Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2001 15:22:08 +1000
Subject: Re: more on cyborgs and the inhuman



Eric/All,

First, Eric's reply to this message, with hbone comments at **
Second, additional comments, end of post.


> hbone wrote:
>
> IMHO these evils are consequences of the acts of living people whose
> religion is greed, and whose tools are institutions and technologies.
> The EVIL ONES siphon wealth from worker/consumers in the form of Rent,
> Interest, Profits, Taxes, Insurance, Advertising.  That where our money
> goes.
>
> Development, technology and complexity are not actors in this drama....
> only names of  concepts.
>
> Hugh:
>
> Just a couple of points.
>
> 1. I'm not sure that a moral category like greed is sufficient to
> emcompass all these political, social and technological issues.
**Think of greed as human action, as quasi-religious motivation, as
neo-liberal ideology.
>
> 2. Just to be the devil's advocate, what kind of social solution do you
> advocate that would not involve some form of transfer? After all, H&N
> advocate a global guaranteed income.  How does this differ in principle
> from some of the things you describe?  In a world that faces so many
> unequal streams of income distribution, it seems hard to visualize a
> solution that doesn't involve some form of transfers, at least in the
> short term.
**  1)Why should a solution not involve some form of transfer, as returning
stolen property, entitlements or political power to those from whom it was
taken?  2) There is already a global annual income, most of it earned by
highly industrialized nations.  The question is how and to whom it would be
re-distributed.
>
> 3. By distinguishing "actors" from concepts and technology the way that
> you do, don't you end up with another dualism that lands you deep within
> the Luddite/Heidegger camp?  Where does the concept end and the actor
> begin?  That seems to be precisely the problem.

**1) Life is dualisms:  organism/environment, hot and cold, good and evil,
let's accept it.

    2) Nineteen terrorists demonstrated the transformation of concept to
inexpressible terror.

    3)In a more constructive vein, Civil Rights activists of the sixties
produced a relatively peaceful revolution, changing their concept to a
reality that transformed their lives and the lives of their children and
granchildren.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm putting together some pages of thoughts on philosophy to be posted soon,
in hope of
thoughtful response such as you gave above.

Back to basics of philosophy:  Mystery of phenomena, any and all phenomena
including human consciousness and language.  Perpetrated by God? or Nature?,
phenomena produce all that human beings know and experience.

Deconstruction of the "self" a useful exercise, but selves, subjects,
whatever... continue to inhabit living healthy brains.

The invention of a unique concept or paradigm is communicated by new words
or new shades of meaning the inventor-author confers on old words, "cyborg"
for instance.

Either situation bounces the inventor's vocabulary off her/his readers,
whose various interpretations (as critiquing Badiou) are exchanged,
questioned, but seem never to result in a politics of action, or even a
visualization of action plans.