There is something wrong with the future

28.VIII 2016

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
It is murder[1]

After getting accustomed to low crime rate since its peak in the 1990s, the world is once again entering a phase of accelerated crime growth. The rise of crime is palpable –- from rapes and robberies to homicides, from blue to white collar, from individual to mass murders, from random to organized and terrorist — although one cannot point to a single reason why. Crime is now at the inflection point. Its presence is felt everywhere, from info-sphere, media, entertainment and schools, to corporations, streets and politics. And the more efforts and resources are deployed to fight it, the more pervasive and out of control it gets. However, it would be a mistake to misidentify this trend as an aberration, an unwarranted side-effect of the post-industrial era. This state of affairs is an inevitable outcome of the neoliberal project at the core of which lies the idea of competition, a highly polarizing concept, which upsets the basic functioning of both society and the economy.

Neoliberalism was born at the intersection of the two crises, the crisis of governmentality and of dominant forms of power during the general contestation of the 60s. The emerging ideology outlined new forms of self-conduct, which satisfy aspiration to freedom in every sphere of existence, while the economic science was conceived as the newest technological invention through which new social reality revealed itself.

At the core of the neoliberal project lays the program of submission of human relationship to one single goal, competition, which has become a general political principle that governs reforms in all areas. This is an extension of market rationality to existence in its entirety. Its unprecedented systematization has profoundly shaped subsequent social reality, as a system of economic production became also a system of anthropological production[2].

So, how did we get here? What kind of reality has neoliberalism created and what is its future?

As the competent constituents of the past (e.g. bourgeoisie of industrial capitalism) gave way to the managerial class that turned competition into the only rule and virtue, the concept of competition gradually replaced that of competence. Only those who had become skilled in managerial functions could become wealthy through their labor. The decisions about production are more influenced by managers than experts as those decisions accounted for the reduction of costs and realization of profits. But, a managerial function detached from intellectual competence consists ultimately of fabrication, trickery, lies and fraudulent accounting, tax evasion and, if necessary, the physical removal of competitors[3].

Competition, once a guarantee of output’s quality, has undergone a major transformation. It has moved closer to the physical removal of competitors, ultimately leading to the systematic devastation of everything that does not submit to the profit of the strongest. Who competes better than those who eliminate their competitors? Mergers are just one form of physical elimination. Profit centers have used their considerable wealth to influence legislative process that removes all barriers for such activity. The state has become both an accomplice and a catalyst in this game. When was the last time government said no to a large merger?

Competition has become a reinforcing mechanism that provides a validation process for the legitimation of crime. Crime is no longer a hidden activity but the alpha & omega of every business, not just a marginal function, but the only way to stay in the game, and often the decisive winning factor in deregulated markets. Crime has disappeared thorough its proliferation. It cannot be eliminated, but it must be embraced. Its total and unconditional acceptance leads ultimately to its invisibility. Permissiveness has become the ultimate form of tyranny and capitalism has turned into a criminal system. Its survival in its present form is predicated on violence, because only violence is decisive.

Re-contextualization of murder: Society and human nature

Neoliberal government requires liberty as its condition of possibility: To govern is not to govern against liberty, or despite it; it is to govern through liberty to actively exploit the freedom allowed individuals so that they end up conforming to certain norms of their own accord[4].

Politics ultimately becomes the tool of social alignment with human nature and consists of the systematic removal of inhibitory mechanisms that allow us to come out as we actually are. Emergence of crime as a paradigm, its omnipresence, is the ultimate consequence of this political struggle. The modalities of resulting social structures have a deep resonance with who we really are.

This is the core problem of neoliberalism, the main reason why it is an anti-social project and why ultimately it either has to self-destruct or society as such has to disintegrate.

Designing a system of social organization which is in harmony with human nature is not something we should aspire to. It is generally a bad idea. A very bad one, actually. Without a considerable amount of inhibition, human nature is socially toxic. In fact, in order to become social, we have to abandon our true nature. The entire process of growing up, of becoming socially integrated – what is referred to as civility – is all about inhibiting our true impulses (e.g. toilette training, selfishness, lack of empathy, aggression, ability to engage in a dialogue,…). These inhibitory skills define us as social beings. Without them there is no society. We are born without those skills and we spend a considerable portion of our lives learning how to acquire and use them.

So, we are the real problem. Violence is inscribed in our genetic code and, as such, it becomes the essential component of neoliberalism. Killing as a (predominantly male) strategy of attaining the status position of dominant power has been adaptive. It is installed in the human brain because it worked. Murder has been a remarkably effective method of achieving evolutionary success (at least in the game of reproductive competition). Modern humans are descendants of those who succeeded in evolution. They are wired in the same way as their ancestors as dominant factors of success propagated[5]. Murder is inscribed deep into our genetic code; it only needs to be set free. The question is then, how close are we to the grand convergence when all barriers are removed and ideology becomes a true representation of ourselves. How far are we from setting free the murder? Well, we may not be there yet, but it is in the cards.

Life in neoliberal utopia. Who has the right to kill whom?

If utopia represents the impossible (imaginary places where social relations are represented, contested, and inverted), and developed society has reached the point where (almost) everything is possible, than the problem of finding our way is no longer the problem of disappearing utopia, but the problem of vision and politics. So what is the neoliberal utopia really like? What is a logical extrapolation of the neoliberal experience and what could be the next frontier for its all-around permissiveness?

Of all the issues that have emerged in the last years, murder has been the most divisive. From police brutality, to vigilante killings, mass murders, shooting of cops and terror attacks. All these cases were really about who has the right to kill whom, and at what price. Black lives matter, terrorism, the OJ Simpson trial, … they have all been about the same theme: Is it ok for the whites to kill blacks, for Muslims to kill Christians, for rich to kill poor, or even for the rich blacks to kill poor whites etc.? There has always been some implicit hierarchy of rules in that space.

Issues that have played a similar divisive role in the past have been alcohol prohibition, abortion (right to life), legality of drugs, prostitution, gay marriage, speed limits, etc. In many countries where these issues have been put to rest, tensions and problems associated with the issue have disappeared.

It is common sense to assume that removing an aura of taboo reduces the appeal of the vice. By legalizing something, one eliminates the challenge and reduces the abuse. For example, incidence of teenage drinking, drunken driving etc. are much lower in countries which have no minimum drinking age, and similarly in the case of car accidents vs. speed limit. In the same manner, one can argue, that legalization of drugs could lead to lower incidence of drug abuse and reduction of crimes associated with illegal drug trafficking. Same holds for prostitution. The upside of legalizing these activities is that society becomes less polarized – people get along better with each other – and, once divisive aspects are removed, politics becomes more constructive.

By analogy with these well-know cases, it makes sense to ask the same question regarding the murder. First, there is an insane number of murders every year. Obviously, the fact that murder is a capital offense is no detractor for killers; the rate of killing (individual/random/mass) keeps increasing. We now have more than one mass murder for each day in the year. The legitimate question to ask then is would the number of murders increase if they become legal. Most likely, there would be an initial surge, but then the trend would gradually subside and new lower murder rate equilibrium reached.

Death by shooting would gradually be accepted as a consequence of our freedoms, in the same way as death caused by traffic accidents, plane crashes, fire, or natural disasters have.

The benefits are immediately visible. First, guns would get the status of a regular appliance, like car or TV — everyone would own (at least) one. This would be plain common sense. All debates about the second amendment would become obsolete and with them the polarizing effects would go away. There would be no justification for the existence of the gun lobby. The NRA would be rendered politically irrelevant and politics, free of its influences, would be able to focus on issues that matter. Without polarization around the second amendment, republicans and democrats could even merge into a single party.

Smart guns would become the new technological innovation. Apple would produce first iGun, synchronizable with iPhone and iWatch, and Teslas would come with special road rage software and appropriate smart guns usable in such situations.

Compulsive killing would be frowned upon. It would be deemed uncool, along the lines people treat obesity. There would be awareness groups that provide counseling and talk shows where compulsive killers would be subject to shaming.

The US would enter its post-political phase (given the current political developments, this could be a blessing). There would be less need for police; private protection would be the new area of economic expansion. There would be far fewer people in prisons, both private and state run. No debates about death penalty or life sentence? All these would free the federal budget for more constructive projects. People would be much more considerate and respectful of each other’s feelings. Conflicts would tend to be avoided. Everyone would be nice to each other (assholes would have a very low chance of survival). Generally, people would get along much better. Right?

This is the face of neoliberal utopia. At the end, it is every man for himself, or in the words of Margaret Thatcher: There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

[1] Leonard Cohen, The Future

[2] Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society

[3] Franco Berardi, After the Future

[4] Dardot & Laval

[5] David Buss, The Murderer Next Door

 

The tropic of Chaos

15. IV 2016

Three years ago (in 2013), I came across an interesting book, 1913: Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts. The original (The Summer of the Century) and its English version title (The Year before the Storm) give a complementary summary of its importance for the rest of the century. There has never been a year like 1913, a true big-bang for arts and culture. Vienna was the cultural capital of the world and Berlin was just emerging on the scene. Everybody was there, Freud, Schönberg, Witgenstein, Arthur Schnitzler, Egon Schiele, and Alma Mahler, while young guns, Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky and Tito made a brief appearance on the scene. Elsewhere in Europe, things were happening as well, although somewhat less concentrated. The first and second Balkan wars were over, the Ottoman Empire had been driven out of nearly all of Europe, King George I of Greece was assassinated. On the New Continent things were developing fast. The Mexican revolution started in February, and the US made its voice heard in the art world with the Armory show, while, at the same time, undergoing significant institutional and political transformation with an Amendment to the US Constitution authorizing the government to impose and collect income taxes and the creation of the Federal reserve System. Louis Armstrong and Charlie Chaplin had their first public appearances. The first assembly line as well as the Camel cigarette brand were introduced , stainless steel invented, MDMA (aka ecstasy) synthesized for the first time, and the all-purpose zipper patented. The world was buzzing. Creative forces were building up together with (positive) political tensions. Things could hardly look better. The world appeared to be in balance, only to fall apart a year later. The rest was silence.

While reading the book, a short paragraph caught my attention commenting on the only two mass killings that took place in that year. This is the factual summary of the two events:

• The Bremen school shooting occurred on June 20, 1913 at St. Mary’s Catholic School. The gunman, 29-year-old unemployed teacher Heinz Schmidt, indiscriminately shot at students and teachers, causing the death of five girls and wounding more than 20 other people, before being subdued by school staff. He was never tried for the crime and sent directly to an asylum where he died in 1932.
• On September 4, 1913 Ernst August Wagner, killed his wife and four children in Degerloch and subsequently drove to Mühlhausen an der Enz where he set several firesand shot 20 people, of whom at least 9 died, before he was beaten unconscious by furious villagers and left for dead. After several psychiatric assessments diagnosed him to suffer from paranoia, and thus becoming the first person in Wüttemberg to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, he was brought to an asylum in Winnenthal, where he died there of tuberculosis in 1938.

Mass murder has become so commonplace that having only two such occurrences within a year strike us as odd. For comparison, in 2013 there were close to 80 mass murders (they had to be alphabetized by the place of occurrence — on the average about three for each letter of the alphabet).

Intrigued by this comparison, I collected the data on mass killings in the last 100+ years looking for some clues about the trend. The data reveal a rather disturbing pattern. Since WWII, the number of mass killings (defined as an idiosyncratic, not state-sanctioned, killing spree with multiple victims) has been growing exponentially at a rate of 5% every year. This means that every 20 years or so, the number of mass killings triples (1.05²⁰ = 3). For example, between the 1970s and 1990s, the average number went from 10 to 30, and between the 1990s and 2010s it went from 30 to 90. In 2013, when I looked at the numbers for the last time, we had around 80-90 mass killings, or one for every third business day. Allowing this trend to continue would take another 20 years for this number to triple, which meant that by the mid 2030s there would be one mass killing every business day.

The arrival of 2015 has announced something new! We have achieved this rate in less than two years: from 90 in 2013 to over 350 in the last year. The number of mass killings in 2015 exceeded the number of calendar days – every day somewhere someone’s fuse went off! This was not supposed to happen before the 2030s. This is how crazy the world has become. The future came too soon – we have already reached the point of self-intoxication when inner contradictions of the system, which previously could have been ignored, are taking over. The destabilizing forces are becoming stronger than those responsible for restoring the equilibrium.

But, nothing surprises me any more after subjecting myself to the ordeal of watching the republican debate in the last weeks, something I had never attempted before (and am unlikely to repeat again). The obscene spectacle of this year’s presidential elections is a real game-changer, a true political big bang that will set the template for future public discourse everywhere. Its consequences will be studied for years to come. The political landscape will never be the same. Are these men really the best this country (of 350 million people) has to offer?

For several decades now, modernity has been operating between two fatal modes: Carnival and Cannibal – it has been transfixed by the spectacle of its own creation and self-annihilation [1]. The current republican campaign is a culmination of of this trend which has finally reached alarming proportions where the system can no longer bear it and which, by the force of its own absurdity, has made an illegible long-running process instantaneously legible by the sheer power of the event.

Current political discourse no longer has a solid empirical backbone. Nothing is binding. Politics exists mostly in the kingdom of words. It creates parallel narratives and fragmented reality. As a consequence, society has become disoriented and confused due to the gradual loss of all frames of reference and distorted cognitive coordinates. It suffers from loss of shared reality and a chronic inability to form consensus, which becomes its main cultural dimension. The political body is afflicted with split personality — collective mental disorder in need of shock therapy. This collective “mental instability” becomes its intrinsic cultural determinant and enters the center stage of public life.

Watching this bizarre orgy, this unabashed display of vulgarity I am beginning to converge towards the realization that the biggest collateral damage of this century has been empathy — not really a natural emotion but a cultural concept and a psychological condition that is cultivated and refined and which, in the absence of cultivation or under ideological pressure, can disappear or be completely extinguished [2]. Most certainly, there can be no room for it in the winner-takes-all environments.

Early attempts at creating conditions for social atomization started in the 80s with sustained camping to turn material poverty and absence of luck in general into something shameful and repellent. The anti-war movement, pacifism and public empathy together with conditions nurturing these currents had to be eliminated and replaced in all areas with culture of aggression and violence. Through the appropriation of public spaces and resources into the logic of the marketplace, individuals were dispossessed of many collective forms of mutual support of sharing. A simple and pervasive cooperative practice like hitchhiking, for example, had to be transformed into a filled act with fearful, even lethal consequences [3].

The result of this state of affairs, and its purpose, if one wants to attribute it to a particular ideological design, is to prevent us from hearing each other, sharing our pain and expressing our underlying discontent through a single voice that can be heard. The net effect is anger, frustration and withdrawal of libidinal energy. Depression becomes the only adequate emotional response to this state of affairs, a privileged position of anyone capable of reflective thinking.

Since the beginning of the crisis I struggled to understand why in the times of epochal crisis, when change appeared inevitable, trillions of dollars have been spent on preventing change. The escalation of violence, which gained new momentum in the last years, is not due to reaction of the oppressed (e.g. revolution), but is the flip side of the resistance to change. When change is as necessary as it is politically impossible, rage capital becomes the new political currency and the systemic rise of violence becomes the price to pay for forcing the acceptance of the unacceptable. Mass killing becomes a suicide in displaced mode, a somatic response, a reaction of the physical body, to increasing precarity, hopelessness and fragmentation of the social body. A depressed and desensitized subject, no longer burdened by empathy, transforms personal lack of courage required to pull the trigger of the gun pointing at his own head into a high stakes video-game type spectacle with the practical certainty of being killed in the end.

It is not easy to kill another human being. It is a deeply traumatizing experience, for a killer, of course, especially if it is his first kill. 100 years ago, mass murders were result of an idiosyncratic mental disorder — killers always ended in an insane asylum. In contrast, 21st century mass killings have acquired strong systemic overtones with high degree of commonality across different occurrences and individuals, and have become an integral part of the spectacle. Contemporary mass murderers, when seen in hindsight, show a strikingly similar pattern. Depending on the vantage point, they can be seen both as heroes and as antiheroes. They are all ticking time bombs whose trigger could have been anticipated and possibly prevented were it not for the lack of resources. Unlike their early 20^th century peers, contemporary mass murderers are largely rational individuals or people on a planned mission (murder or suicide), perfectly aware of what they are doing at the time of killing. For the most part, their behavior can be argued, reasoned or explained by underlying social factors.

102 years later, we are undoing the cultural big bang of 1913 with a cultural collapse and symbolic annihilation – a continuation of the general debasement that has dominated the political landscape of the last four decades. This is a full blown explosion of Carnival & Cannibal, a cultural mass murder and eventual cultural suicide. It is depression externalized through aggressiveness, a typical male reaction (we are yet to see the emergence of female mass killers on the scene). Collateral damage? A split on the political right, fascisization of the political body and the barbarization of the social landscape.

If some 20 years ago I saw a sci-fi movie with these images of the future, I would have walked out of the theatre. Today, I want to do exactly that, to walk out of the spectacle, only I wouldn’t know how to find my way home.

[1] Jean Baudrillard, Carnival and Cannibal, Seagull Books 2010

[2] Franco Berrardi, Heroes, London, Verso 2015

[3] Jonathan Crary, 24/7 — Terminal Capitalism and the End of Sleep, London, Verso 2014

Big things

15. IV 2016 The tropic of Chaos     Three years ago (in 2013), I came across an interesting book, 1913: Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts. The original (The Summer of the Century) and its English version…

Source: Big things