs
like the ones that China has so successfully deployed. Biden attempted part
of this - the domestic piece only - and frankly, I don't think the failure
was his alone. We elected him at a moment of extreme danger, and then
societally, we failed to develop a vision adequate to the magnitude of the
challenge. Liberal euphoria is really a profound form of arrogance: It
says, we'll defeat these people, and then go back to doing exactly what we
want (namely, laying another hypocritical veil over the relatively new
profit centers of tech and finance).

Still in all, after that terrifying debate, it has been simply awesome to
see people act. We demanded a significant political change, and we got it.
That effort extended across half the country, its success reversed the
doom-loop of a media apparatus focused only on Trump, and now what comes
into view is a possible future. Which, under present circumstances, is
really a beautiful sight to behold.

What this shows is that the vision we need will not come from the elites,
not only and definitely not first. Instead it's up to everyone, in their
local environment, in their communicational circuits, to start creating and
sharing the vision of a survivable 21st century.

Heinz von Foerster understood all this long ago: "If you want to see, learn
how to act."
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