The nooks, crannies and u-tubes of ideology

God love the man, not for the squeamish.

Baudrillard on "The King's Speech"

As the professor so rightly says, this text by Baudrillard rewards a close reading. It is a reflection on cinema and history and I was continuously reminded of it while watching The King's Speech, which, incidentally, I thought was a good movie. It packs an emotional punch and drew together some interesting themes. But there was something about the nostalgia that it stirred that was not to be trusted.

Slow motion bullet through various objects

The Treadmill

A few months ago, I posted a piece on my other blog, Social Acceleration, discussing Hartmut Rosa's metaphor of the treadmill in relation to the acceleration to which we are subject in late capitalist societies. Recently I've been getting the chance to engage with Rosa's metaphor in a more corporeally committed way as I've started pounding one everyday in the university accommodation in which I'm staying. (It's surprising that nearly all the high towers in the centre of Leeds are devoted to student accommodation, making the student economy to Leeds what the financial economy is to London, both debt inflated bubbles waiting to burst- for the second time in the case of London). I was a little sniffy about Rosa's choice of metaphor, but having used one, I have to agree that it is emblematic of our digitised, decontextualised, abstracted post-industrial world.

There are certain obvious things, though no less important for that. The first is that, run as you might, you don't go anywhere. This is not in fact new with the treadmill, it's just been taken to a new level. A logical space was prepared for the treadmill as soon as people started running for an abstracted reason like exercise. According to Wikipedia, this can be traced back to the mid 17th century. If you go running for exercise, space is purely functional, in so far as it provides the resistance that you need in order to achieve your primary aim which is to get in shape. If that resistance can be provided mechanically, then space shows itself to have been inessential and can be dispensed with. That's not to say that space is irrelevant. Our bodies have adapted to specific environmental conditions over many millennia. Strange as it may seem, there is actually a continuum between the land, the flora and fauna that inhabit it, and our physiological composition. Our legs are made for walking and running across a savannah, our arms for reaching for fruit and our hands for grasping a branch, holding a bone and, latterly, fashioning a tool. The fact that people started feeling the need to exercise their bodies from the 17th century onwards shows how alienated people had already become from nature and their environment and so, coextensively, from their bodies (according to Baudrillard, the naming of nature was symptomatic of our alienation from it and its reworking as the environment, took this alienation to a new level- the same new level as the treadmill for that matter.)

Hence the treadmill can't simply ignore space; instead it seeks to simulate it. You can adjust the gradient and programme in a range of different terrains (in fact there are presets for that). But, of course, the simulation leaves out all that is inessential, such as space itself, the people you have to dodge, the streets you have to cross and the traffic you have to wait for. It pairs down the experience of running for exercise to its formulaic minimum. All pretense of context is abandoned, this is simply working the muscles which, given our sedentary lifestyle, would otherwise atrophy.

And of course there is so much more control. You can set the speed, and adjust it as you run, although I really don't know if it's mph, kph or some other unit of measurement peculiar to the machine. It doesn't seem to matter though- I start at 6, and build up to 9. In 20 minutes (I suppose they're minutes) I managed to do 20.2. My aim is to do 30. It really doesn't matter what 30 refers to, as long as it is internally consistent- and I'm reasonably confidant that it is.

An internally consistent system simulating reality, obviating the need for involvement in that reality such that reality is superseded by the simulation.

And what about that control? The treadmill certainly provides the illusion of control. Lots of presets, quick sets, options and monitors that will enable you to adjust speed and incline, monitor distance and heart rate and have it all displayed digitally while you are pounding away.

Well, yes there is control. There is control within the rigidly defined parametres provided by the machine. The point is that the machine and its parametres mediate the every aspect of the experience of running and the control that one has. In the same way that workers were obliged to adapt to the rhythm of machinery with the introduction of the factory system, so the treadmill obliges you to adapt to its rhythms. With the kickback that you can adjust its rhythms, you are offered options. However, the options are tightly circumscribed and, to repeat, your choices are mediated by the machine. Your choices are, effectively, functions of the machine. At which point it becomes unclear whether you are using the machine or whether the machine is using you. Especially if it is a gym where you are paying for the privilege of exercising the machines.

Does it matter? I guess not, except it seems to be a form that recurs again and again as our total dependence on virtual environments becomes more apparent. The old spatially and temporally determined categories in which human meaning and practice were traditionally played out are being replaced by streamlined, efficient, simulations. Like the ideal economy of Adam Smith, the awkward, contingent accidents of reality, the people you have to dodge, the idiosyncratic choices people make, are no longer allowed to interfere with the smooth functioning of the model. It is the model which sets the pace and we must adjust to its rhythm, taking comfort in the plethora of mediated options which it is only too pleased to concede to us.

Bilderberg Postscript

The day after the Bilderberg conference ended Cameron made a speech about how the depth of the cuts would transform the British way of life. Importantly this wasn't a speech announcing cuts, but intended to shift perceptions and foster a mood of resigned acceptance. A similar announcement was made in Germany. Was there any connection between this and Bilderberg? No one who didn't attend the conference knows.

Bilderberg Meeting in Sitges, Spain

So, the Bilderberg group is meeting in Sitges. In case you haven't heard of it, it is a kind of global steering committee which discusses and, depending on who you listen to, plans, the economic and political direction to be taken by national governments.

To which the "conspiracy theory" alarm bells start ringing.

I think there are two responses to this. The first relates to what we know about the world and how we receive, evaluate, assimilate and disseminate that information. The second relates to the regulatory role that the accusation of subscribing to a conspiracy theory plays in maintaining a homeostatic equilibrium when it comes to opinion forming.

On the first point, it is becoming increasingly evident, not just the extent to which the the media is biased or presents a distorted view of the world, but the way in which the media encloses us within a completely closed field. Take the North Korean sinking of a South Korean ship. I don't doubt that that is what happened, the North Korean regime is clearly unstable and unpredictable, there was an international panel of experts which looked into the case and concluded that the sinking was almost certainly caused by the North Koreans.

Why don't I doubt it? I know next to nothing about the case. What I do know has been gleaned from fragments of news reports on the radio, headlines and first paragraphs of stories in newspapers and on websites, a few images of the ship recovered from the seabed and the slightly comical image of Kim Jong-il, which has never quite recovered from its treatment in Team America. None of this, even if you add to it my slightly sketchy grasp of the history of the relations between the two countries, amounts to anything that could be considered evidence. But that's the point. I have delegated the role of context setting to the media, accepting as true that which is not put into question across the range of different media. It's as if I divine attitudes and opinions on the basis of their implicit assumption in the media. And this is not intended to be a confessional- I am convinced that even the most radical cyber-warrior or activist is subject to exactly the same regulatory influences, just not exactly where they look. It's as if there is a point beyond which it is no longer socially expedient to call things into question. Not for obviously ideological reasons, but more because such questioning would remove the grounds upon which dialogue with other people is possible. Tucked into the margins of everyday conversation, we therefore find a powerful regulatory mechanism which acts to maintain something like social homeostasis. If we're going to talk about the sinking of the South Korean ship, it must proceed on the assumption of North Korean culpability because to question this would undermine the smooth functioning of the social field (the conversation in this case) and so represent a threat to the homeostatic equilibrium of the social body. Being right is not really what comes first in our list of concerns, being coherent and keeping the conversation fluid are far more important. It is within the various media that the parameters are established, and potentially challenged, regarding which narratives (in the form of opinions, facts and assumptions) are 'in play'.

We tend to veer away from conspiracy theorists. We start looking around in a contained panic for the exits. I met an alien fanatic one time. He waited a decent amount of time before he swung the conversation around to aliens, but once he got there, there was no letting up. The problem wasn't the ideas- it was the sense that you had been trapped in a self-contained field, the functionality and fluidity of which had been bought at the expense of its integration into the broader social field. The guy made sense and spoke at break-neck speed, but also seemed anxious, paraniod and strangely lonely. This could be explained by the fact that, at least while he was rapping about aliens, he wasn't embedded in the social field of regulated discourse. Of course, the field of aliens and ufology contain their own regulatory mechanisms, but importantly these fall beyond the parametres established by the various media, and are therefore inherently suspect. Consequently, there is no fluidity between the field of aliens and the broader social field. You are not being asked to traverse the contours of the social field, but to break with it.

Talking to a ufologist, talking to a jehovah's witness and talking to a committed Marxist can often be very similar experiences. In part this is because what you are facing is a challenge to the integrity of the field of legitimated narratives which you know you are not going to accept. All that remains is to look for the exits.

This is all well understood and for this reason accusing someone of being a conspiracy theorist with respect to an opinion that they hold, plays a very powerful regulatory role in the maintainance of homeostatic equilibrium. No one wants to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist. In conversation, and also in contemplation, the formation and dissemination of our opinions is strongly influenced by this recognition that their are certain nexus of opinions that threaten to enclose us within a coherent, yet utterly limited field. We recognise that this field will compromise the smooth working of the broader field of opinions, attitudes etc... which we need to traverse in order to be social players and which is regulated, primarily, by the traditional media.

The role of social networking sites and blogs and fora etc is clearly very important and with time will be transformative (or better, will hold a strategically crucial place in the the more general transformation which is occurring). The cracks that are appearing in the legitimacy of the traditional media are, in part, related to this static of unregulated opinion. However, I think that the traditional media, which obviously includes the on-line presence of newspapers, television and radio, are still instrumental in framing and legitimizing opinions, attitudes, perceptions and even reality.

So what are we to make of the Bilderberg conference and the various conspiracies that swirl around it? Should we laugh it off and allow the social field to continue functioning smoothly. Or should we be alerted to the fact that the various media have, for the last 50 years or so, obediently withheld from reporting on an event that, under any normal circumstances, would be a massive media magnet. And this is the same media which effectively frames our perception of reality at least as it is played out on the national and international level. I think that at this time, when we can see cracks opening up within that framework, we should take it very seriously. Britain and America have been embroiled in wars over the past eight years that were clearly embarked on for reasons that had nothing to do with the official line. Anyone with a pulse can see this. We have just witnessed an election in the UK which was conducted under conditions of national sedation. The vitally important questions about how we are going to transform consumption habits and turn the banking sector into something that is socially useful were not touched on. An awful lot of anesthetizing flattery was dished out. What's more, and this is an on-going issue, the interpenetration of different estates (politics, business, banking and the media most notably) that we generally take to be separate was and is at no time highlighted. Neither was the way that they increasingly seem to operate in a coordinated way on a global level in the interests of a very small elite.

Bilderberg is an annual meeting of this elite. Stuff conspiracy theories. For all its smooth appearance, something is seriously wrong with the social field and our perception of how it operates. No one is in a privileged position with respect to this, no one 'knows what's really going on'. But don't be cornered into passively shrugging your shoulders because you don't want to be labelled a conspiracy theorist. The world is in an immensely unstable state and the policies being pursued by our leaders are clearly aggravating the situation. Whatever it is that they are discussing in Sitges, I think we should absolutely take it seriously.

The Empathic Civilisation

I enjoyed this video on the empathic civilization a lot, which was posted at The Social Media Philosophy Project. It certainly made me want to believe, but he does leave out an awful lot.

Those same technologies that extend our central nervous system and bring us into contact with people from all over the planet condition how we understand and relate to those people. There may have been a big response to Haiti, but that’s because it was a clearly defined media spectacle that lent itself to an out-pouring of generosity. A timely counter balance to that example is the fact that that in the Niger Delta in Africa, the aging oil infrastructure bleeds the same volume of oil annually into the Delta as has been spilled into the Gulf of Mexico over the past few weeks. The effects on the inhabitants, whose lives are already desperately precarious, has been devastating. I haven’t seen much empathy flowing from Europe or America for these people. Sure if it was prioritized by the traditional media in a very focused and coordinated way, there may be a trickle of empathy, but even so that would remain just an instance of a global inequality so widespread, pervasive and structural that people’s patience with it would soon wear thin.

I’m not much more optimistic about the social media. In the first place I don’t believe they can organise information and set the agenda in the same way as the traditional media. Secondly, and more importantly, given that most people have never used a telephone, let alone coolly surfed the social networking sites, the world simply doesn’t correspond to the geographically proportionate sphere that the fantastic cartoonist drew. If you were to draw a spatial representation of the globe based not on geographical space, but internet usage, Africa would be all but invisible. As Manuel Castells pointed out in his “the Gutenberg Galaxy” the new technologies create a networked world which, in fact, has a far greater tendency to exclude those who are not connected.

So, while I don’t disagree with the fact that our technologies and media transform our perception of the world and sense of community, I would take issue with naively optimistic assumptions about the spread of empathy. As things stand I think technological narcissism is closer to the mark.

Give unto Caesar...

Lyotard writes that the boundaries of an institution stabalise when they cease to be stakes in the game.

Wittgenstein wrote that the language games we participate in can be likened to a river bed. Some are silt-like and in constant movement, others as immobile as the river bed.

Foucault points out how institutions and social practices contain within themselves multifarious disciplinary procedures to maintain their own internal integrity.

We are essentially conservative- how could we be otherwise- but we long to make a difference.

Slavoj Zizek on Groucho Marx authoritarianism

We Just Don't Get It

“They just don’t get it” God that feels good to say. It’s so self-affirming, withering and self-righteous. It doesn’t matter if you stress the word ‘just’ thus creating steps with the subsequent words that descend to the level of the target’s idiocy “you just don’t get it”, or if you stress don’t and so create a beacon of self-righteous indignation right in the middle of the phrase- “you just don’t get it”. It’s intended to be a devastating put down from which no recovery is possible. The implication is that the dull-witted klutz is still clinging to a state off affairs that everyone else recognises has been superseded. The paradigm example must be the Hollywood scene in which a coolly distant wife is arranging spices on the spice rack while the hapless husband is fussing around her proposing dates and places for their vacations that summer. Suddenly she turns to face him for the first time in the scene and hisses “you just don’t get it, do you? It’s over between us”. A complete rupture of the old state of affairs, that had become transparently unsustainable, held together only in order to provide a veneer of continuity. Only the wilfully ignorant could have failed to recognise the artificiality of the reality that has now been expelled and hapless husband is propelled, confused and disorientated, into the new reality.

It can’t be any coincidence that the phrase seems to be everywhere these days. Obviously it’s been around for ages, but I believe that the phrase first came to be used as a rallying cry for ‘ordinary people’ in the wake of the financial crisis, when it became clear that the banking sector had no intention of reducing the amount of value they skimmed off the capital markets in the form of bonuses. There was public anger at the irresponsibility of the banking sector and this phrase got touted from time to time, but it didn’t really catch on at this point. I think this is because, although the appeal of this phrase made itself felt- certain requirements for its effective use were missing. Principal among these is that the person who delivers the phrase must be in a position of power. They must see and understand the irreality that the other person is floundering around in and therefore be capable of dispelling it with delivery of the phrase. Hapless husband was in no position to shoot back with, “No, it’s you who doesn’t get it.” Although they would never say it, the bankers were. They could say that, for reasons that the self-righteously indignant public could hardly be expected to grasp, the economic well-being of the country was tied to them paying themselves obscenely high bonuses. Whilst the public could mutter its dissent- it couldn’t, with self-confidence, contradict them. The wind would have been taken out of their sails and they would be left to bob around once more on the big sea of their impotence.

The expenses scandal, however, was another matter. Oh boy, how we seized on that one and how we enjoyed using our recently rehearsed phrase of choice. The expenses scandal provided the catharsis the fractured, rootless British public needed to eradicate the disorientating, confusion of the financial crisis. Here was an issue drawn entirely in terms of black and white, with the greedy, self-serving politicians on the one hand and the decent, hard-working British public on the other. And of course these sentiments were trumpeted from the front pages and leader columns of the national dailies, with the Telegraph in the vanguard, shaping and provoking public opinion. Suddenly it was everywhere, disgraced MPs paraded across the front-pages daily for what seemed like months (was it really months?) with their duck houses, second homes and god knows what other allowances. What the alliance of the ‘general public’ and the media (how well placed the media are to announce such an alliance!) expected was nothing less than abject remorse on the part of the politicians. Any suggestion that they would try to defend themselves was met with outraged disbelief. Did they not recognise the tectonic shift that had taken place? Could they not see that the game had changed? Most of all, were they not aware that the decent, hardworking British public were calling the shots now and what they demanded was unconditional contrition. It was as if the phrase “they just don’t get it” was made for this situation, and the media generally fell over themselves to supply it, thus putting themselves in the position of giving voice to the Great British Public and simultaneously flattering the Great British Public into believing that they have a voice.

Which is all well and good, except that in the meantime those responsible for the crime of the century were slipping out unnoticed through the back door.

And in this crime, politicians were little more than servile accomplices turned fall-guys.

But of course it’s not a crime. Entering a bank with a shotgun and demanding the cashier hand over 10,000 quid, that’s a crime which will land you in prison. Paying yourself a bonus of 3,000,0000,0000 dollars from what are, effectively, public funds is perfectly legal. The voracious pursuit of capital accumulation on the part of those who understand how value can be extracted from the global economy in this way, and who control the machinery for doing so, led to a financial crisis that was so severe that it should have brought down the entire system. The only reason it didn’t was because that crisis was effectively transferred from the financial sector to the public sector. The banks were recapitalised with public money and the public will have to pay by accepting deep cuts in public services. The financial crisis did not disappear- it has been transferred. If you want to see what it looks like watch the rioting on the streets of Athens.

Most extraordinary of all, nothing has been done to address the systemic failings that created the crisis. The crisis was caused by trying to extract value, where in reality, there was none to be extracted- this is the defining characteristic of advanced capitalism. The banking sector is continuing, just as before, to extract the maximum amount of value from whatever and wherever it can, which is then re-distributed to serve the interests of a very small elite.

And if this sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theories, think what it means that one person in New York can receive a payment that is in excess of the GDPs of many African nations. And that’s just a bonus. No one’s even trying to justify that anymore. All that can be done is present economics as a force of nature that we are powerless to change and take peoples mind off it with bread and games.

Rather than being an opportunity to confront, understand and argue about this most important of issues in terms appropriate to it, this election has seen a massive avoidance of the issue by all those involved in its production. The politicians, still reeling from the expenses scandal, fall over themselves to flatter the public and the public, obligingly, accepts the agenda set by the media and the politician.

So who, exactly, doesn’t get it?

Of the Tribe and the Worm

So I’m not going to vote, which I must feel slightly guilty about because I found my self telling someone that I hadn’t been able to register myself in time. Hardly any wonder as I made my initial inquiry on the final day of registration and was relieved to be told that it was too late. Hardly a case of fate conspiring against me. So why have I chosen not to vote? Let me deal with the guilt first.

I think it’s twofold. I think it’s the modern articulation of a far more ancient attitude that evolved to regulate the individual’s relation to the tribe. Guilt, in this sense, would be more than just a sensation. It would be the existential equivalent of having the rug pulled from under one’s feet. You are who you are by virtue of the place you hold within the tribe. To act without reference to the tribe is to forget yourself. Guilt is remembering. In The Big Kahuna Larry reprimands Bob for not serving the interests of the company in similar terms,

“…it would be like the hand just sort of breaking away from the arm and saying, ‘Oh, you know what, I’ve got this other thing out here to do that’s got nothing to do with you.’”.

He says this to try and induce in Bob the guilt that he thinks he should be subject to.

This older sense of guilt provides the conditions for the possibility of a more recent version of this guilt, which relates to ‘being a good citizen’. Whilst I guess this attitude could be traced back to Athenian democracy, the form it takes in contemporary society is more related to the 19th and 20th century struggle for the right of ordinary people to be represented in the political process and the emergence of a representative democracy that is not conditional upon class, gender or religious conviction. This is a powerful argument, not least because the right to vote was truly the fruit of bitterly fought battles against institutionally embedded vested interests. Consequently to not vote represents an affront to the historical struggle of those who were previously disenfranchised, ignored and oppressed. The guiding phrase here is, “people laid down their lives to win you the right to vote”. So, one has every reason to feel guilty if your forefathers struggled so hard and sacrificed so much in order to guarantee the right to vote.

Yet… it presupposes a model of society in which the political process is the stage upon which competing interests in society are pitted against one another, a representative swath of opinion is expressed and real decisions are made. I don’t think anyone watching, or even participating in, the unfolding drama of the election could claim that this is the case. What is striking is that it is no longer left to flamboyant French philosophers to point out the virtual nature of the political process. Everyone is well aware of the fact that what we are witnessing is a simulation of politics. There is little interest in the content of what the politicians are saying. Apparently the press core in the press centre stopped watching the final debate long before the politicians had finished speaking in order to move on to the real business of getting reactions, in other words, allowing the process of spin and counter-spin to play out and see where the dust settled. I’m sure the pubic, equally, is more interested in finding out who was perceived to have won the debate, as that clearly matters a lot more than anything that anyone says.

At the heart of it all this time round has been “The Worm”. During the debates, groups of floating voters are equipped with dials with which they can register their response (positive or negative) to the speakers, moment to moment. You can actually see the data displayed across the screen, like a heart monitor following the strength of a patient’s heartbeat, as they are speaking. The politicians are, in turn, compelled to submit to the configurative requirements of the formats within which their messages are assembled. Little wonder that they spend the time shamelessly flattering the viewers. This was most embarrassingly obvious in the summing up of each of the party leaders. It’s not their fault, they have no alternative. Were they to engage seriously with the potentially catastrophic consequences of the operations of the global financial markets or consider the ethical implications of Britain’s involvement in two wars that have left over 100,000 civilians dead, they would flat-line. On the other hand, seeing as it's the format that matters, it shouldn't have been so surprising that support for the Lib Dems shot up as soon as they were included in the debates. I don't think it had much to do with what Clegg said, but rather that we were being presented with three contestants to choose between rather than two. Clearly if a contestant is prevented from having a prominent role in a reality TV show, it is unlikely that the public will vote for them.

It seems to me that within this context, and following Baudrillard, voting has less to do with playing an active role within the body politic than with participating in a nation-wide simulation of democracy designed to obscure the fact that democracy has long since disappeared. It is important to vote, in order maintain the illusion that voting, and the political system, and the historical narrative which supports that system of politics, that all these things are still meaningful. However the democratic process has clearly freed itself of any relation to such weighty realities and entered the realm of pure simulation, or simulacra to use Baudrillard's term, more closely related to reality TV shows than to prior historical conditions. And we have a lot invested in this simulacrum. We still feel the tug of the tribe. In a fractured and dysfunctional world, it would seem that a simulation of community is better than no community at all.

Of Ash and Time Theft

I haven't seen the film, but I don't doubt the queasy, sense of repressed euphoria that must surely accompany the sight of Charlton Heston sinking to his knees as it dawns on him that civilisation has indeed sunk. A messy, trifurcated species of emotion; part unselfconscious elation, part rapid readjustment to the demands of social necessity and part ironic snickering at the overblown earnestness of the denouement. Yet still, there it is. Presented with one of the symbols of civilization being reclaimed by the sand and the ocean, our initial response is to cheer. The scenario is not restricted to its representation in film (although the relentlessness with which it is represented in film is instructive).

As clouds of volcanic ash spread invisibly through the troposphere last week, threatening to disrupt the minutely calibrated workings of aircraft engines, so all air traffic was suspended, causing massive disruption to the minutely calibrated workings of the transport system. People found themselves in the extraordinary position of being unable to complete their travel plans. No delays, no alternative routes, not even alternative forms of transport- short of walking- they just couldn't travel. Imagine the moment at the airport when passengers (were they passengers at that point?) were informed that they couldn't fly; the dumb disbelief that they were not being offered a range of alternative options for traversing the thousand or so kilometres that separated them from the places they Needed To Be. Even hard cash didn't help- there were no hire cars left.

Grim for those caught up in it, but for those of us vaguely registering the fragments of information as they flitted across our various screens, I suspect that concern for the suffering of the stranded travelers was not really the dominant feeling. I imagine that there was a good deal of surprise that something as mundane as a volcano could actually interfere with the flight schedules of European airlines. Only a massive terrorist attack had previously achieved this- were we to add volcanoes to the list of evil-doers? But wasn't there also some, not schadenfreude, but a certain pleasure in seeing a spanner thrown in the smooth functioning machinery of transnational transport systems?

Why would that be?

Because they reflect so perfectly the extraneous imposition of temporal structures to which we have both chosen to submit and against which we inwardly rail because we know full well that there was never really any choice. It's a colonisation of time that only reveals itself in extemities- on drugs, in moments of joy or anxiety, when confronted with our mortality. I suppose this has always been the case, that we have always, in a sense, been living on borrowed time. Perhaps in a far more entrenched way when we had less options and identified unreflectively with the roles and temporal structures in which we found ourselves. But that's the point. What is different now is that we are both subject to an accelerated rhythm as we become keenly aware of minutes and seconds, whilst simultaneously being prevented from developing any stable, durable identifications.

Why wouldn't we cheer when the system jams?