[P2P-F] Fwd: What do I Know?

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanth, Rajani <rkanth at fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 6:02 AM
Subject: What do I Know?
To: "michelsub2004 at gmail.com" <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>




                                                        What do  I Know ?


It could be that  Michael Polanyi was the only major  EM (Eurocentric
Modernism: the genre of Modernism that Europe bequeathed to the world))
thinker to emphasize  the importance of ‘personal knowledge’ in science.

We  are prone  to reify : and see 'science' as an impersonal project, part
of some independently given -if self-licensed -  tradition of investigation.

It may appear that way, but it is ever , at best, the contribution of
gifted individuals who 'personify' the project.
The early materialist bias of EM science projected that third person air of
'objectivity' as an ideal.
Yes. It is  just that - an ideal.
We are not here, I believe,  to realise ideals: invented by some , for the
many.
*

Fact is that truth can be both personal and objective, in its vital  phase
of   discovery.
Canonical traditions are part of our anthropic trait of deification ,  and
ancestor worship, and so we  also think of canonicals (Smith, Freud, etc)
as templates 'risen above' the herd.

And that would be an error.

Because  the choice of ‘canons’ , itself, is not a democratic process: it
is an elite , highly motivated ,selection,
At any rate, whether we 'do' science or art, we remain human, personal, and
subjective, w/out necessarily invalidating our ideas.

*

Most established scientific mainstreams are as flawed as not: they are
refreshing in debunking retired paradigms,  and flawed in clinging to their
own dogmas.
This is true in physics, much as social theory.

Par Exemple the dominant model of Cosmology in physics today is seriously
questionable.

Black Holes, e.g.,  were never prima facie, observed natural facts, but,
rather,  derivations of Math.
In the latter, we get out only what we put in.
No, I don't think CERN is of much use, and the Higgs Boson is a  mere
flight of  fancy: it's  all a billion dollar boondoggle.

It's not as if someone  first 'observed' such phenomena,  and then  wrote
about them, and conducted experiments.
Of course , if you have a few billions invested, 'evidence', of a kind,
will, sooner or later be found.

This is also true of  dogmatic variants of Darwinian evolutionary biology,
as of mainstream economics.
The Hawking cosmology can be easily quizzed using, e.g.,  the ideas of
the  emergent ‘electric  universe’ theory.

Even our solar system may have originated in ways different from today's
conventional wisdom, as Velikovsky, e.g.,  maintained.

Darwinian ideas can be  challenged by  so-called 'forbidden archaeology'
that has uncovered  artefacts of human existence aeons  before humans  were
supposed to be around.

Nor can something as refined as  the human eye be the result of  a slow,
natural selection.
Similarly,  ‘trickle down’ economics can be rubbished by  straightforward
empirics,  and so on.

*

So,  we participate in ritualised affirmations of dominant ideas just as
easily in science as in other domains of societal life.
So, then:  what do we know?

That science is a social enterprise susceptible to social pressures.

And that dominant individuals in science can exercise dominant power over
others,  even in the face of recalcitrant facts.
*

So the moral is that for  real science to be preserved , we must allow
individual scientists maximum latitude to formulate new ideas.

This simply does not exist today in the EM world, where powerful,
monistic,   'establishments' – dare I say cabals? - control science, via
funding, and prevent advance: and many good ideas are shelved , at times,
for far too long.

The state needs be divorced from science, for starters.

And I don’t mean handing it over to corporatists:the odd thing  about 'free
enterprise' ideologues is that they do not permit it, at the ground level,
anywhere, to anyone (Wall Street sets limits to Main Street enterprise)
 not even in science.
*

So, the ‘human story’, in the sciences,  is a mixed one.
We are  both brilliant, and corrupt.

And the process of science is plagued with detours and dead ends.
Ultimately,  the only test is the  rather pedestrian,  empirical one.

Does gravity exist?
Well,  a leap off a  (low) table should decide that.
But does gravity  really hold together the entire universe?
That would appear doubtful: electro-magnetism is a far more convincing
candidate, for being  exponentially more powerful.

Did the Big Bang ever take place?

Now, that's a toughie: and  'background radiation',  or  a presumed ‘dark
energy’ , will not suffice (which is no more than ‘proving’ one
hypothetical by another): and it is curious that it is  virtually assumed
to be a fact,  a priori,  as it were.
It is a hypothesis, at best, and a stretch, at worst.

Much rigor is needed here, since there's so much snake-oil  around.
And EM  science is bursting with sharp-eyed operators with tenures  to be
had , and prizes to be won.
Not to mention all those research monies.
And, like Oscar Wilde, they can resist anything -  except temptation.
   *
So, again, what do I know?
I'm  compelled to be brief!   :)

I know that EM ways of thinking/being are a libel upon the promise of our
real Anthropic state.
That IT is responsible for our decline/debacle to the point of bringing us
all – good, bad, and ugly -to the point of human extinction.
I also know that our original Anthropic state, our Default State,  of
simple tribal society, embodied the essentials of our societal being such
as no other society since.

How?

They managed to restrain male destructive drives – which are the scourge of
all living things -  within the prison of affective, kin relations to the
extent  humanly possible: in other words,  they expunged intra-tribe
violence,(much like the incest prohibition bans , within certain degrees,
intra-kin sex).
Compare that achievement  to  the ordinary state of ANY EM society.

This is NOT to idealise them, simply to state an important fact.
They were built not on interests but on affections.
On Conviviality, not Competition.
Most of them broke up into  empires,  owing to male-inspired mutations
(either from within or without).
*
One of those empires is EM, which stepped out of a feudal empire claiming
to be god’s gift to this world.
It was not.
It managed to convince a few,  owing to the allure of  its  tendentious
slogans of ‘freedom’ ( free, in essence ,from any societal obligation of
support and maintenance)  and that that road leads to Nihilism and an
Amoral society,  we know today, though many noticed it even back then.

EM broke a social compact dating back to antiquity, and beyond.

And yet are applauded for that sacrilege.

Given its feudal provenance, it could pass itself off as ‘progressive’: and
many to this day  still think that democracy, liberty, women’s rights and
the diminution of servitude , in general , were  ‘gifts’  of EM  - rather
than   concessions extracted  from it by  sheer force  - of defiant social
movements.

EM was a movement led by the new Commercial classes seeking space -  at the
top - for themselves.
*

Indeed, whatever it  may have ‘gifted’ us  stands  absolutely no comparison
to what it took away from all of us.
Two ‘World Wars’ (i.e. 2 EM Wars, generously dragging in the world at
large),  and  dozens of other ‘wars’ (declared/undeclared)  virtually
without interruption -   millions  upon millions dead, and a Third Great
War in preparation -  should be proof enough.

That much touted ‘Sixth Extinction’, far from being imminent,  is not only
mis-specified  but has already taken place: and  needs to , indeed must,
refer to   the  ( still on-going) genocide against non-European peoples for
four straight centuries (stated simply, European elites continue to murder
non-Europeans with complete impunity, as they have since the Sixteenth
century).

It is not uninteresting   that European scholars , who have  principally
written our mainstream histories to their own advantage, omitted to
‘notice’ that trivial fact?

At any rate,    EM  drives  now threaten even  the  sheer physical
stability of  our host planet.

*
Driven by  pure, untrammeled, abject greed, it inaugurated the darkest
chapter in the history of our kind.
Being racist, sexist,  and imperialist, it pushed the whole world off  all
tracks leading, potentially,  to civilization.
To this day,  it is the natural ally of every form of  societal pathology,
recidivism,  and chauvinism.

What do I mean by civilization?

The pacification of our conditions of existence, both social and natural.

Contra the above, it created the most insecure society in the history of
our kind, extending  the  basic  economic insecurity of profit-led
production  to seamless  aggression and  gathering of means of violence on
a scale unimaginable by the worst tyrannies of history.

By institutionalizing  economic insecurity it ensured a vicious struggle
for survival amongst the poorer orders, thereby fanning  the flame of
anger, aggression, and frustration: ideal bases for divide et impera
policies involving violence and  militarism.

And it started a degradation of our environs that goes on, unabated,  to
this day.
It won’t do  to say, O India and China do it too, today: yes, because they
were force-fed EM mantras by their EM mentors.

India learnt it , perforce, from the Brits; and  ‘revolutionary’ China
imported  it first  via a  ‘Marxism’ that ignored externalities, and then
later by Western assisted , wholesale corruption of its somewhat dubious
‘socialist’ restraints that  today marks its growing  conformity to EM noms.

And No, ubiquitous guns and civilization simply  don’t mix: indeed , the
general availability of guns is a mark only of the degree of barbarism, as
manifest in their Lead Society.

And yet the vast majority of European elites – Left, right, or Centre
(barring, as ever, honorable exceptions)   still swear by  EM nostrums:
only some amongst its  tragic victims -  the poor,  the laboring orders,
the ex-colonial world , women, and First peoples,  appear to understand
its  lethal, misanthropic nature.

So, we are  now presented with a  clear Choice: between  our original
Anthropic  Society (cemented by affections)  AND  what I shall term  (EM
inspired) Entropic Society ( held, loosely,  if at all,  by force  and
mutual distrust, and disintegrating by the day).
*

I also know that men and women are profoundly,  and naturally, dissimilar.
By instinct,  men are aggressive and violent , and  women are nurturing.

Now biology is biology, not destiny: and behavior can be molded: but, in
the case of men,  it needs to be continuously monitored , checked, and
contained.
And then some.

It is this ‘paradigm of masculinity’ , as I term it, that is the great
threat to societal peace: as it has always been.
It is still that which subverts all utopian agendas of amelioration.

It is curious that instincts are admitted in the case of animals, but not
humans!
That stems from the Christian presumption that we are not animals, but  are
‘made in god’s image’.
Really?

So,  ‘god’ is an ape?

The moment one  brings in instincts, as I do, one is accused of’ ‘
essentialism’  (a standard , knee-jerk, EM put-down).
But, as I have said many times: instincts exist and explain as much of
human behavior as other extrinsic variables.
It is time that EM prejudices were exposed for the  facile sham they are.
**

I have also maintained that , amongst  all the European tribes, the
Anglo-Norman has gone the farthest with EM  postulates , which is why the
US exhibits the Neanderthal character it does: even its  close cousin, the
UK,  has still a few restraints left in place, stemming from  the  fading,
but not dead,  legacy of  an  ‘un-bourgeois’ aristocracy , and  a
near-heroic, long-suffering,  working class.

Dropping a nuclear device on helpless civilian populations, as  in Japan,
much as the  gratuitous  saturation bombing of Dresden at the conclusion of
WWII , that surpass even Nazi atrocities,  is an educational index as to
the real ruthlessness undergirding our ‘civilisation- mongers’.

Finally, I maintain that North Europe pirated the commerce/legalisms of
southern Europe (Italy) and then claimed lineal descent from them as part
of one single ‘ western civ”, (thereby passing themselves off as
‘civilized’): Not True.

Southern Europe (Greece/Rome/Venice) was part of a  great Mediterranean
civilization , itself at the intersect  of ideas from Egypt, India, and
China.
North Europe ‘borrowed’  much of its  so-called ‘enlightenment’, and most
of its resources,  from all and sundry(including, no less, from  ancient
civilisations in West Asia, India, and China).

It’s vaunted ‘industrial revolution’ is  simply inconceivable without it.
It  was,  as has been remarked  born in fire:  and baptized in blood.
*
To sum up.

Anthropic society is communal/co-operative and kindred-based: it is our
Default State of  Being,  as humans.
It is both natural and social simultaneously.

Entropic Society (deriving from EM) is an illegitimate usurper, cast in a
Hobbesian mode, a society of asocially individualized beings, wallowing in
‘universal egoism’ (Hegel) with little or  no cultural or moral scruples.

It is  starkly Amoral and Post-Human: and it will turn us into something
even worse – A Trans-Human ‘society’ of cyborgs, which will end  all
Evolution.

Follow it and we will , along with many others, vanish as a species.
We are close enough to it as far as genuine anthropic values go, already.
*

And it is not at all  difficult to doff it all: since we would only  be
returning  us to our species-being,  to our essential natures - of
co-operation and mutualism  - that EM  so   very willfully extinguished
generations ago.

As I have said the human family – no matter how  constructed - is the
repository of  such values that still survives universally despite EM
policies; and it , easily, gives the lie to ALL EM ideals : note that it is
not democratic, not equal, not individualist, nor ‘free’.

Fancy that!

And yet , it offers us our first, and final,  sanctuary, based on caring,
consideration, and conviviality  that is our birth-right,  be we high or
low, rich or poor,  European or Non-European.

It is, in  fact,  the only ‘utopia’ that is not utopian.

And Communities can still be re-founded on  those  essential  anthropic
axioms, an extension of kinship norms to a wider 'extended' family of
Gemeinschaft social forms.

It would make life, and living, meaningful again, for all of us: EM or not,
overcoming the anguish/alienation of our extant  constituted entities.

Perhaps it is what nature 'intended' for us?


**
So, that is what  I  know.
But then again: what do I know?



REFERENCES
Kanth, R       Farewell to Modernism: On Human Devolution in the
Twenty-First Century, Peter Lang, NY 2017.
Kanth, R      The Post-Human Society, De Gruyter, Warsaw,  2016
[© R.Kanth 2017]



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