“‘Digital Athens’? Or Last-Ditch Drama?”
(January 27th, 2014. This will be discussed on The Waking Up Radio Show [which is transcribed on the page Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class] of February 2, 2014.)
[…see also: Staying Focused on Designing A Future… On Not Getting Divided… where partial transcripts of The Waking Up Radio Show are located.]
This is not about ‘knowledge’… this in about filtering… filtering out the freedom… and finding new chains…
This is about installing Auschwitz- High-Tech.
“No one else can tell you what work you’re here to do.” “Be free! Be free!” is what the ancestors are saying.
…that if we can see how we’re merely tail-chasing when we pursue the goal of ‘improving “democracy”’… that we can begin to step off that track… and take ‘the future’ back.… and end ‘power’-worship once and for all…
There is a land uncharted… known to so-called ‘artists’ (‘so-called’ because we are all artists…)
…that so-called ‘artists’ know of… show of… but seldom if ever speak of…
…and they need to… we all do…
…called our bodies…
…that they know… we all do…
…‘power’ stakes a claim to… burns in its ‘citizen’ brand…
…pounded in the earth our bodies… are its stakes…
…that proclaim… we serve its aims…
…and though… all so-called artists know…
…that for their art to flow at all… those stakes must go…
…they don’t – or at least I’ve never heard them say –
…that every human being has the right to live that way…
…unbranded and unstaked.
This land is our land… to grow without the fire-brand glow of states… burning in our flesh…
This land is our land… to grow in freedom with our fellows… unfettered and unbent.
This body’s my land… your body’s your land…
…an earth-oasis… we live in freely…
We’re born for freedom… there’s no stakes in us…
This land is Shared Humanity.
Brothers and Sisters… Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account is an account of what happens when a whole society “does what it is told.” But that level of conformity is what we’re seeing when we arise… and when we close our eyes.
[…with this is mind… we’re going to look at the work of two guys… slickening the trap… that they hope will hold our Global Awakening back… in this page I’m calling “‘Digital Athens’ or Last Ditch Drama?” I hope you’ll take a look at it…]
The people of Germany under the Nazis are no different from us… accepting our clothes and our shoes without asking questions… never demanding the slaughter’s dismantlement.
A virtual-child-on-the-loose in Boston was the excuse… to test how far along we have advanced… in our training in passive obedience… how deeply our bow to authority… and I think the results for ‘power’ have been pleasing.
“How do we regain our leadership capacities?” is the same question as “How do we reclaim our own reasoning capacities?” is the same question as “How do we regain our humanity?”
In Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness… I’m trying to show how the circular trap of official state ideology works… in the case of ‘democracy’ (noting that it works the same with other state-legitimating ideologies…) hoping that if we can see that the only ‘progress’ being made… is toward tighter and tighter containment (although we are – with our ancestors’ help – peeling away the layers of the illusion…) that if we can see how we’re merely tail-chasing when we pursue the goal of ‘improving “democracy”’… that we can begin to step off that track… and take ‘the future’ back.
All of us are kept focused on the narrow tasks before us – whether we’re on the street… making a building… in a comfortable ‘analyst’ seat… or in a laboratory… or in a legislature making policy… we’re all encouraged to make our ‘check-lists’… but the future we continue to leave to the ‘statesmen’ (and ‘shadow’ more so, we’ll see… than those in the limelight-glow…) who set our courses behind-scenes (always pushing to the forefront… the ‘scientists’… always telling us ad nauseum they’re ‘smarter’ than us….)
Until we refuse this narrowing of our thinking – the boxes – the hierarchy… the dehumanizing focus on function merely…
(…we’re not made for that Brothers and Sisters… it’s not our nature to be narrow… just the opposite… we want to encompass the ‘all-of-it’… But we can’t do this in harness… we must end once and for all… ‘power’-worship… which exists behind the state’s existence… it is the ‘cause-generative’…)
Getting off the ‘Class Train’… defining a new destination… is the challenge of the moment.
…and reclaim responsibility for the goal… reclaim exclusive focus on determining the goal… focus on it… and only on it… until we got it… then… they got us. The folks who brought this effort from MIT discussed in this blog “‘Digital Athens’ or Last Ditch Drama?” are just the latest installment of an on-going (since ‘class’ began…) effort to lock down our containment.
Getting off the ‘Class Train’… defining a new destination… is the challenge of the moment.
We must start talking about this… state-legitimating-ideologies cannot be ‘fixed’… they are designed to work us out of the whole ‘calculus’… of determining what world we want… of what the world is that we will live in….
These ‘statesmen’ are rapists. They want us to surrender our bodies without complaint… never raise our vision above what they give us… steal our vitality and answer us with, “sit down!… shut up!… don’t interfere with grown-up business!””
The result: Auschwitz.
Here are some quotes from the interview I heard today (January 27th, 2014) which inspired this blog. In some instances I paraphrase:
“In the ‘First Machine Age’ we overcame the limits of our bodies.” [Our bodies have no limits… we are infinite… in truth… – P.S.] “The ‘Second Machine Age’, for us, is to overcome the limits of our minds. This is going to be as big a deal for humanity as the ‘First Machine Age’…” [Our future will certainly be about overcoming limits… but it is the limits imposed by ‘power’ that we’re finally overcoming… by turning away from narrow function… and to a willingness to accept, honor, and grow… what the earth has given us… not his masters… – P.S.]
“The Stock Market doesn’t provide the best metrics [for determining productivity…] we have to reinvent the metrics… Wikipedia adds zero to GDP. The same is true of YouTube and many applications…. As goods and services become cheaper or free, it’s missed by the current measures.”
“The ‘Second Machine Age’ is about the astonishing advance of technology… a difference of degree resulting from an increase in quantity… first, we are walking around with devices in our pocket with a lot more computing power… second, there’s a lot more data to feed to the machines… third, there’s an army of geeks around the world… a people-resource that’s bigger and smarter…. ”
We have to be able to say that how this ‘society’ got this way was through a massive mistake. This is discussed in John Boswell’s The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children…
“There’s an interconnectivity of billions of brains out there… able to contribute to [this ‘New Machine Age’…]” [‘Power’ is tripping over itself to own and fetter this capacity… – P.S.]
“Routine information-entering tasks [jobs] are on the chopping block.”
“65% of Americans do basic information-processing work. More and more processes are being digitized. It’s hard to think of an industry that’s not affected…”
“For example, tax-preparers are a microcosm of what’s happening across the board. They’re just following rules…”
“The boundary between routine and non-routine information-processing is getting fuzzy…”
“Breast-cancer diagnosis is a good example. Diagnosticians have identified seven different categories of skin cancer, and computers are able to identify all of them, and on its own identified an eighth category. Computers are going beyond routine processing and discovering new knowledge…” [I have to interject here that this is not ‘knowledge’… this in data-filtering… computers are filtering tools – high-tech sieves. Finding new patterns in mountains of data is but producing more highly-refined data. ‘Knowledge’ is not about executing functions… but revealing essential truth… grasping with our understanding the forces of life… – P.S.]
“This is a huge change from prior mimicking of us; a much more intensive data-computation approach. It’s not programming in a conventional sense…”
[When asked, “how do we distribute (this socially-derived) value if the work of most people is made obsolete?…
(…and I have to add that that’s a really interesting way of putting it… which made this interview far and away more useful for getting to the essence of the propaganda… and shedding light on reality… than the other pap-interviews I’ve since read. The way the interviewer put it… essentially… was to acknowledge that ‘value’ is our communal inheritance… because that’s how we came by it… just as Miklos said about the production of the 140 gram gold coin used in the underground economy of the KZ: “Since the gold was procured through a collective effort, the distribution of the merchandise received in exchange was made on this same basis.” That is how we do it when we aren’t coerced by ‘power’… like all of nature we’re big on ‘balance’. It’s these would-be ‘philosopher-king-statesmen’ who want to upset ‘balance’… and we’ll be talking more about this… this… I don’t want to call it ‘the psychological rationale underlying their obsession’ because it has a material basis… in their being… turned out of the house… on a massive scale… in Europe… in Antiquity… through the Middle Ages. This was a deep pattern among the wealthy… the elites… which we don’t hear discussion of. And we have to push conversations like this forward as we work our way to ‘claiming the right to define the world we want.’ We have to be able to say that how this ‘society’ got this way was through a massive mistake. This is discussed in John Boswell’s The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe From Late Antiquity Through the Renaissance. These are very important discussions… which require as well Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato… which traces this injunction back to Plato.
It is truly… there are no words to describe the awfulness of the fact that so much massive wrong can be laid at the feet of one man.
And this is not to say that if he had not existed someone else would not have done what he did… and not to deny the reality that ‘power’ looks around for what it needs to perpetuate its rule… it’s legitimacy… its sense of self-legitimacy… but… nonetheless… as Popper says there was a vigorous anti-slavery… humanitarian… equalitarian movement that Plato was writing to defeat. So it may very well be that we legitimately can lay the whole of this mess at one man’s feet. It’s mind-boggling to say the least.)
As always… ‘class’… ‘power’… hides in these conversations… is hidden… passes unexamined. They need us to do what we’re told – this is called ‘education’ – and they protect for their tribe the prerogative of control…
…the reply was what we’d expect from bullies: “we don’t care…” anymore than the Nazis cared that the value they procured was taken unfairly. And how is the theft justified? Then and now by saying that it serves a ‘higher goal.’
So when they say: – “There are still useful things for people to do. We’re not automating everything. We’re not at a post-work economy yet. There’s a lot to be done to keep our system working in a healthy way. We have three chapters in our book that describe what people can do to find ways to contribute and do valuable work…” [Can you feel my blood rising… across the electrons?… – …the Nazis would answer the same… “there’s still some things you can do to ‘contribute’… your teeth… your hair… the clothes you wear… these have ‘value’… but not you.” – P.S.]
[The interviewer said, “we’re seeing record-setting levels of inequality… everything you’re describing heightens these trends…”] In reply the interviewees said: “In the ‘First Machine Age’ there were disruptions and dislocations too. Farm workers had to be retrained in the ‘First Machine Age’ too. We have to upgrade the education system… [quoting] ‘progress is a race between technology and education.’ We haven’t been re-inventing education that way. Rote learning and following instructions is not enough today.” [And here I have to say that when he says this, he’s talking about and to ‘the common hoard’… me and you… as it goes unsaid… that this was never the ‘rulers’ education. As always… ‘class’… ‘power’… hides in these conversations… is hidden… passes unexamined. They need us to do what we’re told – this is called ‘education’ – and they protect for their tribe the prerogative of control… – P.S.]
How many more atrocities must we wait for them to commit?… before we’re ready to take that first step… talking about it… allow in the thought that we must… begin again… this time as global humans… not ‘citizens’…
“We need more creativity…” […“‘we’… is not squeezing enough out of you ‘worker-bees’ of what ‘we’ need… to create the machines that allow us to finally be free of you ‘low-level’, imperfect, no-value-adding… ‘worker-bees’…” is what he means… – P.S.].
[When asked about ‘curriculum’ one of them said:] “We need a ‘Grand Bargain’: higher teacher pay, but more accountability [i.e. more top-down control… – P.S.]. The bottom 20% don’t add value and we have to remove them.” [That’s Auschwitz… he’s describing Auschwitz… – P.S.].
“We need more technology in education that captures the best techniques [of educating] and digitizes them. A data-driven approach to education will get us to a higher level of education.”
“We’re sticking students in desks and teaching the three ‘R’s, but we need less rote-instruction, less teaching kids to do what computers are good at, and focus more on what they’re not good at… like ‘negotiation’…”
“We want to create a mechanism that continuously creates and learns. Digital education will identify which teaching techniques improve the technology.”
“Imagine pushing a button that would satisfy our needs? That’s the world we want, a ‘Digital Athens’ in which not slaves but machines provide for our needs. But we can’t get to that point until we address some of the issues.” [i.e., us… the people… locking-in our enslavement… – P.S.].
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“No one else can tell you what work you’re here to do.” “Be free! Be free!”
The ancestors have been telling us that since ‘class’ first stalked and claimed our humanity.
‘Power’ hopes to turn us into functionaries of ‘the machine’… ‘the mechanism’… ‘the system’… ‘tenders’ merely… of their ‘system’… their ‘Athens’. We are being told what future we’re supposed to want….
Disconnect from the propaganda Brothers and Sisters… please… let’s turn to each other… and the rich, deep thinking of the earth and the ancestors… the knowledge we’re given at birth. (Sisters and brothers: haven’t these worshippers of ‘power’… these children of Abandonment… done enough? How many more atrocities must we wait for them to commit?… before we’re ready to take that first step… talking about it… allow in the thought that we must… begin again… this time as global humans… not ‘citizens’…. Our ancestors of heart are calling for this…. Let’s start.)
There’s absolutely nothing new about this vision at all. It’s a vision of total control of us… by calculus… by means of reducing us to predictable functions – and with our help(!)…. They need our ‘creativity’ (as they themselves… trained so linearly – are ill-equipped for this…) to make machines that render people… absolutely irrelevant.
Our ancestors have long seen… that this is where the so-called ‘best’ lead… the ‘philosopher-kings’ wet-dream… ‘Brain-in-a-Bottle’ George Orwell called it I think… this Plato-Fascist fantasy… “Identify ‘the best’ and coerce the rest to serve them…” so the ‘rulers’ can possess ‘Knowledge-Infinite’.
“We’re a long way off from a work-less world,” they say… “but… just trust us…” (and what did Shakespeare tell us… about trusting our freedom with a keeper?…) “just trust us… as to that destination… trust us… with the ‘ultimate’ vision… and get busy helping us realize it! And we’ll give you a future in which you just have to push a button… and your feeding-tube will be inserted… automatically!”
That’s your vision? Truly? You don’t want a world in which babies are treasured?… the earth unfettered?… unbounded communion with our earth and ancestors? Don’t you want these things for our future?
These things are gifts from the earth… not your masters… they’re within our reach now… this minute… once we decide we will no longer serve them.
Our future is not about having masters… but… love… only.
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(Continuing examination of “what is ‘democracy’…” can be found at: Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness… and:
“Ten Questions for Richard Wolff”
(See also: “Reclaiming Our Stolen Gifts… Our Leadership… To Establish A Future Based On Distributed Generation” and You Know How I Know 'Localization' or 'Democratic Economics' Is A Con? and Conversation with Joel McIver)
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