On of the ways humanity is giving up on reality is the increasing abandonment of faith in academia. Even intelligent people looking into subjects outside their speciality are often only able to find a terrain of conflicting 'expert opinions'. This leads people into a chaos of confusion, not knowing who they can trust about some of the most basic facts of life. Very quickly the falsities pile up, leading to frequent arguments based on ignorance (I'm sure you've encountered some). Only the very best of our kind will stop an argument to agree that neither of them know enough, and so return to research more.
George Monbiot recently posited the question: "Why does a crazy set of beliefs in one field seem to migrate into unrelated subjects?" He concludes his thought with the following:
To dismiss an entire canon of science on the basis of either no evidence or evidence that has already been debunked is to evince an astonishing level of self-belief. It suggests that, by instinct or by birth, you know more about this subject (even if you show no sign of ever having studied it) than the thousands of intelligent people who have spent their lives working on it. Once you have have taken that leap of self-belief, once you have arrogated to yourself the authority otherwise vested in science, any faith is then possible. Your own views (and those of the small coterie who share them) become your sole reference points, and are therefore unchallengeable and immutable.Indeed, it is this leap into self-belief that so many have now taken. Adrift in the postmodern Sea of Uncertainty, people increasing settle for escapism and don't even try to find reality. And our world certainly does offer an array of fantastic escape routes - supernatural or virtual, temporary or ongoing. "Anything is possible in Second Life" claims the popular online game. Primitivist John Zerzan writes, "Immersive and interactive, [virtual reality] provides the space so unlike the reality its customers reject. ... It is 'less lonely and less predictable' than the life we have now. This inversion of reality is the consolation of the supernatural of many religions, and serves a similar substitutive function." As humanity looks to the extremes of religion and technology, the world around us gradually loses its existence.
John Dominic Crossan claims, "since the Age of Enlightenment has been replaced by the Age of Entertainment, the future clash would not be between science and religion but between both of them and fantasy." He continues, "In 1999 I never imagined, even as prophetic nightmare, the speed with which faith-based thinking would morph into fantasy-based dreaming to infiltrate medicine, education, domestic program, foreign policy, and even news reporting." That was in 2007. The shift to the fantastic has hardly slowed down since.
We're in a newly emerging age. This is an Age where fantasy seeps into every area of our lives. This is an Age in which every US Republican Senator denies human-caused climate change. This is an Age where people prefer to escape reality than face it. This is an Age of increasing confusion, increasing blindness, increasing non-existence. This is the Age of Fantasy.
We are forever distanced from each other and from the things in front of us and surrounding us. We don't want to face the music, the rotting "things themselves"--note, not in themselves--consequences of our actions. Technology will save us, the town fool cries! And, as if functionally, we remain content with entertainment, false relationships, computer screens, technology. Distance. In denying Presence we have denied presence!--It's easier that way, after all.
ReplyDeleteFor Zerzan this Love for the Real, the animal, the obscure, the taboo--NATURE--has already been replaced by movement away through seizure and control, two tentacles of civilization--Replacement. The logic of revolutionary times suggests that we must dismantle the hydra of civilization and tear this motherfucker down. Every replacement is a new hydra for Nature. Zerzan would say that your critique is more of the same.
Zerzan calls for complete annihilation of hierarchy, and that means reform is a pathetically narrow and childish word.
I know Zerzan wouldn't like my respect for academia, although he certainly puts a lot of effort into engaging it himself (hinting of at least some degree of respect/value-placement). I know he also doesn't really like the Enlightenment, claiming it "supplied transcendence for the next level of domination, an indispensable support for industrial modernity." (Twilight, 121)
ReplyDeleteHowever, although he wants both the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Fantasy to end (hoping for a return to a Golden Age?), are there not degrees of 'evil' within the current system? Can some of it not be worse than others? Or, like so many Christian fundamentalist preachers, does he just want to "speed the coming of the end", thus privileging the more destructive/undermining ideologies?
'Annihilation' is a dangerous word to throw around. It's justified some pretty 'fucked up shit', and it demands (mindless?) destruction - there never even was a baby or its bathwater! And, of course, 'nihil' is a Greek concept (Axial-Age basis), which has been heavily adopted by Christianity (Creatio ex nihilo), and is massively tied in with the domineering and destructive forces in the world today. If God can create out of nothing, he can reduce things/people/species/planets to nothingness too.
There is no nihil. Nothing has ever been created from nothing, and nothing can ever become nothing. There is just the ocean of relation.
Having said that, I am liking Zerzan more and more. :)
Age of Fantasy, indeed. I've long had concern with the "echo chamber" mentality that the internet and cable TV engenders. There's no reason to spend any time with conflicting (or even balanced!) viewpoints when you can surround yourself with shows and internet sites that will bombard you with your very own thinking over and over, reinforcing your worldview. This can even happen accidentally, by focusing on sources you think are unbiased (due to your own preconceptions), but are in fact very biased. Cass Sunstein and Kevin Dunbar both have interesting things to say about this phenomenon (Sunstein in law and politics; Dunbar in science).
ReplyDeleteIntellectual stagnation results when living in this "echo chamber" fantasy world--whether living there intentionally or not--and I've seen many smart people fall into this trap.
Thanks for commenting. It is a problem, and it is very much a dead end.
ReplyDeleteGee, I just need to surround myself with people like you. ;)
The problem with academia isn't academia per se; rather, it's hierarchy within the system, which is systematic, as well as the general manufacturing of pawns for the furtherance of Domination and the industrial mode of production. Fuck work, and fuck academia. Also, it just happens to be a fact that people will take you more seriously if you know your shit. He knows his shit.
ReplyDeleteAssociating Zerzan with Christian fundamentalism is an obvious rhetorical ploy. While it is true that a thinker may be fall under an application of the 'you too!' charge, it would appear to me that there is nothing in Zeran that would suggest such. Does he want the end of humanity? Does he support biodiversity--human included? Of course. He's just opposed to the industrial mode of existence where hierarchy rules. It seems to me that you think he is guilty of hierarchy when his model is totally horizontal.
You raise an interesting point about the need for hierarchy to destroy the machines that destroy. But I think you are conflating 'standing up for oneself' with hierarchy. It is true, in a trivial sense, that standing up for oneself is hierarchy in some weird derivative sense. I just don't think such a point would be very problematic, especially for an anarchist. Such an anarchist is merely in control of herself.
'Annihilation' of hierarchy seems like a pretty good goal. You know he doesn't mean to abolish everything. In fact, he wants to recover authenticity, truth, and reality, as I mentioned in my post. That's pure relationality.
Yeah, Zerzan is a long, long way from Fundamentalist Christianity. That was indeed rhetorical. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure hierarchy can be annihilated. But I could be wrong.
Given your apparent desire to keep animal exploitation in place, even after the collapse of civilization, it doesn't appear to be the case that you "want to" abolish hierarchy at all. But it is perfectly possible to abolish it within one's own life; even the attempt to abolish it is a process of continuity and change in one's life. The fact that you seem content with it in some instances is gross at best. I'd wager that your hierarchical position towards animals would subconsciously reverberate in your relationships elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteOf course hierarchy will remain. There are lots of people who wouldn't want to stop abusing women and wouldn't want to free the slaves. Capital is, after all, wihtin one's interests. Are these people vilified merely by way of some arbitrary speciesist rhetorical presupposition? Again: you just want to keep hierarchy alive so that you can excuse yourself from animal cruelty. Such isn't so much a one-ness with nature as it is yet more of the same, hydra upon hydra of domination of nature. You've fallen between two stools; your critique lacks any genuine motivation.
Very well said. You hit the nail on the head with that one. Everything you said in that article reflects what i am witnessing on a daily basis.
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