Chapter 1: Simplicissimus
Decentralized networks, smart mobs, collective intelligence, open source software, biopolitics, the emergent social Web and the integration of love percolate the New Edge, yet how do we use all these sexy, geeky, quasi-spiritual concepts to deconstruct the global empire of control and build a movement in response?
Welcome to the first Reality Sandwich reading group, featuring Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. As the subtitle suggests, the book grapples with two of the most pressing issues of our age. It can be argued that all other causes that we care about – health, environment, media, etc. – pivot on the dual problem of a militarized system trying to maintain global control while it pushes against the unfinished work of democracy. We're led to believe that "democracy" is codified, set in stone in the guise of the world empire envisioned by the Neocons, yet the reality is that democracy is a work in process. We are constantly shaping it, evolving it, but often in unconscious ways. The goal of Multitude is to make more conscious the nuts and bolts of this process, and to demonstrate how it is evolving along with the emergent paradigm of network theory, immaterial production and knowledge work.
Multitude is the sequel to Negri and Hardt's highly popular book, Empire. Multitude departs slightly, amplifying the arguments of Empire, but also simplifies them for a more general audience. The book examines the contradictory forces that shape contemporary warfare and control, but then moves on to explore alternatives, opposition, and ways in which the world can actually transform itself despite the gloomy picture of global militarism. For this reason, Multitude is a good springboard for exploring how people shape a response to power in a postmodern political environment when corporate control is so illusive and difficult to bounce off of. By understanding the importance of networks, collective intelligence and self-organization, the authors propose a map for a way to a more peaceful future.
Links:
Networks, Swarms, Multitudes: Pt.1, Pt. 2
Getting Started:
So here's how it works. Buy, borrow or check out the book and begin reading. Each week starts on Friday and ends on Thursday, though discussions will no doubt linger and there is no reason we have to be strict about a time limit for each week. The first discussion officially starts on March 14. This gives everone a week to get the book and to start reading. Come to the Multitude forum and check the dates for each week's session. We'll create new threads for each week's chapter, but the previous forums will remain open. If past experience stays true, debates will continue as we move through the book. About once a month we'll edit together a selection of comments from the forum into a post for the Reality Sandwich home page.
There is a separate "administrative" thread, which is just for technical or non-reading issues. There is also a "taxonomy" thread for terms in which people can offer terms and definitions. For people who want to post links that were inspired by the group or reading, there is a "Further Reading and Links" thread where you can post recommended materials. All of this will probably appear during regular discussions, but we thought it would be useful to break out the links and resources so they are easier to find and navigate.
I suggest reading this overview first.
Also, please update your RS bio page so people can check out who you are.
Guidelines:
A persistent theme of Multitude is the emergent intelligence of informal networks. The Reality Sandwich crew is one node in such a network. With that said, for this reading group I have a few guiding intentions. Let me start by stating what this is not. The goal is to create a space for discussion, so this is not a "class." No lectures, no summaries. Though topics might delve into the academic stratosphere, I envisioned this being like one of those informal novel-reading book clubs that friends participate in, but in this case we are reading something dealing with social studies and we are all presumably interested in social change. Consequently, I encourage participants to treat this as if it were a forum of "normal" people, that is, try to link or define any jargon that is not accessible to those unfamiliar with critical theory or political philosophy.
The original design is to do a chapter a week, which might seem a little slow, but I thought this would be a good pace because we all have "other" lives and we might benefit from a closer reading of the material rather than jamming through it. Some of you might be ambitious and finish the text quicker than the established pace. If it seems like one chapter a week is indeed too cumbersome, we can change course later, but let's give it a try for the first couple of weeks.
As facilitator I'm going to suggest a few topics and questions each week, but I thought that it would be more fun if others decided to "lead" weekly discussions. The forum will be organized by chapters, so if anyone is interested, let me know and I'll put you in as the discussion leader for a particular week (or weeks). "Leaders" could set the tone for the week's discussion by offering some insights, themes or questions. Of particular interest would be links outside the book – that is places that people see connections between what the authors discuss and examples they see in their own work or in that of others. Because I have a background in media studies I'll offer my expertise, when applicable, for areas that might seem abstract or difficult (Empire requires more theory than Multitude), but I think the book will be accessible to most. There will probably be people smarter than me in the forum who could also answer difficult questions far better than I can.
Like all online forums, the usual standards of etiquette apply. Please be civil, and if there is excessive flaming or abuse by any of the participants, it may result in that person being asked to leave. With that said, I don't imagine encountering any problems, but as with most political discussions, passions can be enflamed. We're not here to be right, but to be informed and to learn from our collective potential. I hope and believe that this will indeed be the outcome.
- 3-6-08
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Conversation starter
Welcome everyone. Maybe this is a good omen for the reading group, but the other day I was eating lunch on the street in Rome (where I live) and Antonio Negri walked by my table. That’s all. So, here we are. What follows are some sentences that I highlighted with questions, but since I teach for my day job, I hope the inmates will take over the asylum and you will enter with your own questions and discussion points. Please introduce yourself when you make your first post (who you are, why you are interested—you can put the details of your life in your bio). If anyone wants to lead a week, let me know and I'll post a schedule in the "administrative" area.
As I was reading I jotted down a few terms to think about as we go along. Do the authors successfully define them? If not, how would you change their meaning? I put these terms in the taxonomy section as well for further discussion because I think we need to revisit them periodically.
Multitude
The common
Biopolitical production
Empire
Democracy
Sovereignty (redefined)
Swarm Intelligence
Singularity
Distributed systems
imperial vs. emperialism
The preface states one of the most important themes of the book:
p.xv: "…production today has to be conceived not merely in economic terms but more generally as social production—not merely the production of material goods but also the production of communications, relationships, and forms of life."
Are you feeling ephemeral these days?
The first section, "War," sets an ominous tone, but the authors acknowledge that it's necessary to identify the problem in the beginning. Trust me, the book gets more hopeful, but given what they say in this section about war, violence and militarism, I wonder if you feel optimistic about the future.
What is the "state of exception," and why is that so important concerning the way warfare is currently conducted?
Pg 13: "War has become a regime of biopower, that is, a form of rule aimed not only at controlling the population but producing and reproducing all aspects of social life."
How does militarization influence "social production"?
Given the current state of war defined by the authors, is it still possible to argue for "just" warfare? What about so-called humanitarian intervention?
Pg. 16: Cajus regio, ejus religio—"the one who rules determines religious faith." If capitalism replaced the church, what are the major religious principles of our time, and what would makes one a "heretic"?
Pg: 19: "Torture is one central point of contact between police action and war; torture techniques used in the name of police prevention take on all the characteristics of military action."
What do you think torture has come to represent as both a tool and symbol of the current power regime? The US has long engaged in it by proxy through its international police academies, client states and covert operations. Now that is openly debated, do you think that it's a positive sign that our society is facing our dirty secrets? Or it becoming legitimated.
Pg. 20: "Global war must not only bring death but also produce and regulate life."
Do you think war is the foundation of politics itself, as the authors claim? (p.21) How does that relate to the current US elections? Where do the Democrats fit in this scheme?
Pg. 27: "In a world where no violence can be legitimated, all violence can potentially be called terrorism."
Obviously they mean to say only one power can have a monopolization of violence. But in a multipolar world, how is the monopolization distributed? (This is one of the core ideas of "Empire.")
Pg. 31: "The abstract objects of war—drugs, terrorism, and so forth—are not really enemies…they are best conceived rather as symptoms of a disordered reality that poses a threat to security and the functioning of discipline and control."
I'm not so sure reality is so disorganized. What do you think?
Pg. 32: Concerning the categories of warfare, "Only one distinction does matter, and it is superimposed over all others: violence that preserves the contemporary hierarchy of global order and violence that threatens that order."
Does such threatening violence actually exist, or is that an illusion? Is nonviolence more threatening than violence?
OK gang. What's interesting to you? What in the chapter got you thinking?
Note: Please read the material before jumping in. Thanks!
First of all I'd like to
First of all I'd like to thank those involved for recommending this book, it has arrived at just the right time for me. It's hard to know where to start... the theory expressed in the first chapter has a lot of explanatory power.
There are numerous examples of the accelerating merger of police activity and military. We live in a time when policemen are being equipped with machine guns, microwave pain beams, and are installing a surveillance control grid to monitor threats in the population.
The "state of exception" is of course the sole basis for authority, part of it's DNA. That DNA is written to encourage the organism to grow larger, which it accomplishes by manufacturing war, and today by manufacturing terrorism.
One positive aspect of this reality is that since war is now biopolitical, it can we waged nonviolently. But are we still trapped by mimicking the methods of war this way? (there are two sides to infowars, culture wars, economic warfare, etc. all of which has been going on for a long time and is by no means a postmodern invention, though it has intensified).
"Pg. 32: Concerning the categories of warfare, "Only one distinction does matter, and it is superimposed over all others: violence that preserves the contemporary hierarchy of global order and violence that threatens that order."
Does such threatening violence actually exist, or is that an illusion? Is nonviolence more threatening than violence? "
-Violence directed against the Global Order is exactly what it craves, because that gives it pretext to expand authority. Yet at the same time I think it is legitimately threatened by some forms of violence- by 'rogue states', and internally by guerilla resistance, gun ownership, etc.
I think if nonviolence is a threat, it may just be classified as biopolitical warfare. It's hard to think of an alternative to war that does not get drawn into it... for example, you could say that instead of fighting an enemy (and eventually turning into that enemy), you might transcend the enemy... in real (biological) terms this means either hiding/evading or outgrowing. If your enemy's survival is as a predator (and our current Global Order is a group of predatory elites keeping a herd of domesticated humans), then evading it or outgrowing it are both acts of violence. You could just be simple and say it's about survival in a web of life.
Aikido war
Mossyfern,
I agree with what you are saying. As a media educator I have been searching for a way to use a kind of media Aikido, which if I'm interpreting the concept correctly, is to use the "enemies" energy against them, i.e. let them stumble and fall on their own while you twist around them (this is why mindfulness is such a powerful tool). I think it could be argued that a military power predicated on industrial production, i.e. a militarized economy based on the manufacture of goods (weapons, supplies, etc.) will become increasingly top heavy and irrelevant. I think this may have been one of the errors in thought concerning Iraq. They believed they could steamroll a country with a mighty industrial army but are being beat by a decentralized network of cellphones and homemade bombs. Goes to show that war without a political basis or social foundation is futile.
I remember reading ten years ago that the number one consumer of oil in the world is the US military. In some ways it is trapped in its own iterating loop. It has to feed itself through war, but is unable to adjust or change its structure according to the times. Can the military survive peak oil? Is that the real reason for Iraq, to guaruntee a fuel supply for the military?
The authors argue that Empire is postmodern in the sense that it behaves as a distributed power, but it's still runs on industrial production and organizational concepts. I believe the WTO protesters (who are discussed later in the book), had a decentralized structure which was so outside the thinking of the police that they were unable to conceive or respond to what was happening. This is why I've always thought the best solution in Afghanistan would be to drop water balloons. I mean it. Can you imagine how disorienting and confusing that would be? How it would completely shatter the concept of power and war, and make it impossible for the enemy to respond in a meaningful way?
hello and let's get this rolling
Hey everyone, I've been looking forward to this ever since I've seen it announced. My name is Bryan Dewey and I'm a Ph.D. student at Binghamton University in Comparative Literature. I actually had a similar good omen, although not nearly as cool as seeing Negri walk by, when I ran into a colleague today I haven't seen in awhile who was actually teaching Multitude in his course this semester (I had given it thought but went with Gravity's Rainbow instead, it being a literature class and all and not a philosophy/poli sci. course). I picked up Multitude on Daniel's recommendation at Burning Man and was a bit familiar with Negri and Hardt beforehand through professors and friends, etc., but had never given too much serious probing until this book. This is my second time going through it and I look forward to learning from all of you and hopefully shaping the multitude and actions that Negri and Hardt see as necessary with you lovely and intelligent future overmen/overwomen.
As a teacher myself, I will play the good student and bring my own questions/thoughts from this reading rather than simply answering and addressing the one's posed by Antonio (btw thanks for your effort in doing this). Of course this chapter is a bit depressing as it is stating the problem of our current state of war, and the U.S.'s "exceptionalism" (we've got the bombs so we don't have to follow international treaties); but what I think might be helpful to understand, at least for me, is what this current global state of war looks like. I understand it, in almost Nietzschean terms, as well as through the writings of Ingebohr Bachmann, that every one of our personal relationships is always a battle of wills at war. While I know this is clearly not what Negri and Hardt are making this out to be, they also want to make it clear that "the war on terrorism" is not what they mean by our current state of global war.
What do they mean by this "global state of war" though?
The one thing that stood out to me through this reading is the destruction of borders. They want to make it clear, I believe, that the traditional rules of war, and the boundaries created by modern theorists and modern wars on what war is/should/must be are all off and no longer in play. Nations exist now, just as you and I do, in constant interaction with one another in everyday existence, always vulnerable to one another and at the same time always exerting their will on other nations' around them. In this light, perhaps the Nietzschean play of nations' will to powers and Bachmann's war of relations might be close to the global state of war they are describing. After all, they do seem to be insistent that this war is ontological at its base. (p.19) War, as police state, they write, "does not take away but actually confirms its ontological dimension". By invoking Orwell later in that same page and the exertion that one asserts power only through the creation of another's suffering, Negri and Hardt are illuminating that Empire (their term for the global power structure and the preceding book to Multitude) only has power over us through causing suffering.
Currently, the counterculture group of reality sandwichers that we are, suffer from pity for our fellow women and men that we see suffering - and the suffering that we see is ontological and rooted in a pretty simple acknowledge that the majority of us human beings are living and being "incorrectly" and not being true to themselves or their own true desires, thus taking the global state of war to a further, more deeper, personal level. I'll stop with this description to see others' thoughts on this, but I also wanted to address one other possibility that seems to be striking me more and more through reading the writings on this site, and that is the possibility through change and transformation via artistic creation.
In reading the section of legitimate violence, and especially the description that "all other (aside from the State/sovereign's own use of violence) social violence is illegitimate a priori" with full internal intuitive knowledge that violence can not be the answer in any way in this social (r)evolution we are creating, art, especially in a performative state, struck me as a way to do violence to one another and Empire, without causing any sensation of violence that would immediately draw police force. Violence through art, just a side note, but what do you think?
- Bryan
All bridges can be rebuilt.
P.S. Anyone know how to type my comments the first time so that I don't have to redo all my paragraph breaks in the preview comment page (if I don't go through and correct them in the prev. comment it all comes out as one giant paragraph).
P.P.S. We really need a better link from the front page for this discussion group, it's quite awkward and difficult finding out how to get here from the site.
Empire's derangement
Bryan,
Great post, terrific insights. I think your intro was far more cogent than mine. You should facilitate a week or two. BTW, there are some issues with forum posting in Firefox (with the Mac OS at least). Until it gets resolved, I encourage people to use Safari
You got me thinking of a Philp K. Dick quote from Valis: “To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox: whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies” (p.134). In my forthcoming book, Mediacology, I critique the media literacy and activist movement for replicating the thought process of the system they are fighting against. My gripe with a lot of antiwar media activism is that it assumes by virtue of being oppositional that they are changing the paradigm, when if fact they are playing the same game. This is why terms like "alternative," "independent," and "opposition" have always bothered me because they self-define one in relationship to the other, in a sense becoming a negative reaction of what they are against. Furthermore, what's so great about independence? Isn't that the mentality that got us here in the first place? I think we're better off becoming interdependent. Also, the world power mirrors in many ways our own shadow. Perhaps what we are witnessing is a collective projection of what we have suppressed or denied in our being, and it is being presented to us to face once and for all.
In terms of your question about art, as an old school punk looking back at my days of youth rebellion (early '80s), I definitely feel that in many ways we were mirroring and exaggerating the contradictions of the society, consciously and unconsciously. I also feel there were nihilistic tendencies internalized from familial and societal dysfunction that ultimately led to the collapse of punk as a social movement. Finally, as artists it's difficult develop a response to a system that is so good at turning critiques into commodities or marketable style. Thus, as some critics have argued, the antiwar movement becomes another laboratory for the next "cool."
Hey Brian,What I do, click
What I do, click the preview commentbutto
nand then on the paste on that page. It seems to work… But yeah, I do hope they fix it too.
Anyway, glad we are starting this up. My name is Peter Deane. I am a firefighter in Cincinnati, Ohio. I don’t believe I have had any omens regarding this book – just a drive to understand the world in which we live and make the corrective actions needed in my own thinking and actions to bring about positive changes to further the next generation of humanity.
I have a high school education, so my grammar and vocabulary does need improvement, but I will give it my best. I guess you can say that I am like Simplicissimus, I view the world in the simplest, most naïve eyes – so please bear with me – graduated third from the bottom of my high school class. I was also in the Air Air Force (four years), Cincinnati Fire Department (fifteen years), married for twenty one years, but recently divorced with four children. With more time on my hands now I find myself reading like never before. So, that is what brings me here… to learn on the cheap… redeem myself.
I guess I would like to begin with what Antonio has laid out in his first questions posed to us and will also answer try to give my opinion on Brian Dewey’s question on violence through art that would stave off police force.
Antonio’s question: p.xv: "…production today has to be conceived not merely in economic terms but more generally as social production—not merely the production of material goods but also the production of communications, relationships, and forms of life."
I'm curious to know if this is true for the line of work/art/life projects you are engaged in.
Answer: Yes. I believe that if we are to look at democracy in economic terms we become cogs in the uncaring system, mere consumers of materialism, a robot, a golem to appease and serve the master of the house. I believe that this type of thinking is already becoming prominent in American culture. The American people to me sort of live their lives in a nine-to-five sullen sort of way. They know something is wrong and resent all that is happening, and yet they allow it to continue. It is truly fear that is keeping them from looking deeper into the problem. As long as they have the T.V. with unlimited cable channels, a roof over their heads, potato chips in the cupboard, nobody is doing the spouse, and four wheels in the driveway… they’re mildly content but with resentment that it is fear that is keeping their lives from growing richer to a level where they feel satisfied as being a whole human being. Servitude, a pay check, and shopping for the next best item is not what democracy should be all about… something is missing. Something is wrong.
Production that is social must become the greater part of democracy in the lines of communication, relationships, and forms of life. This does require a greater reaching out to others and a greater reaching into one’s self. How have I recently been a part of this? I’m doing it now. This web, coming to the Reality Sandwich, giving my thoughts about the meaning of the book we are reading about global democracy is a perfect example. Even though I’m the least educated, as of now, I feel I have an important message and it is as equal as anyone here.
Production of communication at its most basic must definitely be able to cross the language barriers. Working within the Latino community of Cincinnati brought me to experience the vital importance of communication within democracy. If you wish you can read about it here… http://citybeat.com/2002-01-31/news2.shtml . What I found was that for democracy to work well in a mid-size city in the mid-west is that we all need access to services equally. We must be able communicate across all language barriers to make it so that the basic human needs of humanity are being supplied and/or supported by Multitude. The heath of a society that seeks to remain free is greatest when victimization and fear is removed and common is recognized as a legitimate force against the Empire. The bioproduction forms of communication are necessary on a global scale to achieve this trust between the people of the world but on a local level it may only require that you get out to the streets and meet the people on their own level.
Within art… it would be appropriate to answer Brian’s question here. Life is art, it is a play in itself, and the world is a stage. The three arts I have dabbled in are the visual arts in painting -- my feelings of what my personal and public life was all about. The art of poetry… and the art of life itself. Within the freedoms of democracy that we know today within our own borders the first two don’t even make the police blink unless you piss off some ethnic or religious group that becomes offended by your art. But that envelope must be pushed because the immediate attention of the police shows how far we have come within the boundaries of the freedom to express ourselves to each other. Here’s a poem on where we are in the freedom of self expression in the art of life in democracy in America in concerns of Empire. I wrote this after President Bush’s war speech in Cincinnati in October of 2002.
Liberty's Light
Cries of war,
did you hear them?
On that cool October evening,
inside Cincinnati’s old railway station,
the fine suits and fine dresses assembled,
mind’s tunneled and tuned in to one lone voice,
one voice pointing, blood thirsty, seeking revenge,
and the fine suits and dresses cheered it on,
they believe innocence is wholly theirs,
as children suckle sweet breast milk,
eat with unwashed faces and hands,
walk to schools kicking empty cans,
wishing they were already grown,
in every nation and every land,
blameless only the children,
the children of the world,
journeying through minefields
seeking shelter under hard stone,
fearing bombs, bullets and bayonets,
cuddled in narrow corners under fathers fearing,
separated from loving embraces of mothers missing,
dripping tears of sorrow they know no vengeance,
pure innocence belongs justly and only to them,
not to those who find hope in warlike things,
as nukes erasing cities from a map,
deadly airborne biological spores,
chemicals entering through skin pores,
shock waves that rake all life from the land,
change only through war and more war,
always and ever never ending…
Cries for peace,
did you hear them?
On that cool October evening,
outside Cincinnati’s old railway station,
under the curved slivered dim moon’s smile,
the peacemakers danced and cried for peace,
praying, singing, chanting, chiming their chimes,
beating drums, holding peace symbols and signs,
candles burned and flickered in non-violent hands,
lighting the railway station exit for one last stand,
”Give peace a chance”
they sang that saying out loud and clear dearly,
until, without warning, horses hit their flanks,
dispersing them into three small crowds,
their spirited peace songs still caroling,
remaining after the dresses and suits had gone,
singing peace until the horses slammed them again,
again without notice, they knocked the peacemakers back,
to the ground, lit candles fell, silencing songs of peace,
democracy marching with clubs and pepper spray,
mauling and blinding peaceful castaways,
arresting their freeborn rights,
hands tied tight,
hauled away,
their art silenced.
Cries for liberty,
did you hear them?
On that cool October evening,
outside Cincinnati’s old railroad station,
Lady Liberty hung her and sighed,
”Give them their chance,
let them dance,
chant their chants,
yearning free,
chiming chimes,
beating their drums,
weeping and crying,
praying their prayers,
holding symbols and signs,
art felt longings,
singing songs,
assembled in peace,
burning their candles forever high,
let them show the world Liberty's Light… I do.”
The greatest art form to me is the peaceful protest. It shows one where they truly are in relationship with the Empire. Does it require that no police action at all will be needed? Hopefully. Or delayed police action? It may. But it may also require a quick action by the police… let the truth be told through art of protest. One is then able to measure the amount of freedom that one has.
And I guess that brings me down to Antonio’s last curiosity… Life. The production of my only son who is sixteen. I want him to be a good man and a light to others in his WHY generation. I teach him good things and try to keep him aware of the issues that are in society. I wish him to remain free and living under Multitude may be the answer he and those of his generation may need. Maybe they should make it mandatory reading in high school.
Multitude, the first section, "War," does set an ominous tone. I believe that we still have time in America to right the wrongs that are currently being played out through wars throughout the world for the sake of spreading democracy. But I do not believe that there is a lot of time left. One terrorist act can place us all in lockdown. But we are on a slippery slope to what may become a dictatorship in America and if this happens then you can place Multitude on hold for awhile because we will have lost true opportunity as a major player in world affairs to spread true democracy throughout the world. And there is still time but the people have to awaken now to what is going on in the Empire.
Naomi Wolf wrote a book called End of America. In it she writes, “Bullies are cowards: Time and again, when people have awakened to danger and risen together to confront those who have sought to oppress them, citizens in their thousands have crumbled walls and broken open massive prisons. In our own nation, in times of eclipse, patriots have become rebels again and said: “No; the nation is not going down, not on my watch.
“When this happens, there is no power that can hold these patriots back.”
Today is part of forever.
Doctor Dewey's Colleague is ME!
yay
Let me know what chapters you'd like me to cover... the earler the better as I'll liekly be doing my comprehensive exams April 11th and 18th, etc.
And just so its known, Peter Deane is very much smarter than me and I know whatever degree I get on the shelf is just a bullshit bourgeoisie moneymaker.
All bridges can be rebuilt.
Thanks for volunteering
Thanks for volunteering. I have put discussions about technical issues and scheduling in the administrative area. Please check there my latest suggestion. Thanks!
Degrees are an example of biopolitics
I think thats a main point of interest for understanding how biopower or biopolitics functions! I have a difficult time getting my students to understand this... they so often believe that the problems of the world can be educated away (as if President Bush is a phenomenon explained by mass ignorance, rather than special interests and media homogenization of the democratic process itself)... No, Im not so nieve to think that my PHD will make one iota of difference in the grand scheme of things because unfortunately the academy is structured in such a way that students have to take on obnoxious amounts of debt in order to earn higher education, thereby giving them NO OPTIONS other than assimilating into the culture of capitalism for the sake of survival. In order to avoid a life of destitution students desperately scramble to get into law school, med school, or the particular graduate school of their choosing, in order to pay off that debt. And going to law school is often a pathway to tax law, finding loopholes for corporations which pays WAY MORE than social justice work... so universities should be free! Like they are in France, where universities are subsidized completely by the state! This would be a small step toward alleviating the desperation and mere functionalistic and instrumental nature of higher education that is so prevalent in the academy. Its not uncommon for my students to ask "What kind of job will this degree get me"... and I often answer bluntly, there are no guarantees and hell if I know!
The point is that your education often produces a particular ontology (lifestyle, way of being) that is based on the assumption that "I have earned this education so Im entitled to a life of leisure and wealth" Or even worse, Ive paid my dues with all of that "Learning", so Im now educated enough to get by...leading to intellectual stasis! College is an exciting time when you're young, where you think and explore so that you don't have to think anymore once you're bogged down with "responsibilities" like family, job stress, American Idol, etc.
I just wanted to add that there is a really pervasive assumption, that Im assuming is widely accepted among intellectuals and less pretentious folk, who assume "War is a result of human nature". As if people are innately violent, aggressive, and bloodthirsty. Well, if we take Hardt and Negri seriously (and the postmodern philosophers associated with Marxism), we realize that "human nature" is a product of social institutions, and a complex network of relations....a-historical, eternal, and transcendent notions of human nature are a trick of the bourgeoisie... of course they want to convince us that war is eternal, people are aggressive and dumb, because that would lead us to believe that radical change is impossible.
At the core of biopolitics is the belief that humans are essentially-x. Once you get people to believe that you can do all sorts of messed up things.
Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault had a classic debate on this subject in the 1970's. I agree with Foucault, who was a constructivist. Basically he concluded that the whole discourse about "Human Nature" is the product of very specific power relations resulting from a particular historical eras. Hegemonic forces are always implanting power relations at the level of what is thinkable, normal, and possible. This is the level of penetration that power has upon our lives, and this is the level where a feasible resistance is necessary. We need to question the assumptions of what is possible by questioning what is natural... once we resign ourselves to the discourse of human nature we let power inscribe itself upon us in a most incendiary way, because at the level of "normalcy, and naturalness" power becomes invisible and unconscious. That's when the bourgeoisie have you!
I just wanted to post one of my all-time favorite quotes from one of my all-time favorite philosophers because its relevant to this discussion. Georges Bataille once said, "Freedom is nothing if it is not the freedom to live at the limits of comprehension where all sense breaks down".... I love that quotation! On some levels, once you produce a cohrent definition of "freedom" or any other political signifier, you subjugate it to common sense, and in some ways bankrupt it of its social meaning because it can be co-opted by any of the supposedly benign institutions designed to maintain social order.
Sorry I rambled a bit, hope some of this makes sense!
Just Mossy-ing Around
Hey Brad, I must read Kant. Much I read seems to quote him. I think I'll look him up on wincyclopidia. And thanks for the puff-up Brian, but I do struggle hard with words. And just to give fair warning to you who may read what I write… sometimes you just have to say to yourself, now what is Peter really trying to say. O well, it’s all in the DNA I guess.
Talking about DNA, I really liked Mossy’s intro thread, I believe I’ll stick with this tonight. He wrote, "The "state of exception" is of course the sole basis for authority, part of it's DNA. That DNA is written to encourage the organism to grow larger, which it accomplishes by manufacturing war, and today by manufacturing terrorism.”
I was thinking about this when I read of the Dali Lama's comments today concerning Tibet. He said that he acknowledged China has the world’s largest population, military prowess, and booming economy. I believe he was speaking about things that define a state-of-exception. But what the Dalai Lama said they did not have was the moral authority. He then went on to accuse the Chinese of “rule of terror.” And terror is, I believe, is what the state-of-exception always becomes.
Mossy goes on to write, “Violence directed against the Global Order is exactly what it craves, because that gives it pretext to expand authority. Yet at the same time I think it is legitimately threatened by some forms of violence- by 'rogue states', and internally by guerilla resistance, gun ownership, etc.” Which makes me wonder how, under Multitude, would we define moral authority. How under Multitude we would find the final say onto action that is needed weather violent or non-violent? Can the people of a democratic world discover that they are the answer they seek without military institution? Is it possible to transcend the current state affairs we are in under Empire?
In Mutitude there is a quote by Madeleine Albright: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are an indispensible nation.” The authors say this phrase carries all the weight of ambiguity. What she was saying was we are a powerful nation and we’ll do whatever we want.
What nation state of Empire is uncorrupt enough to use state-of-exception? China? Russia? America? Japan? Vatican City? Theses powers all have their own corruptions that it would be impossible to ever go with moral authority for any country. Moral authority in a sense can only be used by a state defending itself from a superpower or any other power that should rise violently against it. Nobody has the right to trample upon another’s culture without the others approval. I believe that we can conclude that state of exception is moral authority gone haywire. And in the Empire what morals do they have? Really, there are no set of moral laws to follow, religious or otherwise, what lies under their clothing made of wolves fur.
I think the Lama would agree with Mossy as he said today, “Violence is almost suicide.” And I believe that he meant it in regards to small states that go against global empires or Empire in general. Because he surely wasn’t talking to the Chinese when he said it. The Lama and Mossy I believe see the same thing – violence gives Empire the excuse to take over and it all looks like moral authority because of it. And in the end it’s the people that lose and freedom becomes a harder to find.
Mossy also wrote, “There are numerous examples of the accelerating merger of police activity and military. We live in a time when policemen… are installing a surveillance control grid to monitor threats in the population.” You know I just had to think about that because in Cincinnati the Sheriff is installing scanner on the front of his patrol units to scan your plates. This isn’t good and I believe that it is just another thing that is chipping away at the search and seizure laws. Empire beaming onto all there is to know about me without my knowledge. I call this terrorism. You always have to fear that someone is watching you. No one can ever relax. You need to be on edge even for a minor parking ticket that you threw off your windshield two years ago. It’s terrorism by Empire.
Mossy’s one positive aspect is that war is now biopolitical, it can be waged nonviolently. He says, “But are we still trapped by mimicking the methods of war this way?” As he continued I was struck by the point he gave, what we are doing is playing their game of what Empire believes or wants is a war. I mean I’m not really sure at all what type of culture Empire in the end is but as of now I believe it to be a culture of war and greed and institution.
Mossy’s last paragraph was his finest for me. I mean if we are the ones trying to survive all these wars (currently over two thousand) then this way of thinking holds a answer. He wrote, “I think if nonviolence is a threat, it may just be classified as biopolitical warfare. It's hard to think of an alternative to war that does not get drawn into it... for example, you could say that instead of fighting an enemy (and eventually turning into that enemy), you might transcend the enemy... in real (biological) terms this means either hiding/evading or outgrowing. If your enemy's survival is as a predator (and our current Global Order is a group of predatory elites keeping a herd of domesticated humans), then evading it or outgrowing it are both acts of violence. You could just be simple and say it's about survival in a web of life.”
Our key to Multitudeto survive is most defiantly to transcend the enemy and any war that is thrown one’s way. We must know that cultural, economic, biopolitical transcendence, not war, is the key to humanity’s freedom. We will survive this. We will outgrow the violence that is being heaped upon all by Empire. But if we are going to truly transcend Empire 1) We must never hide 2) We must never invade violently 3) We must never evade.
Today is part of forever.
"Our key to Multitudeto
"Our key to Multitudeto survive is most defiantly to transcend the enemy and any war that is thrown one’s way. We must know that cultural, economic, biopolitical transcendence, not war, is the key to humanity’s freedom. We will survive this. We will outgrow the violence that is being heaped upon all by Empire. But if we are going to truly transcend Empire 1) We must never hide 2) We must never invade violently 3) We must never evade." To expand on what I was trying to say in that last paragraph, I guess I am at a loss to make the distinction (in black and white) between transcendence and violence. I think of the example of a predator... a lion lives by actively devouring a gazelle's flesh. If that gazelle were to grow teeth and eat the lion, it would just be another lion. But if it were to run away (evade) or outgrow (like an elephant), it would have essentially the same effect because the lion would starve and suffer.
I know that analogy doesn't perfectly correspond to our world, but some elements of it do. I do believe there are elites in this world who are truly threatened to the bone by creativity, unpredictability, independence of thought and self-reliance, and the power and wealth of decentralized networks. It threatens them and it threatens their children, their little lion cubs. (for a great overview of the Elite's obsession with Eugenics, I recommend Alex Jones' movie ENDGAME just search for it on Google Video).
For me, violence is a gray area. There are some forms of violence that I couldn't participate in, like bullying or torture. But if policemen ever came to my door to take me to a concentration camp, I'm still not sure what I would do. Would it even matter? In one twisted sense, my resistance would justify the existence of those policemen- by proving that I am a 'terrorist'. In another twisted sense, my pacifism would just encourage and perpetuate their violence. And if my defensive, atomized violence were universalized it might stop oppressive violence, like a wolf trying to attack a porcupine. As the Janus Face opposite of violence, Pacifism does not escape its logic and breeds more in the end. Pacifism is also the most important characteristic of any domesticated animal.
Long story short, the Empire likes us to be little ski-mask wearing anarcho-terrorists, but it also loves it when we are bleary-eyed innocent little rabbits.
Sustainability
Greetings
Hello all. I am an actor, director, writer and technology analyst here in NYC. I'm very excited about this reading group and about the ideas in "Multitude." Lots of great thoughts already, worthy of much digestion.
Throughout the first chapter there is much reference to "Empire," its interests and character. Its qualities are evoked and a persona of sorts comes into focus. What I find myself wondering is, WHO is Empire? Who are the individuals who are creating, supporting, maintaining Empire? Empire isn't just a concept - it is only possible through the efforts of what Daniel Pinchbeck recently referred to and others have termed "the Ruling elite." Who are these people? Do we even know? Can we only suspect in generalities: bankers, world leaders, etc.? I would love to hear who we perceive Empire to be. Perhaps it is addressed in Negri and Hardt's previous book "Empire," but I bet we all have somewhat different ideas of who these sometimes nefarious, sometimes paternal string-pullers are.
Empire is a state of mind
Empire
who are "they"?
I probably spend too much time thinking about the question of who are "they" or what kind of conscious agency do "they" actually have? Also, I am interested in the issue of whether there is a consciously realized esoteric or occult agenda to their actions.
To take a non-esoteric example, it seems that the current credit crisis and potential meltdown of the financial system should have been easily predicted by financial analysts and economists. Given that, is it simply a case where mindless greed has overwhelmed every restraint, or is the assumption that even a breakdown of the current system simply facilitates the transfer of assets from the middle class and poor to the wealthy through bail outs? If so, is there a "master plan" at work here or just a set of competing agendas that are not fully coordinated but can still work together?
I was surprised in "Politics of Subversion" that Negri mentions the Free Mason/Nazi ideology as that of the ruling masters of Empire. I am increasingly compelled by the Hoagland/exopolitics/disclosure project narrative of their being a cancer of secrecy around extraterrestrial discoveries and futuristic technologies. However even if this is the case, it seems that there may be different cabals in possession of different levels of information and maintaining different strategies.
Why is this important? I think the problem is that if we don't have an accurate sense of the opponent and what they are seeking to accomplish, it is hard to craft an effective counter-strategy of resistance. I also however agree with Negri in The Politics of Subversion where he says in an interview that the system itself is the enemy - so in that sense it is beyond any single individual or particular sector's agency.
I hope that this reading of Multitude will also lead to a discussion of how to create and deploy strategies for transformation of the planetary culture in a hyper-accelerated timeframe.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Distriubuted mind
Daniel, I'm tempted to believe that it is not individuals but a parasitic mind that is distributed among individuals who serve as servomechanisms of the mentality. Perhaps in ancient times this was an alien god or a self-diluted god. But I'm wondering if these kinds of conjectures help us with a political program, because ultimately they are not practical in the same way Buddha thought contemplating the origins of the universe was not useful for alleviating suffering. So you are right to identify certain cult mentalities as being behind historical power drives, but it's impossible to prove. Is there a way to take that information and make it useful for the poor bloke who just lost his or her life savings or house because of the current economic crisis? What tools will help that person form a cogent response? I'm asking, because I don't know.
PS I was writing a blog post about emergence theory and went to the Wiki page to read what it said. I discovered this little tidbit. Thoughts anyone?
"Economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek wrote about emergence in the context of law, politics, and markets. His theories are most fully developed in Law, Legislation and Liberty, which sets out the difference between cosmos or "grown order" (that is, emergence), and taxis or "made order". Hayek dismisses philosophies that do not adequately recognize the emergent nature of society, and which describe it as the conscious creation of a rational agent (be it God, the Sovereign, or any kind of personified body politic, such as Hegel's state or Hobbes's leviathan). The most important social structures, including the laws ("nomos") governing the relations between individual persons, are emergent, according to Hayek. While the idea of laws and markets as emergent phenomena comes fairly naturally to an economist, and was indeed present in the works of early economists such as Bernard Mandeville, David Hume, and Adam Smith, Hayek traces the development of ideas based on spontaneous-order throughout the history of Western thought, occasionally going as far back as the presocratics. In this, he follows Karl Popper, who blamed the idea of the state as a made order on Plato in The Open Society and its Enemies."
helpful
That's a helpful answer, Antonio. Thanks!
However I still feel that there is something here that needs to be teased out - if there are occult and esoteric aspects to reality, then there may be invisible agencies involved and invoked in the course of political affairs. You might only be able to break the grip of a social-political movement ruled by an occult intervention through a movement that had a developed shamanic awareness of the ways that positive and negative spiritual powers operate in the world.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Here comes everybody
If empire is the 3D manifestation of larger forces at play, then I think the principle of an individual's freedom from slavery still holds true. What I mean is slavery to mental control through fear and attachment to materialism. The glue that holds this whole system together starts with the individual. To introduce a really practical example, I just learned about a movement in Italy that is combating the mafia with an ingenious strategy that does not involve law and order, or violence. It started with a group of artists who put stickers all over a mafia controlled city (control meaning that most businesses are paying "protection" money) that said a simple statement like, "Paying the mafia demeans the dignity of humanity." This message was so core to people's feelings that they demanded to start doing business only at places that did not pay protection money. Through a Web site stores started to act in concert, working together to declare themselves mafia free. The movement has grown rapidly because the ability of people to work together and support each other eliminated the fear of being targeted in isolation by the mafia. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch a talk by Clay Shirky based on his book, Here Comes Everybody (the anecdote is at the end):
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2008/02/shirky
I haven't read the book yet, but I think I will because it is very relevant to our discussion. The book link is here:
"Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations" (Clay Shirky)
PS A mexican shaman once told me that curses only work if you believe in them.
"Everybody" has Arrived
"Occult and Esoteric aspects"
Chiming in, with greetings all around, another non-degree'd, proletarian mook who listens to McKenna while turning wrenches.
I'm with ya, Daniel, there's likely more going on here than academic political analysis is fit to unpack.
Techniques for the concentration of intent, i.e., majick, have had the Inquisitorial screws put to them for centuries, enduring in obscure crannies and, I suspect, private esoteric enclaves. From ninjitsu to Stargate, "black-ops" technicians have held proven methods close to the vest, or what the hell use would they be?
Your invocation of shamanic awareness seems apt, and I suggest elaboration of improvised techno-shamanic methods of mass entrainment and generation of coherent intent. Bootstrapping off historic examples, something happened at Woodstock, et al, involving music, consciousness, and collectivity.
We can do that again, and better, more intentionally, more coherently, probably with fewer pharmacologic aides, thanks to new tech, re-discovered cultural templates like shamanism, and the benefit of lessons learned the hard way, forty years ago.
Evidence for optimism: the Global Consciousness Project (http://noosphere.princeton.edu) has been tracking global flux in an as yet un-characterized field assumed to have a relationships to human emotional coherence. For over eight years, data has rolled in from a network of random number generators, and sometimes, the network deviates from random, significantly. 9/11 was one of those times, as was the Asian Tsunami.
Picture this: a Live Aide-style event, webcast to, oh, half-a-million subscribers, in which a guided meditation led by the Dalai Lama morphs into a mass chant of "AUM", accompanied by hypnogogic visuals and embedded binaural driving at gamma and theta frequencies. Feel the tingle?
(I've done a little fieldwork on this- see my posts on the Institute of Noetic Sciences website- www.shiftinaction.com/node/2103, and, /node/3387)
Consider: the Institute of HeartMath is launching a novel program called the Global Coherence Monitoring System, (www.heartmath.org/gcms/index.html) which will track modulations in the Earth's ionosphere, the "body electric" of our planet, and it's hypothetical relationship to consciousness, human and other. This would be the playground of our dreams, friends, imho.
Out of such nuts'n'bolts approaches may come a "spontaneous perturbation to higher states of order" pre-saged by McKenna, referring to Prigogine's work on dissipative systems.
Or, we can beat the dialectic horse some more, and issue another manifesto, or two.
I'll be auto-modulating my neurology, in the meantime.
PAX
I supect that concepts like
Indeed!
At some point, "everything" (and everybody) will seem to happen all at once, won't it?
Indeed! I suppose that is already the case, but our illusion of separation keeps us from seeing that.
The Empire's Religion
I used to be a conspiracy nut when I was in my early twenties. In one organization I belong to there was a lot of reference to the Mason's and how they worship satan... the goat head symbol and so on... but then you would see many of the power elite worshiping in church and giving praise to their God of Abraham or Christ especially in the US. Lately, though I have been fighting an issue that has been ongoing at a local school that has to do with native Americans. I was but really wasn't aware of the sheer magnitude of genocide on the Ideginous of North and South America. It was like it was a duel effort between the State and Religions (esp. Christianity) to eliminate not only the culture but the populations of the idiginous of the Americas. There is no doubt that it was the Christian missions that handed out blankets knowingly infected with smallpox to the Native Americans.
There's an excellent documentary that was produced by a man that was trying to break the secrecy of the abuses by large Christian churches against the Native Americans. These organizations are bent on power and contral. They munipulate religions and thus munipulate the masses in feeling justified that it is because of their all-powerful god that will send your soul to hell if you don't go along with a certain religious organization's causes or dogmas.
One part of the documentary he touches briefly on is where Empire finally gets a hold of Christianity. In it he says that the first Christian's were against the state and the power brokers. Christians began to shuffle feathers when soldiers started dropping their weapons. He goes on to say that the rulers pretty much opened the door and said to the christian leadership "C'mon in boys and lets make a deal to spread your religion." The Empire of the day then has ever since warped christianity to there liking through corruption and religious institution.
But what is the religion of Empire? It's a religion based on power, greed, corruption,convolution,institutionalization, lies... It's the opposite of earth based religions... I believe that the religion of Empire is derived from that first religion that decided to build a temple, throw a priest in it, and the people heard how they must protect the state and their close to Godly leaders. They gave us heaven for their good and hell for their wicked. Life hasn't been the same since.
Oh and here's that Documentary... it's really mind bogging that this was and still is happening... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6637396204037343133&q=Unrepentant&total=527&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
The more I think of this I just begin to see that the first built temple was the first corporation. They bricked in the spirit, they brick in the mind, they brick in our reasoning.
"Freedom is nothing if it is not the freedom to live at the limits of comprehension where all sense breaks down"... They have bricked in our sences.
Today is part of forever.
Documentary on "Ruling Elite"
This documentary examines at least in part this question of who "Empire" might be. It's at the Brooklyn Academy of Music next week for any New Yorkers out there.