Brian Holmes via nettime-l on Thu, 7 Sep 2023 15:06:14 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Forget who owns the truth. Just talk about the weather. |
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 -- # 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: https://www.nettime.org # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org