From: "bob scheetz" <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com>
Subject: HAB: Re: Intro the Consciousness Revolution {Bob}
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 00:29:38 -0500


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Matt,
today's news,  Ali will be proved wrong; the butter hasn't clarified yet.  Rumsfelds big mouth may have stiffened the spine of old europe sufficient to make france come together with germany,  and to use its veto to block any UN subterfuge, ...after this the EU may even vote to increase thier own military budgets, nso on

anyway, i guess we're at cross purposes.  i was suggesting skepticism of the monist view, the ironizing the dialectic out of existence, making "resistance" merely an augmentative structure of Power, collapsing everything into Power, ...all the which you do below to its logical extreme, resulting in (very amusing) absurdity of feeding Power to death, McWorld foundering on its own biggie sized fries.
   Clearly Power does, as you say, need to "construct" an other; but that's a construct, a strategem (obviously this is "saddam", the "hitler" du jour), not a genuine other.  OBL however is the real deal, an essential other; and is bankrupting our airlines and travel industry,  and like to destabilize us sociologically and financially, underming civil rights and violating privacy wholesale, and creating huge and defeating inefficiencies in the panic to secure against the tactic of terror.  Patent politician morale-boosting rhetoric aside, I don't think you could find any evidence to support the view that 9/11 has strengthened US Power.

...probably still a muddle, but gotta say good night.

bob





  ----- Original Message -----
  From: matthew piscioneri
  To: habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 7:02 PM
  Subject: HAB: Intro the Consciousness Revolution {Bob}


  Bob,

  Please excuse my intellectual poverty, but I worry that I have missed your point. So to try and clarify:

  > Matt, ...surely Power acts as if it perceives itself engaged perpetually >against an other,

  As much as I don't like totalizing quasi-metaphysical analyses (all is power, or something like that...Nietzsche, Foucault) the point I was "floating" was whether resistance did anything other than strengthen power. This originally referred not so obliquely to understanding OBL's actions against the U.S as *enabling* what Ali characterizes as the imperialist advance of finance capitalism behind the banner of human rights etc.

  Does this make aquiescence (not simply quietism) the most effective form of resistance? I am wondering out loud here. This is where I *think* your point is intended to intervene Bob. If I understand you correctly - and this is why I am asking for clarification - your point that power needs the other (resistance) to strengthen itself would suggest that with global acquiescence to finance capital's imperialism its power would start to diminish for there would be no Other against which it could strengthen itself.

  To develop this approach, then.This strategy might occur in a number of ways. First, the power-system would be starved of rejuvenating potentials from the margins. Second, and more scarey, the power-system in search of an Other would begin to invent heresy a la the Inquisition. In other words it would start to turn on itself, and self manufacture resistance. Yet, whilst this may have worked in Medieval times (when the Church power-system was total) I don't think it could work so well in a globalised C21context.

  It is a basic sociological lesson that in order to define and re-assure the "us" an Other needs to be constructed. What would happen with global acquiescence to the designs of finance capital would be an imperial identity crisis of some sort. If all the peoples of the Earth are lined up behind the flag of Disney Land, Coke and McDonalds I don't see how you can go around bombing them. What does Power do then?

  This is the strange Utopia argued for by apologists for the imperial march of finance capitalism: Pax Californication...in every house a jacuzzi, in every garage a Hyundai.

  Now all of this doesn't mean that - on let's say an aesthetic level - I look forward to Pax Californication. To my spawn-of-Adorno elitist sensibilities it's a ghastly future of people eating fairy floss, having fun and consuming as much as possible (aarrghh...groan from papa Earth). But I have to accept that twisted humbug elitists like me are globally in the minority, and - let's face it - the revolution isn't being waged to satisfy the cravings of intellectually bewildered eunuchs. So Hollywood and Disney Land it is.

  And after all, how can you argue with $14 billion (?) for a.i.d.s-in-Africa? It makes this bleeding heart weep. If George W. threw in a couple of billion annually for land mine clearance and sign the U.S up to the no-use of land mines club I'd start to believe the war against Iraq wasn't solely about oil.

  IMO, the main outstanding bug bear in all this euphoria of the brave new finance capitalist's wet dreamworld is the environment. Solving this one probably means another revolution (industrial, technological, information, consciousness...). Can everyone have Disney Land AND not degrade the global ecosystem to the point of widespread environmental disaster. Are those air moisturisers in Phoenix going to be turned off so there is some water left for the poorer neighbour's agriculture downstream in the slums of Mexico? And to really hurt the first world rich...can we globally afford to continue to grow lawn as the most extensive *crop* under cultivation? etc etc.

  The emergence of a global morality is the ironic outcome of finance capital's glorious victory. This is why it is a mistake to equate the bastardry of power with one state i.e. the U.S. The bastardry of power (more H. & A. about to be spawned) is not confined to the U.S.A or its client states. It's represented in all peoples. As Foucault wrote there is a little bit of fascism in us all. Against Foucault's and Nietzsche's fatalistic structuralism of irrationality, Habermas points to the fated structures of reason locked into language.

  I'll blah off I think.

  regards,

  MattP.



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----- Original Message -----

From: matthew piscioneri

To: habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 7:02 PM

Subject: HAB: Intro the Consciousness Revolution {Bob}

Bob,

Please excuse my intellectual poverty, but I worry that I have missed your point. So to try and clarify:

> Matt, ...surely Power acts as if it perceives itself engaged perpetually >against an other,

As much as I don't like totalizing quasi-metaphysical analyses (all is power, or something like that...Nietzsche, Foucault) the point I was "floating" was whether resistance did anything other than strengthen power. This originally referred not so obliquely to understanding OBL's actions against the U.S as *enabling* what Ali characterizes as the imperialist advance of finance capitalism behind the banner of human rights etc.

Does this make aquiescence (not simply quietism) the most effective form of resistance? I am wondering out loud here. This is where I *think* your point is intended to intervene Bob. If I understand you correctly - and this is why I am asking for clarification - your point that power needs the other (resistance) to strengthen itself would suggest that with global acquiescence to finance capital's imperialism its power would start to diminish for there would be no Other against which it could strengthen itself.

To develop this approach, then.This strategy might occur in a number of ways. First, the power-system would be starved of rejuvenating potentials from the margins. Second, and more scarey, the power-system in search of an Other would begin to invent heresy a la the Inquisition. In other words it would start to turn on itself, and self manufacture resistance. Yet, whilst this may have worked in Medieval times (when the Church power-system was total) I don't think it could work so well in a globalised C21context.

It is a basic sociological lesson that in order to define and re-assure the "us" an Other needs to be constructed. What would happen with global acquiescence to the designs of finance capital would be an imperial identity crisis of some sort. If all the peoples of the Earth are lined up behind the flag of Disney Land, Coke and McDonalds I don't see how you can go around bombing them. What does Power do then?

This is the strange Utopia argued for by apologists for the imperial march of finance capitalism: Pax Californication...in every house a jacuzzi, in every garage a Hyundai.

Now all of this doesn't mean that - on let's say an aesthetic level - I look forward to Pax Californication. To my spawn-of-Adorno elitist sensibilities it's a ghastly future of people eating fairy floss, having fun and consuming as much as possible (aarrghh...groan from papa Earth). But I have to accept that twisted humbug elitists like me are globally in the minority, and - let's face it - the revolution isn't being waged to satisfy the cravings of intellectually bewildered eunuchs. So Hollywood and Disney Land it is.

And after all, how can you argue with $14 billion (?) for a.i.d.s-in-Africa? It makes this bleeding heart weep. If George W. threw in a couple of billion annually for land mine clearance and sign the U.S up to the no-use of land mines club I'd start to believe the war against Iraq wasn't solely about oil.

IMO, the main outstanding bug bear in all this euphoria of the brave new finance capitalist's wet dreamworld is the environment. Solving this one probably means another revolution (industrial, technological, information, consciousness...). Can everyone have Disney Land AND not degrade the global ecosystem to the point of widespread environmental disaster. Are those air moisturisers in Phoenix going to be turned off so there is some water left for the poorer neighbour's agriculture downstream in the slums of Mexico? And to really hurt the first world rich...can we globally afford to continue to grow lawn as the most extensive *crop* under cultivation? etc etc.

The emergence of a global morality is the ironic outcome of finance capital's glorious victory. This is why it is a mistake to equate the bastardry of power with one state i.e. the U.S. The bastardry of power (more H. & A. about to be spawned) is not confined to the U.S.A or its client states. It's represented in all peoples. As Foucault wrote there is a little bit of fascism in us all. Against Foucault's and Nietzsche's fatalistic structuralism of irrationality, Habermas points to the fated structures of reason locked into language.

I'll blah off I think.

regards,

MattP.

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