[-empyre-] laws, outlaws & golden pirates

[davin heckman]

Marc,

I'll try to tuck some comments into the message:

> An interesting read, consisting of thoughts reflecting social anxieties of
> our troubling age. Everything you mention includes the spectre of social
> engineering, and the most troubling aspect of all this, is how deeply
> 'comfort' is linked to it all. How a desire (or very human need) to be warm,
> safe and relating to others is a psychological factor, that tends to
> incorporate a kind of default of submission or even sacrifice in order to
> live without fear.

Here, I think is where the arts can serve a powerful role.  I think,
for instance, of John the Savage in Huxley's Brave New World.  Look at
first, how John is moved by Shakespeare to seek something good beyond
mere comfort.  And then, thinking about the many discussions I have
had with students regarding this book:  Do they like John?  Does he go
too far?  Is he pathological? Etc.  This little book brings us into a
great discussion about whether or not there is value in seeking a good
that exists beyond comfort.  I also have my students read Burgess'
Clockwork Orange, and ask them how far Alex can go to pursue his
comfort, to what extent society is right to "reform" Alex's mind in
the way that they do.  We think about the extent to which the state
itself provides context for Alex's antisocial behavior.  And then, of
course, there are the deeper questions of "human nature" or
"biologically determined" behavior.  Because all of these things are
true:  Comfort does matter, personally and collectively.  But to what
extent must our notions of comfort be sublimated, transformed, and
repurposed?  To what end can fear be harnessed?  And how?  By whom?
Etc.

>
> You mention the word 'Vandalism', which is typically associated with
> senseless destruction. Where the contemporary notion of it, consists of it
> meaning private citizens damaging the property of others, generally. Yet, I
> view vandalism as a two-way process, where people's lives have been
> vandalized by the state, corporations and privileged elites. And these
> groups of confidence tricksters have fooled generations of individuals and
> common people, exploiting human sensibilities and everyday, functional
> needs, from basic experience right through to consumer orientated desires
> and use of (now) functional, networked protocols, where behaviours become
> more a collective noise of data ready for harvesting.

I agree with you on vandalism.  I think, for instance, of the freeway
projects in many US cities (LA in particular), that were used to
bulldoze ghettos, and build giant barriers between neighborhoods....
all for the sake of progress and ease.  If that's not vandalism, I
don't know what is.  And so, within the general economy of destructive
acts, I think that ethics and politics are critical.  Wanton,
unfocused, small scale acts of vandalism are in a sense, instruments
of power as much as they are acts of aggression against power.  I
often go to a Chinese restaurant in my town, a solid working-class
customer base, and marvel at the cruelty of the bathroom graffiti.
Lots of anti-Mexican slurs, which other patrons respond to with
counter-slurs (occasionally, someone edits the graffiti to make it
into a positive messages).  And then when you think of the role that
talk radio plays in capitalizing on and cultivating xenophobia, and
connect it to the history of populism in the US, you see that this
exploitation is real.  The only way through it is to forge solidarity.
 Which is hard work.  It cannot be automated.  It must always be
personalized and felt.  But, the good news is, that relationships are
hearty once they are formed.

> I can see social anthropology, with postmodern thought along with
> contemporary tools opening up new contexts, for what neo-liberalists wish to
> see as a pre & post socialist age. As in, just like indigenous societies and
> groups are actively reclaiming much of their own cultural agency and
> histories before and post the industrial revolution, neo-liberalism will aid
> this, and then own whatever comes of these processes as 'sourced' recovery
> and material, for their own marketing revenues. This is not to say, that
> anthropologists are seeking to please such powers, but we are in a world
> where information and the study of it is feeding not only those who wish for
> positive social change, but also helps those who wish to exploit and control
> others. Thus, mediation becomes more a narrow define via specific protocols
> under the scheme and management of top-down initiations, allowed not because
> of the importance, values, political knowledge, or critique of the subject
> itself, but because it feeds a greater body of power networks that need to
> consume all, to continue existing.

I think that you are right, neo-liberalism lurks like a vulture
waiting to harvest the energies of our social desires and turn them
into products.  I don't know the way around this.  But I think that
the critical impulse itself, the very motivation, the desire to turn
towards each other, while it may not solve the problem entirely,
certainly is a rewarding end in itself.  And it is a wonderful engine
for creation.  I think of tying the gift economy to the semiotics of
the credit card is a brilliant idea, because it intervenes in the
settled vocabulary to open up critical questions.  In the end, art
itself won't do this.  We have to WANT something different, and we
need to connect successful instances of social interaction to a larger
ethical program capable of fostering these successes further,
correcting them when they get out of line, and figuring out good ways
to protect them.  We have to counteract the pervasive propaganda that
insists that "material sustenance for working people is the enemy of
survival" (the current logic in the US which claims that all resources
must be directed into the hands of the "job creators") and that
"people won't create value unless they are threatened with starvation"
(the current logic, for instance, behind unemployment cuts in the US).

Davin