[Nettime-bold] camouflaging desire

[acm acm <artofficial2@yahoo.com>]

Camouflaging Desire

Ecological catastrophes are only terrifying for
civilians. 
Paul Virilio, Popular Defense & Ecological Struggles,
1978 (1990 trans. Semiotext(e))

You’re going to feel the impact no matter what, you’re
going to have to adapt.
Michael MacCracken, ex Director of the US Committee on
Climate Change, quote in the Oregonian
2/19/01.

The second statement above, made by a US official
recently, is in reference to the inevitability, in
the minds of most accredited scientists, of global
warming and the far-reaching implications it will
have on human life. Reading Mr. MacCracken’s warning
together with the statement by Paul Virilio,
regarding the difference in perception of
environmental danger between the military and the
civilian
public, brings up some interesting, indeed important,
questions regarding the current ecological
crisis and the manner in which it has been addressed
by different groups within the US. Anyone
who is the least bit aware of the environmental
movement, as it has existed in this country since
the late 1960s, must be aware of the heated
controversy surrounding just what the crisis is and
how to address it.

One way of interpreting the cautionary assertion by
Mr. MacCracken is to read it as speaking to not
just the subjective individual that will undoubtedly
have to endure massive environmental changes,
but also to the current political economy within the
US, one quickly moving towards the dissolution
of state/nationalist government in favor of economic
imperative. A situation that is becoming
increasingly intolerant of civic discourse about the
ecological, political, and economic control of
natural resources.

The words can be taken as a warning to all of humanity
from prophetic scientists, but they can also
be read as a threat from oppressed peoples to the
dominant power system – a structural system
that is no less fragile under the weight of the
disorder environmental catastrophe can bring. It can
also be said that such a demand sounds like the
dominating authority of management issuing
orders of compliance to the slow, fleshy bodies of
labor – a demand made necessary by the need
for increased human productivity in the face of
hyper-speed information technologies. This reading
is indeed possible and relevant, and the ideology
behind such demands needs to be visualized and
spoken, as do their consequences.

The power to communicate is all too often not
empowering to “the worker.” The e-conomy, the so
called information age, is not completely virtual, nor
can it ever be. Human destruction is
inextricably linked to environmental destruction, as
Marx and Engels asserted over a century ago.

Crises always drive adaptation and innovation, the
alternative is usually annihilation. Capitalism has
proven extremely resilient, surviving democratic
ideals, isolationism, economic depression, and the
most blatant contradictions. The old adage about what
doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger,
could have been written in specific reference to
capitalism.

With the rise of technology, especially in the realm
of information communications and
management, many have made utopic claims of inevitably
growing freedom due to the ease of
access to information. So far, this democratization of
information has fallen far short of such
claims, rather living up to its moniker as the
“information superhighway,” complete with broken
down vehicles, hitchhikers, roadside debris, and the
overbearing presence of massive commercial
vehicles transporting market commodities. And much
like its analog counterpart, little real
development of mass transit.

Brutality is still tolerated in the extreme, even
though we have “real-time” digital images and
reports. There is something resistant to resistance in
our mundane, seemingly inconsequential,
daily lives. We resist the uncertainty of democracy
for the safety of a militarized domestic sphere,
despite (or because of) the brutality inflicted upon
those who oppose the repressive order, or are
simply “other” to that order. We resist the change
required to end the degradation of the ecological
sphere, a sphere that includes ourselves, for the
(perceived) ease and comfort of conspicuous
consumption, despite our knowledge of the probable
dire consequences. What is it that all these
battles are about; what will determine society’s
strategy of adaptation ? The answer is as complex
as it is inescapable. Somewhere, barely perceptible
upon that facade of order and comfort is a
small, but unavoidable blemish, a hole really, that is
covered by a shiny, translucent patch. Living
just underneath the thick, yet unraveling, patch of
rationality is a microscopic, virus-like organism
that lives off of the undone threads – Desire.

=====
artofficial construction media
A collaborative effort to screw in a lightbulb.
visit us on-line at
http://www.artofficial-online.com

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
http://auctions.yahoo.com/


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold