The author put a lot of work into the essay. It deserves readers who are willing to do their own work to understand it.

So the complaints are just anti-intellectualism, or laziness, or both. — Jamal

Hmm. Were they complaints or simply comments or questions...as to the complexity? We are not all at the same level of understanding, even if we might be on the same page. Hence, the sharing of all kinds of essay and philosophy writing. The challenge lies in good communication. @Baden is excellent at that. I've enjoyed his further explanations.

I hope to come back and say something more interesting. — Jamal

Let's hear it?

It was criticism. Stop complaining! You didn't write it :D I am sure Baden can answer if he sees fit. If not, no bother.

It deserves readers who are willing to do their own work to understand it. — Jamal

As far as that goes, yes. But discussion with others and clarification from authors go a long way. That's the whole point of the event...to learn and improve understanding. Discover new ways of looking and develop new skills. To interact and connect. Ideas and imagination.

Sure as hell did! Not good enough though.

Read Byung Chul-Han's 'Psychopolitics,' it is almost like he wrote a commentary of Baden's work - only more legible.

Frankly I am at a loss for words. I say these words with disbelief because I cannot fathom WHY anyone would do such a thing.

Read Byung Chul-Han's 'Psychopolitics,' it is almost like he wrote a commentary of Baden's work - only more legible. — I like sushi

Thank you. Found and downloaded a free pdf (74 pages). Will read later...

Amity unenlightened @Vera Mont

On the difficulty of the text: I didn't deliberately try to complexify it, but I tried to prioritize theoretical preciseness which involved employing a lot of technical vocabulary that, understandably, the vast majority of readers were unlikely to be familiar with — Baden

The problem is that several of the readers seem to have expected something dumbed down or put in language they’re already familiar with. As far as I’m aware this was not in the rules of the event, was it? — Jamal

The problem is that you are talking about 3 readers, named by Baden, who mentioned the difficulties in reading the text. He understood that. It is not fine for you to falsely depict them as making immediate complaints, implying a lack of genuine interest. Did you even read the posts written by Vera?

Starting with:

This essay amounts to a critique of a consumerist culture that is driven by technology and rooted in capitalism.
— Moliere
You've got my vote right there! The rest of that first paragraphs elicits interest, curiosity and brings a host of long-held beliefs and long withheld doubts to the fore. I find myself lining up possible responses even before I've read the arguments.

The essay is challenging and rather long, so I shall have to read it in sections, reflect and comment before continuing. — Vera Mont

Other participants/posters have not even attempted to read this essay.
There is no rule to say they must.

It’s a shame that people who apparently want to be part of a philosophy discussion forum are not willing to grapple with philosophy, or perhaps do not even realize that philosophy is difficult and sometimes technical. — Jamal

Apparently, some TPF contributors are unwilling to read different forms or styles of philosophy writing outwith their comfort zone. And those who have, and are perhaps not convinced of their value, are unwilling to share their views. There is no rule to say they must.

It’s perhaps telling that whenever I criticize people for anti-intellectualism or laziness they pretend I’ve implied they’re not intellectual enough. That is obviously not the case. It is fine to be flummoxed; what is not fine is to immediately complain about it to the author. Be flummoxed, and if you’re genuinely interested, de-flummox yourself, perhaps with the help of some polite questions. — Jamal

Correct about asking further questions and discussion. Done and dusted. Otherwise disingenuous.

As for the the 'dumbing down'. That was the ironic use of an AI website to clarify. It actually proved helpful. https://dumbitdown.ai/

Your complaints are ill-founded and unjust. The lack of appreciation to Vera, myself and others who try to read and respond to all the essays in the spirit of philosophy and fun and discovery...
Wow. Rock bottom.

Read Byung Chul-Han's 'Psychopolitics,' it is almost like he wrote a commentary of Baden's work - only more legible.
— I like sushi

Thank you. Found and downloaded a free pdf (74 pages). Will read later... — Amity

I haven't had a chance to read this yet. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to start a Reading Group discussion? * Or is it not even recognised by @Baden and other commenters as having value?
If not, why not?

If it is something that improves understanding of the important issues...
It's a pity that Vera is no longer with us. To question. She provided experience, knowledge and insight which I don't have. A clear and motivated voice, even if sometimes tinged with cynicism. To return to her and Baden's final response:

I'm pretty sure the salient points can be translated to more accessible - if less philosophically precise - language. I would like to see that version widely disseminated....
.... so the important message could be ignored by a wider range of readers.
[sigh] I've been here before, in several formats.[!sigh] — Vera Mont

It's always worth a try. :strong: — Baden

Both seem to have shared the desire: to disseminate the important message. Whatever that is. So that it reaches a wider audience. Perhaps it needs to be tailored, the specialist language adjusted to fit into the spectrum. Translated and interpreted without loss of meaning. To reach out. To improve understanding. Knowledge is power.

* I am not the one to lead a reading group...or even start a thread...right now. But I'd be there...

@Baden

This essay amounts to a critique of a consumerist culture that is driven by technology and rooted in capitalism. The proximate goal is not to suggest alternative political systems but to offer conceptual tools to help protect free subjectivity as a creative and self-creating force through presenting in a brief introductory way a theory concerning its cultural situatedness. — Moliere

Isn't this the Frankfurt school response, meaning we should impose ways to disrupt the capitalist takeover of technology for its malevolent purposes as opposed to traditional Marxists who would advocate removal of technology from private ownership and placing it back into the hands of the citizens?

Meaning is use [11] because use manifests this intelligibility, expressing in communicative acts the relation between an individual's neurological patternings of understandings of a concept and the social patternings of brains that share understandings of the concept. The behavioral expressions of this web of interwoven patterns, this web of webbed nodes, simultaneously express and define meaning because they represent social instantiations of this web and—in successful communication—reinforce its structure in accordance with those instantiations. This interdependence makes language both stable and mutable. Stable in that webs of linguistic meaning are self-reinforcing through communicative acts, but mutable in that the boundaries of what is considered successful communication are not absolutely fixed but depend on social and human contexts that are changeable. So, we cannot fully pin down or exhaust the meaning of a word, for example, through a dictionary defnition; there is always an excess to meaning that can expand or redirect itself. The fact that words change meaning over time, sometimes very quickly, is testament to this. — Moliere

This feels like you're trying to ulitmately ground meaning not just in use but in some internal meaning within the speaker, which would I'd submit goes beyond classic Wittgensteinian thought. You're treading in the silent area and starting to sound social sciencey.

The latter, toxic, mode of action of social life seems more and more apparent in contemporary technologically driven cultures occurring through, for example:

1. The bureaucratization of cognition (the capturing of cognitive capacity for uncreative calculative labour limited to reproducing systemic functionality)
2. (Negative) exteriorization / algorithmic outsourcing (the general stultifying of mental development through the replacement of cognitive tasks by algorithmic processes)
3. Semantic flattening (the dulling and standardization of language use towards reflexive repetition of codes of systemic reproduction)
4. Behavioural conditioning (the limiting of imaginative capacity and creative potential by the channeling of behaviour into operationally defined grooves)

When these processes dominate society, we fall into what Stiegler refers to as a “proletarianization” of mind, a general mindset unaware and / or unwilling to potentialize itself except as a function of the system in which it partakes, a society of individuals who cannot see themselves beyond how society sees them and define themselves limitedly as such [9]. Part of addressing that problem, of course, is promoting knowledge of the problem as a means to stimulate thought and action, and in a society that seems to be becoming ever more reflexive, encouraging reflection seems crucial. Of course, the weapon of the theorist in this effort is the theory itself, an idea through which we will now take a detour. — Moliere

You point here to an absolute free will that submits to control, perhaps as the result of over-whelming influence or even laziness, but your theory requires a spirit that ultimately can resist if it wants. I say this to point out you're referencing what appears to be an inpenetrable soul, set aside to do battle if it wants (again an all powerful Will) and a clear assessment that virtue lies in its resistence, perhaps it's its highest purpose, to remain true to itself.

A theory as EKM then is an epistemic protective that aims to catalyze active reflection against passive reflexivity. — Moliere

Your EKM sounds like time set aside to comtemplate your higher purpose, reserved for study of those things that most enhance your humanity, removed from the mechanistic daily activities that define the better part of our lives. Hopefully to annoy you, I'll point out you've just arrived at a rule that sounds like we should set aside a special day and keep it holy.

The freedom to say “no” to economic imperatives is concomitantly marginalized along with anyone who dares exercise it. Further, while the full spectrum of human agency seems to offer the mutative and creative perturbations in societies that may allow for advance, there is no ironclad reason to think technocapitalism cannot as previously mentioned, evolve towards an increasingly limited form of freedom and, by extension, subjectivity. — Moliere

But there's every reason to think it cannot limit freedom because you've posited in your theory an absolute ability to say "no" that lurks within us. If it weren't there, your post would be just a prophecy of doom, but you offer a solution (the EKM), which means your position is optimistic, stating that humanity has the means to prevail at every turn. It's just a matter of calling attention to the ability to say "no."

My general thought is that yours is an accurate concern from both the right and the left, and you offer a defense to this overwhelming impact of negative cultural influences (which you identify generally as "capitalism") which is to remember you are a human being with choice with a much higher purpose than submission to the will of the financially ambitious. But I think it goes well beyond captialism. It's most values you see displayed on TikTok. Our defense is to remember our higher calling. You identify that from the left as revealed through the humanities. The right is essentially saying the same thing just different words.

Isn't this the Frankfurt school response, meaning we should impose ways to disrupt the capitalist takeover of technology for its malevolent purposes as opposed to traditional Marxists who would advocate removal of technology from private ownership and placing it back into the hands of the citizens? — Hanover

It is Han's 'Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power'. For whatever reason Baden forgot to cite the main contributing source for this essay. His ideas are basically the bones holding this essay together.

And he has read Han:

This really resonates with my recent readings (Schiller on aesthetics, Byung-Chul Han on technocapitalism, and John Gray on Utopian engineering), and it represents just the type of thinking we need now with the gap between ideological "freedom" and actual freedom becoming ever wider. — Baden

There are more than strong echoes from The Burnout Society too, of which Psychopolitics was a follow up.

Apologies to all of you. I went on a very long break.

Recalibrating...

Apologies to all of you. I went on a very long break. — Baden

:up:
I have no need or desire to continue the discussion. Thanks for everything. Take care :pray: :flower:

It is Han's 'Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power'. For whatever reason Baden forgot to cite the main contributing source for this essay. — I like sushi

I haven't read that one actually. I've only read "Infocracy". I'm a bit sceptical that the book you mention is that close to my essay in content, but I am tempted to read it to check.

@I like sushi So, I've read about half of that book already (it's a short book). It addresses a similar context but with a different focus (and there are a bunch of books that address this context, so I'm not sure why you thought this one was so special---e.g. I see no mention of systems theory yet, which is central to my essay). Also, ironically, in the book, Han acknowledges his debt for the term "psychopolitics" to Stiegler''s "psychopower", and I have read and did quote Stiegler. Anyway, the book does not at all follow the structure of my essay, but yes, we are talking, along with many others, about the same context, and the first few pages on freedom strike a similar note to my comments. Han's particular focus so far has been a critical extension of Foucault's "biopolitics" to a "psychopolitics" in the context of neoliberalism, which is interesting but, again, not my angle of approach.

@Amity If you haven't read him yet and are still interested, Han is a good accessible gateway into this kind of stuff.

I haven't read that one actually. I've only read "Infocracy". I'm a bit sceptical that the book you mention is that close to my essay in content, but I am tempted to read it to check. — Baden

[4 hours later]

So, I've read about half of that book already — Baden

Props. Or yikes. :grimace:

Hard to tell. Bit envious of the schedule, access to resources, and quality of life, if nothing else. :razz:

:grin: Like "Infocracy" (which I read in a day too), it's a really short book. I'm no @Streetlight when it comes to reading, but it's the type of thing where you can stick it on text-to-speech and it pretty much flows.

My general thought is that yours is an accurate concern from both the right and the left, and you offer a defense to this overwhelming impact of negative cultural influences (which you identify generally as "capitalism") which is to remember you are a human being with choice with a much higher purpose than submission to the will of the financially ambitious. But I think it goes well beyond captialism. It's most values you see displayed on TikTok. Our defense is to remember our higher calling. You identify that from the left as revealed through the humanities. The right is essentially saying the same thing just different words. — Hanover

Yes, and let’s take this as a jumping off point because I think it’s important. What I’m presenting here is political in that it concerns power relations, but it’s not political in terms of taking a clear side on the traditional left-right wing divide. For example, Luhmann, who is central to my essay, is considered by many to be a conservative thinker. And I want to synthesize his ideas with other thinkers that most would consider to be on the left. So, this is certainly not a Marxist or even a neo-Marxist critique. The relevance of class struggle has been so diluted even in neo-Marxist thought (and Frankfurt school thinkers such as Marcuse have been part of this process) that a purely Marxist founded critique of advanced technocapitalism doesn’t even seem coherent to me (when does neo-Marxism become so stretched by current conditions that it is no longer Marxism?). Technocapitalism has made Marx, if not irrelevant, at least orthogonal to the current social context (we can connect Marxist thought but it doesn’t really “line up” with what we’re facing).

This is part of why technocapitalism is ensuring its own success. You cannot have a revolution without revolutionaries and you cannot have revolutionaries without something like class that clearly binds them. And the working class was clearly bound in the past because the reality of their life was dominated by a particular form of work that could be analyzed in terms of exploitation. Reality now is determined by a particular form of leisure, the consumption of media, that can also be analysed in terms of exploitation, but does not delineate class boundaries. This is our contemporary constant. Modernity is “liquid” (a la Bauman) in terms of the work that we do: opportunities to change jobs, reeducate ourselves etc. It is leisure exploitation that is the new concrete and it has been democratized. The janitor and the manager spend their leisure time similarly, have similar experiences while doing so, consume similar forms of junk, and are similarly pathologized and addicted.

So, my concern in terms of power relations and exploitation is, in a certain way, as fundamental and removed from particular ideological positions as possible. It is ideology itself in a general sense in the form of communications, that is exploiting and transforming us in its image. Communications as the operational medium of social systems have found ways to steer and manipulate consciousness and, by extension, the body in ways that are self-fulfilling and self-propelling to the point where we can envisage a theoretical dystopia where language itself “escapes” or transcends the human (perhaps via AI) such that we become purely its substrate. That is, the end of ontological freedom, not as repression but as effacement, is potentially in sight. This is Stiegler’s “psychopower” / Han’s “psychopolitics” as an extension of Foucault's “biopolitics” taken to its ultimate conclusion.

If you want a political movement as a target, it could be neoliberalism, as its social and economic project combine in ways very facilitative of global technocapitalism's onward march. But this again does not really establish a left/right divide. Trump is as anti-neoliberal in some respects (as are many non-populist conservatives on social issues) as the left are. Anti-immigrationism is anti-neoliberalism, only the object of disenchantment is displaced from the ideology to the group. And so, the conflict between left and right on this issue is misplaced and confused. If the left don’t stand up for culture, they are feeding the technocapitalist monster that would homogenize us all, and if the right don’t shift their focus to the underlying cause, they are doing the same. The structure of communications as autopoetic system functions to obscure itself, at least partly, by dividing us on issues that are not fundamental to the problems we face as free subjects trying to organize ourselves in ways that maximize our freedom-as-subjectivity, individually and collectively— that allow for our existence as creative, reflective, analytical, and, therefore, empowered beings.

So, what is at stake fundamentally here is power and its transfer not primarily from one political group or class to another but from the human to the non-human. My message to the lefty is to go out and hug your conservative neighbour, tell them “I hate Tik Tok too!”, and then, together, get to (metaphorically…) burning down the tech companies that are weaponizing such shite against us all.

Fascinating stuff. I see that Han argues protection against this encroachment against our humanity is engagement in communal ritual. While not advocating specifically religious ritual, it would seem that those subscribing to those beliefs and practices would have a certain immunity to the problem you identify, perhaps even more than one who practiced ritual secularly. The practices of the religious tend to be more committed and less fragile to immediate persuasion.

The idea that freedom arises from the routine practice of rites seems a surprising result to come from a secular perspective. A harkening back to the simplicity of antiquity to save us from the dehumanization of modernerity. I'm not oversimplifying this to Han just being a luddite or even being opposed to technology per se, but it does seem he's trying to establish a barrier against the continued evolution of technological control over society.

I recognize I've hijacked Han's view here to some extent to fit my worldview, and I realize a great chasm between the justification of my adherence to custom and his (covenantal versus utilitarian/protective), but I can't help but to see the similarities and wonder if an arguable thesis doesn't exist that ritual arose evolutionarily for the very purposes Han identifies. This problem is therefore just another consequence of our killing God.

I'm not overstating, just thinking out loud. I recognize that societies rigidly affixed to religion face a host of probably more serious problems than the democratization of social control by the handing out of TikTok candy and whatnot. I also see your point that today's subjugation isn"t just limited to the Clampetts (I'll let you Google this reference), but also the Gatsby's (piece of shit novel, for the record).

Yeah, we need more real virtual magic and less virtual virtual magic (there is of course no non-oxymoronic purely real magic as the" real" is either the inaccessible or the scientific). That is, we ought make magical the unmediated socio-symbolic virtual, that which we can directly jointly believe despite its ostensible unreality. And shared rites/rituals of a proto-religious nature seem like a good candidate. Let's just agree to believe. How hard can it be? Primitive folk got busy with it. But they weren`t the Flintstones watching David Copperfield on Limestone TVs. Virtual virtual magic is just gravity-defying hair that momentarily distracts you from your hotdog. That's to say if you'll be L. Ron Hubbard, I'll be your Tom Cruise. Let's just take the Hollywood out of it. Bye, bye Beverly Hills. We can be the reverse-Clampetts.

Just reread trying to look for an "in" for discussion. And the thing I'm wanting more of is specification of these enzymatic knowledge machines: How do they interact with the independent flows of code such that in place of identification, or in combatting this?, we get or somehow are interrupted by knowledge? But that's a Kudos on your writing because it means I wanted more, basically. It's an interesting premise, and I like the theoretical set up between what I would call, for lack of a better word, two subjectivities -- the social subjectivity (operating independent of individual intent) and the individual subjectivity (that sense of being you which, due to social subjectivity, is often a process of identification-with and enactment).

A thought that comes to mind are Koans. They're meant to stop that circuit of the self in a way. — Moliere

Thanks for this comment, Moliere, It gives me a chance to say a bit more about the EKM idea.

The first reason to posit theories like this as “enzymatic knowledge machines”, i.e. as assemblages of functional abstractions that coordinate and can be “plugged into” our mental machinery is to highlight the nature of what we are up against---that is, to set up the obverse, the media machine, which as a whole system and through the action of sub-systems, also “plugs into” us, but in a negative sense.

We might call media systems “anaesthetic information machines”---they neither promote knowledge nor activity in any positive sense but offer passivity through information or the illusion of activity and knowledge. So, we attempt to concretize the abstract such that we can focus on how things function and not be distracted by the fact that we can’t “see” a thing function at the level that matters. Natural and artificial machines, such as organisms and robots respectively, can’t so easily escape our notice, and we may even overestimate their functionality for that reason, whereas the opposite is the case when dealing with abstract assemblages. So, the first idea is to get people thinking about the abstract landscape and its functionality not just from the EKM side but from the opposing side. The EKM first and foremost is a warning.

Another point here is that conceptualisation is creation. By conceptualising theories of action as enzymatic machines, we create them as such and make positive use of philosophy (this dovetails with Deleuzian ideas of the nature of philosophy itself). The idea is to create territories of thought on which ground we have a chance of success. Traditional politics gets us nowhere as the real problem is always displaced. No politician is going to say we should limit tech companies activities because they are creating abstract machinic assemblages that parasitise our mental machinery. They are instead going to blab on about something like “privacy” or etc, which the tech companies love because then they just give us a list of check boxes that we can’t be bothered ticking and we’re back to square one. The machine rolls on.

Overall, the idea is to create conceptual spaces that lead to action to combat conceptual vacuums that lead to passivity. Poetry, art, koans, etc can certainly break the circuit and bring us back to ourselves in a way that helps us resist anaesthetic information machines, but they don’t give us a conceptual grounding on which to be confident in our understanding of them and therefore to actively combat them. I envision a future where people in general are educated about how society, and particularly its technological side, really works at an abstract level in relation to their subjectivites, rather than at a step removed. But we need to create a language and a set of concepts to talk about that that go beyond what we have now (which includes poetry, koans etc) to something more philosophical/scientific. Technology is accelerating its development, and our conceptual space needs to accelerate and expand to keep up or, frankly, we will be left behind.