Fascism!
- Thread starter josef k.
- Start date
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
my best wishes to your Dad & of course I hope the surgery comes off w/o a hitch & that he fully recovers.
but - & I dunno how serious you are - I very much doubt that every scientist solely wants to make life tangibly better for everyone; career, ego, academic politics, prestige, intellectual arrogance, etc etc. not only that but I'm skeptical that any scientific advance really makes life better for "everyone" - there is always someone getting the short end of the stick. on the flipside obv there are many idealistic revolutionaries who believe they are trying to make life better for everyone. of course it is much easier to be idealistic when everyone is united by struggling against an oppressor; once the revolutionaries get into power & have to make all those day-to-day policy decisions & tradeoffs is when the trouble starts. which incidentally is not something I see the Zizeks & Badious of the world address, ever - it's always that State Communism was a "betrayal' of communism or something similar - never that it just doesn't work.
anyway surely scientists & revolutionaries are sometimes the same people?
vimothy
yurp
What about performing Badiou?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
doesn't exist.
also if Badiou is an "event" I think that comments more on the paucity of events than it does on Badiou.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I was being facetious--of course science is situated in the world, economically, socially, politically--but I'll still take 3 scientists over a trillion communists, any day.
See, scientists get results. If their hypotheses don't get results, can't fit the data, or cause unintended harm, they change their hypotheses. Communists don't. If their hypotheses don't get results, or cause unintended harm, they stick to their hypotheses.
They're almost identical to Christians in that way.
I've never met anyone who has told me that this is what they are doing, though it is interesting to speculate about what that might involve.
Also if Badiou is an "event" I think that comments more on the paucity of events than it does on Badiou.[/QUOTE]
Agreed. But there are events, and Events.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
right. "communists" vs. "revolutionaries" is a big difference to me. not that the two categories don't share a number of flaws. but the latter just casts such a wide net.
isn't this true of all politicians tho, anyone in power? if Communists more overtly of course, b/c they have a basic premise underlying everything.
it seems to me also that this view of science also has an elephant in the corner. that is, scientists get results but then they pass most of the really tough decisions on to someone in power (w/exceptions, like Oppenheimer & the Bomb). that is, it's easier to portray scientists as neutral cos they just supply the tools, they don't decide how to use them. scientists came up with napalm, for example, but one wouldn't blame them for the napalming of Vietnamese children.
It seems that "unintended harm" is pretty hard to define.
not to sound like I'm attacking scientists - what I'm really getting at is that someone is always going have to make a tough decision at some point, the 51-49 decision, that involves horrific tradeoffs.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Did I say there weren't problems with the way science is often violently applied by states in order to sustain their power? No. But in these cases, such as with the atomic bomb or napalm, the problem is with the war machine and the state, not science as such.
Scientists also consider themselves ACCOUNTABLE to society for their actions. They are very literally accountable on a legal, ethical, and moral level, and this accountability is enforced by law; scientists are forever held up to public scrutiny for their actions and beholden to the public for ethical grounding. This doesn't mean (of course) that science goes off without a hitch, but it does mean that you don't have a Central Committee of Party leaders who get to decide to torture--I mean, "re-educate"--anyone who dares to dissent.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
surely Badiou is in the former. for that matter surely any kind of academic infighting & intrigue is in the former.
that thread about Idea of Communism conference - I mean, if a bunch of academics sing the Internationale (or fail too
) at a Communism conference and no one's around to hear it do they really make a sound?
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
that thread about Idea of Communism conference - I mean, if a bunch of academics sing the Internationale (or fail too
They make beautiful music together.
How many Badiouites does it take to change a lightbulb?
All of them. Only none of them will actually stand up and screw in the lightbulb. They wait, and through their fidelity to an Event--universal in its political truth--cause truth procedures to eventually push the lightbulb in.
Look, Ma, no hands!
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Is it just me, or does all of this talk about refusing to be cynical (which equates to a belief in communism, of course), sound a lot like a Maoist version of Chomsky's "people need to believe in their own beauty and greatness"?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
but science is then functioning as a part of "the war machine & the state". that's not to make scientists more complicit than policymakers but not less complicit either. the question is, I guess, responsibility. if you created napalm do you then bear the responsibility for its use? I don't know, & I don't think there is a clearcut answer really. I just question this view of science - even if you were being flip - as largely a disinterested, munificent force in the world. *EDIT* especially given that what you might call a scientific establishment is so closely tied to pharmaceutical, defense, etc. industries...
certainly it's true that scientists do have established systems of self-regulation thru peer review & so on (& informal ones as well I'm sure), as well as laws & things like the Hippocratic Oath. I am not questioning any of that. rather, what ethics they regulate.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
that's a good one.
on the topic of politics light bulb jokes;
q:how many anarcho-primitivists does it take to change a light bulb?
a:NONE! THEY DON"T USE ELECTRICITY! DEATH TO THE TECHNO-INDUSTRIAL MACHINE!!!
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Yup, to the same extent any of us do. I do think there's a way in which nothing can regulate science, even though a lot of things rein it in...
If we could only get rid of the state, the war machine would start to shrivel up. Eventually it'd be tiny. You'd only have little regional wars over food like in the pre-colonial Americas. Science would potentially be our best bet toward making life better under those circumstances.
Not easy to do--not at all.
But as far as historical communism and fascism go--different rhetoric, similar results.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Teehee. They make a lot of good points, though.
The State is simply unsustainable in its current incarnation, and possibly-- with a global population this large--at all.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
you know it. that joke is satire coming from a place of mostly love, not spite.
yeah but saying that, even yelling it from the mountain tops is like pissing into the wind. speaking from yrs of experience.
a big problem, I reckon, is not having a (coherent) alternative solution to propose.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I want to get a tattoo that says humanism but is crossed out by a universal "no" symbol, like this:
Only with the word humanism in the middle instead of a cigarette.
Only with the word humanism in the middle instead of a cigarette.
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yes.
What does this do?
It gives
a) Life-projects.
b) Creates networks.
c) Creates noise.
d) Creates media logics.
...
e) Creates urban logics.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I think there is one, but nobody wants to hear it, because it doesn't involve enough power and therefore has little seductive allure.
There are tribal societies all over the world that exist without states, and are doing just fine. You aren't going to read about them in the papers, or see them on the TV, but they exist. And they're a great model for a future society.