From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:43:52 +0100
Subject: Re: globalisation:



Hugh
comments below...

> Do we need new concepts of the damage of addictive drugs, tobacco and
> alcohol to get rid of them?

Yes - because it is not possible to eradicate the human desire to want to take
drugs.

> Do we need new concepts of schools and teachers to provide proper buildings
> and competent instruction?

The meaning and purposes of education have dramatically changed since the
movements from classical/despotic agricultural, to modernist industrial to
post-modern informational societies. As Foucault once predicted, proposed from
discipline to self-discipline.... (Either way no one can explain to me why
education is so much better in the 21st cent than when I was at school...)

> Do we need a new theory of homeless people to give them jobs and shelter?

Because without it you cannot 'break' the discourse that enables the
justification of theie remaining there.

> Do we need a new theories of theft in order to apprehend thieves?

Yes.

> Your comments I like best are:: "how do you define and work toward change?"
> And, "Philosophy is, I would suggest,  about the invention of new concepts
> which enable us to understand our relationship to the world?".
>
> The biorevolution, and bio-ethics offer opportunities to understand human
> beings in relation to the world, to their selves, and to other selves.

Remember that bio-ethics were an obession of Nazism and used to justify anything
that the Nazis wanted to. Nazism was a through ethics of life... Facism had an
interesting notion of the 'dignified life' which is not to different from the
impositions that are being constructed currently. The merging of the erms
'biological' and 'ethics' is curiously threatening.

> Physicists have demonstrated the ability to convert matter to energy and
> energy to matter. Perhaps, in a few years, biologists will convert inanimate
> matter to living matter without recourse to ancestors, and become
> "creators"..

> The future effects of a decade of genetic tampering with other species may
> cause serious injury to humans..

So did the invention of language and the printing press... But the future will
probably be like Surrey in England, the largest wild animal in Surrey is the
Badger which exists simply because its bovine and lives like a small cow the
size of a medium sized dog. Everything else has been eradicated. This it seems
to me is a more tragic version of the future than the death of a few humans as a
result human mistakes. (Jurassic Park is a post-modern phantasy which displays
humans as weak, misguided, essentially harmless, slightly bovine creatures which
is not an accurate representation)

> Lyotard was concerned about justice.  The words of the all the 20th Century
> philosophers have not stopped injustice, righted wrongs, restored stolen
> properties.

He began as a marxist anti-colonial militant - though he changed intellectual
positions over the years that relationship to the world remains within his
work/texts. Look at Peregnations, The Inhuman or indeed any late text, texts
that in some direct sense remain committed to social change. Like the rest of us
he recognised that previous positions do not, did not adequately describe our
societies.

> We need acts of justice, not theories of possible societies as instruments
> of change. Stop killings, restore properties, practice the uncomplicated
> ethics of
> relationship that pervade the simplest of societies, the most ordinary
> religious congregations.

In the early 20th C women were enfranchised, during the 20th C most of the
racist ideologies have been discarded, though of course societies in themselves,
like people remain racist. This has not happened in the simplest societies, but
in the extreme revolutionary societies of the west. All previous societies were
of course less democratic and less free, mostly life was short, unpleasent and
very brutish...

> And when new social arrangements are envisioned and published by
> philosophers, they must be sold to populations saturated in capitalist
> ideology to bring about peaceful resolution of global problems; otherwise, a
> return to the stealth, violence, and murder which were made famous by
> Communists and Nazis.

Not my concern - the violence and terror inflicted by communists and nazis which
is history - almost pales into insignificance compared to the violence and
terror that has been carried out through and by capital. Human societies are by
nature violent, terroistic and sacrificial forms. I once saw some comparative
figures of the effects of colonialism as againgst the Fascist adventures of the
30s and 40s, which were in effect the bringing home of colonial ideologies and
discourses (what was the 'inferior and subhuman peoples' ideology but colonial
racist discourses brought back to the center).

During the late 70s, into the 80s and early 90s the right gained significant
intellectual ground and were intellectually in the ascendent. It is not an
accident that right-wing theories of the social (neo-liberalism and
neo-conservativism) preceded and enabled the gaining of social and economic
control in the west.

regards

sdv

> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> > No they are not. They are short descriptions of dominant economic
> > trends.
> >
> > If you insist that the postmodern is solely discussed and understood
> > solely
> > through Lyotard you are missing the point. The postmodern is a model, a
> > proposal
> > that the world can no longer be understood through the modernist
> > project.
> > Lyotard did not invent or fully describe this - the economic shift that
> > the
> > phrase 'the postmodernist economy' can be identified as taking place
> > from the
> > mid-1950s when the numbers of people employed in the western societies
> > in
> > manufacturing began to decline whilst the productivity rose. The
> > definition of
> > the economic and social change is however recent...
> >
> > Of course the individual historical elements that you mention may be
> > correct but
> > the point of constructing new philosophical, and perhaps also scientific
> > categories is that it enables new approaches and new understandings of
> > the way
> > in which the social functions. Philosophy is, I would suggest,  about
> > the
> > invention of new concepts which enable us to understand our relationship
> > to the
> > world.  To produce exploitiation, as you do below,  as a constant which
> > by
> > implication does not require new concepts raises the questions -  how do
> > you
> > define and work towards change? Do the old modernist and pre-modern
> > concepts
> > adequately describe and define the contemporary period? Is the empirical
> > understanding of the state of things adequate in the contemporary world?
> >
> > I like the idea that the media are in some sense 'bearers of truth'...
> > an
> > entertaining thought.
> >
> > regards
> >
> > sdv
> >
> > hbone wrote:
> >
> > > Steve and All,
> > >
> > > Points 1) and 2) are impersonal academic truisims. As to Point 3 -
> > > everything after modern is, and will be chronologically, postmodern.
> But
> > > the "Postmodern Condition" of Lyotard was based on the years preceding
> the
> > > Soviet collapse.  And that collapese commenced the stampede to corporate
> > > domination we call globalization.
> > >
> > > Globalization is old wine in new bottles, old wolves in new sheepskins.
> > > Describing the theft of  lands of indigenous peoples, the killing of
> their
> > > fighters, the raping, burning, and pillaging, are not speech acts of
> > > academics and historians, but daily reports and pictures that enrich the
> > > media.
> > >
> > > The information revolution facilitates globalization in much the same
> way
> > > naval technology facilitated and maintained colonization in the late
> 19th
> > > and early 20th
> > > centuries.
> > >
> > > regards,
> > > Hugh
> > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > > >
> > > > The below 'simply', (simply ye-gods! Hugh i'm doomed...) simply
> describes
> > > the
> > > > normal state of all post-the-invention-of-the-state societies... I'd
> > > suggest
> > > > that it's neve been different.
> > > >
> > > > The economic structures of the past thousand years are understandable
> in
> > > the
> > > > following three groups - 1) agriculture and the use of primary raw
> > > materials,
> > > > worldwide 2) industrial production and the gradual invention of
> consumer
> > > goods,
> > > > based essentially around the western economies and the disgusting
> colonial
> > > > ideal 3) the post-modern economic system focusing on services, and the
> > > > manipulation of information on a global scale. The movement from the
> > > second
> > > > economic structure to the third is the process we know as the
> > > postmodern...
> > > >
> > > > regards
> > > >
> > > > sdv
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > hbone wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Globalization exempts Arms, Illegal Drugs and Oil from international
> > > > > control, favors secrecy, profits from child labor (read Eliz.
> Barrett
> > > > > Browning on children in 19th century mines) takes the legacy of
> > > colonialism
> > > > > to new heights - destroys able-bodied males, sends elders, mothers
> and
> > > > > children on a Trail of Tears, and,
> > > > >
> > > > > describes those who protest as as CRAZIES
> > > > >
> > > > > HB
> > > >
> > > >