Newmedia on Sat, 5 May 2012 01:53:17 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> The insult of the 1 percent: "Art-history majors" |
Ed: > what I see in the words and actions of a Connard > is desperation and an identity crisis. Yes, I think you are right . . . well beyond Connard, the "ruling class" is in seriously bad shape! The *problem* with "neo-liberalism" is that GIMME MORE is not a "class" cohesive or even satisfactorily motivating "prime-directive." In an every-man-for-himself world, how does *society* organize itself and not just degenerate into hand-to-hand combat -- among the elites themselves? This lack of coherent cultural "purpose" has been a hallmark of the West since at least WW II, when it went through its last "rotation of the elites." If the goal is to eliminate the "authoritarian personality" (i.e. code for those who adhere to "traditions") and to generate a series of synthetic "images" for people to rally around -- as first detailed by Dutch futurist in his 1953 "The Image of the Future" -- then what are you left with? Chimeras? Memes? Video-games? If the "empires of the future will be empires of the mind" and psycholog ical warfare against "peacetime" populations became the primary operating mode of the newly dominant elite, then eventually the lack of anything enduring must catch up with you. That *eventually* is now. For a while, the "artificial" *global* conflict between FREEDOM (i.e. the CIA's 1950s/60s cultural Cold War) and WORLD PEACE (i.e. the Soviet response, which after the mid-70s "purge" also became the CIA's mantra, as institutionalized by the 1984 launching of US Institute for Peace) could "hold" things together. But all this has been off the table for 20+ years now! What can replace it? Global War on Terror? Not very successful as a popular meme in an age of machinic (and mercenary) warfare. China is stealing our secrets? Replaying the "precious bodily fluids" argument of Dr. Strangelove and occupying the front pages of the NYTimes daily, this is likely to be heavily featured in the 2012 Presidential election and appropriately tagged as the global version of "blame the other guy." Save the polar bears? In a world where the BRICS will add a *billion* people the middle-class (i.e. driving a car and not a motorbike) over the next 10+ years and where the ideology of "globalism" has collapsed, everyone knows that Kyoto isn't going to work. Now Stewart Brand has become an "eco-pragmatist." The recognition that the US has no *strategy* and cannot rise above legislative deadlock is, after all, obviously the *fault* of those who are supposed to be "in charge" is now almost universal. So, like Trilat-honcho Zbigniew Brzezinski and the lead US correspondent for The Financial Times, the various "mouthpieces" all write their hand-wringing books . . . which no one bothers to read. And this deep cultural incoherence is substantially amplified by the Net, since we are all living in nettime . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: nettime@kein.org