Campagna

Biography, Enworldment, Metaphysics

I think I’ve found my next book, Federico Campagna’s Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality.

My likely story unfolds as follows. The character of our contemporary existential experience, points towards a certain type of ordering of our world, and of ourselves within it. This ordering is supericially social/economic/etc., but in fact derives from a set of fundamental metaphysical axioms. These axioms combine together in an overall system, which is the reality-­system of our age. A reality-­system shapes the world in a certain way, and endows it with a particular destiny: it is the cosmological form that defines a historical age. At the same time, however, it is also a cosmogonic force: its metaphysical settings and parameters actually create the world – if for ‘world’, as the Greek cosmos or the Latin mundus, we understand precisely the product of an act of ordering chaos. Here comes the mythological aspect of my eikos mythos. It is possible, narratively at least, to present this cosmogonic force as almost a thing, whose world­making activity is revealed by its internal structure. I chose to call the cosmogonic form of our age, ‘Technic’.

His reason for writing this book is addressing today’s nihilism epidemic.

…the unfolding events and the apparent impossibility to put a stop both to the disintegration of those institutions that had prevented the return of recent atrocities and to the blatantly suicidal path of environmental wreckage, started to instil a doubt in me. Somehow, it appeared as if the range of the possible had dramatically been shrunk, and that our ability to act differently, or even to imagine otherwise than in a way already inscribed in the present, had been curbed once and for all. Like many others of my generation and of our time, I myself experience this paralysis. Whether by taking the form of political impotence or of individual psychopathology, the oppressive weather of our age seems to impact all of us equally. But even though the present age seems to impact all of us equally. But even though the present had little in store for anybody interested in fostering what used to be called ’emancipation’, perhaps the future still hosted the possibility of a change as-yet to come. As anybody with children, I too didn’t want to let go of a however implausible hope for a future, planetary turn in a different direction. And indeed, I too didn’t want to renounce the dubious belief that even an individual can always contribute, however marginally, to social transformations on a large scale. Yet, such stubborn hopes didn’t silence my doubts. For one, I wondered, what am I to do with myself, while we journey through these gloomy, penultimate times? And secondly, is it really true that a sociopolitical revolution would be sufficient to change the course of the events? Or is it perhaps the case that something else, at a different level, would have to change?

This double questioning — a pressing anxiety for my own well-being, and a more theoretical curiosity over the general mechanisms of change — led me to consider the problem through another angle.

And now here’s the good part:

Might it not be the case that change seems impossible, because technically it is impossible? And might it not be the case that imagination, action or even just life or happiness seem impossible, because they are impossible, at least within the present reality-settings? At their core, both questions pointed towards an element within our reality that stood as the ground of the specific cultural/ social/political/economic settings of our age. Perhaps, it is at that level, that we implicitly define what is possible and what is impossible within our world. Perhaps, it is at that level, that we decide what is our world. In traditional philosophical parlance, that is the level of metaphysics: the place where it is discussed what it means to exist, what kind of things legitimately exist, how they exist, in what relation they stand to each other and to their attributes and so on. By deciding on metaphysics, that is by deciding on the most fundamental composition of our world, it is implicitly decided what kind of things can or cannot take place in that world. In less specialist parlance, we could say that it is at that level, that ‘reality’ itself is defined. As the parameters of existence, particularly of legitimate existence, in the world change, so the composition of our world changes — and consequently, the range of the possible takes one or another shape, and with it the field of the ‘good’, that is ethics, and politics, etc.

As with most books I’m drawn to these days, the joy is mixed with terror of being scooped. His diagnosis is identical to mine.

The ingrained hopelessness of so many contemporary intellectuals is not in the contents of what they believe, which was summarized charmingly by Woody Allen in Annie Hall:

There’s an old joke.

Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”

Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life — full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.

The litany of complaints changes generationally, and what will bring an end to the misery changes with it.

It is forever “life sucks [for x reasons] and then life as we know it will end prematurely [from y catastrophe], and this time it is different and worse than ever before [due to z criteria].” The sense that this time it is different is an element of what makes this time perpetually like all other times.

I, like Campagna, agree with Heidegger that this recurring, shifty nihilism is a metaphysical malady that goes by the name technic, technik, technicity.

I, like Campagna, see our relationship with language as central to our problem.

Only a range of the existent can be conveyed through linguistic means, much like only a range of the colour spectrum can be perceived by the human eye. No matter what the evolution of our technological prosthetics will be, there will always be shades and things that will remain immune from language and from colour detection. Yet, this last statement is, in itself, a metaphysical axiom: it is a criterion which I suggest to place at the foundation of our understanding of what exists. Also the opposite criterion, that of the limitless ability of language and of its technology to grasp the truth of the existence, is an equally legitimate axiom.

Wow. And shit.

Back to this terror of being scooped.

I must get real about the metaphysical emergency we face. I need to care more about the success of the rescue mission than whether my role in the mission is ever acknowledged. I’m corrupted by the need for recognized originality.

Once again, like dozens of times before, I’m pretty sure I’ve been scooped.

Or.

Or maybe I am a truth-seeker who got so accustomed to swimming in boundless waters that I stopped hoping for land. Forty days and forty nights, forty years of swimming through watery wilderness toward something promised but ever unfulfilled, I gave up on landfall, or even a ship. I dreamed of some ideal ark we could build together, some firmness beneath our feet.

Could it be that I can’t even recognize the feeling of terra firma when I’m finally standing on it? That I imagine others built the boat I dreamt of building, when really, we have all just wandered ashore on the beaches of the same promised land?

If that land turns out to be the Pavilion at Brighton I am going to be pissed.

Disalienation gathering

NOTA

A few things I love to do that make me feel connected with the world beyond my skullspace.

I’ve also gotten this from cycling, especially mountain biking.

Alienation is a loss of intuitive contact and participation in some aspect of reality. Total alienation is rare, but partial alienation is nearly universal. Wherever alienation occurs, things begin to feel unreal and we, ourselves, feel less real. It requires effort to overcome alienation, especially in conditions of mass societal alienation.

I am designing a half-day disalienation event. I would want a mix of generations and worldviews in the room.

A rough agenda.

  • 20 minute meditation or prayer session to quiet ourselves down and prime ourselves to pay attention.
  • 30-45 minutes of gongfu tea. We will focus on noticing the sights, sounds, smell and taste of the tea, speaking only to point out subtler features of the experience so others can notice them with us.
  • 90 minutes of salon, on some experience-resonant topic. “Acquired tastes” might be a good one.
  • 60 minutes of blind contour drawing. We’ll refrain from commenting on or even looking at one another’s drawings. The purpose of the activity is the activity itself, not the output.
  • 90 minutes of salon, over some simple lunch, on some topic connected with awareness shifts. “Noticing” or “absorption” or “craft” are possibilities.
  • 30 minutes of scotch tasting. We’ll each slow sip one dram of scotch. We will share what we smell, taste and see, and try to notice what others are noticing.

That would be an amazing day.

I might want to experiment with doing gatherings in multiple cities. A friend in Chicago expressed interest in hosting one. We were thinking we could do in-person gatherings on Saturday, then have a Zoom call the next day for participants in different cities to connect and reflect.

My fantasy debate questions

Politics

The question I really want to see asked at the next debate:

“Each of you represents a party with extremist elements. How would you each address the extremists of your own party (as you understand extremism)?”

And as a follow up:

“What do you each believe the other should have said but did not?”

And as a follow up to that:

“Based on what you just heard from your opponent, what additional things would you want to say to your own party’s extremists?”

 

Sapient IA Bible

Design

For many of us, Sapient’s “Information Architecture: Practice Definition and Process Framework” (universally known simply as “the IA Bible”) was the first time we had ever seen an exhaustive documentation of UX design methodology (except nobody was calling it “UX” quite yet). It was released in March 2000, and copies of it were coveted. I still have my copy.

Up until it came out I was swimming in techniques, and did not understand how any of it came together. I think the IA Directors understood it better, but according to this document, it was only after they gathered and combined their knowledge that anyone felt they had anything like a complete picture. I think this is a historic document, and I collect design books. If you know of a book that laid out the human-centered design process like this earlier than March 2000, please let me know.

Battling design triads

Design

Designers love diagrams. We tend to be visual thinkers. Where verbal thinkers feel they understand things when they find the right words to express a thought, designers feel they understand when they find the right shape. And so it is not surprising that designers understand their own work in diagrams.

If you ask a designer what they do, there’s a strong chance they’ll draw a Venn diagram. There is an equally strong chance one of the three overlapping circles will be labeled “Desirable”.

Perhaps the most popular one is the Desirability-Viability-Feasibility triad. My first exposure to it was the late 90s, but expressed in different language. A User Experience Architect used it to explain to me that our role was responsible for finding the overlap between 1) “User” (what users want and need), 2) “Technology” (what is technologically possible), 3) “Business” (what serves business goals), and 3) . At least according to one source, it was IDEO who developed and popularized the now ubiquitous Desirability-Viability-Feasibility model. What is Desirable, Viable and Feasible satisfies the needs of people, is good for the business, and can be developed and delivered easily enough that it is worthwhile to do.

Another version, which I believe predates the other by almost a decade is the Usefulness-Usability-Desirability triad. When designers focus on the benefits they provide to people — and this is our primary focus — we often speak of these benefits in terms of good experience. This triad clarifies what is meant by “good experience”.

A good experience has three qualities: It is 1) “Usefulness” (the design satisfies functional needs), 2) “Usability” (the design minimizes functional obstacles), and 3) “Desirability” (the design is valuable beyond its function).

Years ago, I became curious where this triad originated. It turns out it was conceived in 1992 by Liz Sanders, who is now known primarily for her work in participatory design. To the degree a design affords usefulness, usability and desirability, it will be valued by people and adopted.

So which of these two Venn diagrams is preferable? They seem to do similar things with a similar shape and with one overlapping word. Do we just choose the one we like better? Do we just choose the one that we think will resonate more with our audience?

I propose that these two triads complement each other. This becomes easier to see if we avoid using the word “Desirability” in two different ways. In the Desirability-Viability-Feasibility triad, Desirability is about people’s response to what is being designed. It asks if the design will actually be adopted. Let’s call it “Adoptability”.

And adoptability is the goal of good experience. Looking at the Usefulness-Usability-Desirability triad, they define what is adoptable. So the Usefulness-Usability-Desirability triad fits inside the Adoptability region of our new Adoptability-Viability-Feasibility triad.

Not one to stop while I’m ahead, I’ve decided to add yet more elements. I’ve been warned by trusted colleagues that I’m pushing it too far. I’m going to try anyway.

Years ago I heard someone, and I suspect it was Jared Spool, talk about design having two modes. 1) “Design the right thing.” 2) “Design the thing right.”

I see the first triad Adoptability-Feasibility-Viability as representing “Design the right thing.”

I see the second triad Usefulness-Usability-Desirability as representing “Design the thing right.”

So far so good?

Ok. But here’s where I got in trouble with my colleagues. While I was digging around the internet to confirm that Jared Spool was in fact the inventor of “Design the right thing.” / “Design the thing right.” I came upon an article that mapped these two statements to the famous Double Diamond of design thinking. And I got all excited about mapping the two triads to the diamonds to produce a  Grand Unified “What Designers Do” Diagram.

I received two objections. The first objection points out that we are not only thinking about adoptability-feasibility-viability while defining our problem. We also think about usefulness, usability and desirability. And once we think about designing a thing right in the second diamond, we don’t stop worrying about feasibility and viability.

Honestly, none of this bothers me. In design, when we describe what we do, we exaggerate and sharpen definitions and separate things that are blurrier and messier and more intermingled in real practice. We’re just trying to help people conceptualize, and this makes it easier. It is roughly true. Good enough.

The second objection, however, might be fatal. But if it fails, it seems to be an interesting failure, so I’ll expose the idea with the objections and see what happens. If I can’t rescue it, maybe somebody else can.

The objection is this: While it is true that the first diamond is where we determine what the right thing is to design — and while it is also true that the right thing to design is adoptable, feasible,  and viable — it is not necessarily true that the first diamond helps us determine what the right thing to design is by defining what is adoptable, feasible,  and viable. Adoptability-Feasibility-Viability is more commonly used as a framework for evaluating concepts, and that is something that belongs in the second diamond.

But then, I’m thinking… Maybe designers should be thinking more about how we can bring feasibility and viability into that first diamond.

Perhaps we are overemphasizing Adoptability when framing our opportunities and design problems.

I don’t know the answer. But I do know from years of design practice that sometimes clearly framing a question is the key to better answers. So I’ll leave it open.

Thoughts?

 

“Swiftvoting”

Philosophy, Politics

When news came down that DNC convention would be held in Chicago (based on my book purchases, it must have been in mid-January 2024, when I started reading Playing With Fire, followed by The Controversialist and King: A Life) I had a sudden epiphany that we are reliving 1968.

The October 7 Pogrom had happened three months before, followed by orgies of pro-Palestine / anti-Israel / anti-West demonstration, which invited comparison with pro-Viet Cong / anti-American activism of radical youth. I’d been thinking about Nixon’s seething “silent majority” and wondering how big today’s silent majority is. It is hard to know in times when dissent against the dominant ideology is discouraged, or even punished. I was also thinking also about how the Paris riots of May 68 disgusted a generation of ex-Trotskyite Jewish neoconservatives into existence, and how the pro-Hamas left is likely inspiring a neoneocon movement.

Then I heard that through some cosmic perversity, the DNC Convention would be held in Chicago and it all crystalized, and I hit the books and immersed myself in the era. Around that time (February 12) I posted to Facebook:

We are re-living 1968. Just keep watching.

To which I got comments like, “more like 1932”. Because Godwin’s Law.

And then I commented:

I just poked around to see if this idea is trending right now. It seems that is sort of isn’t — or isn’t much more than it always does every single election year.

Because at that point I hadn’t seen anyone make the comparison, or develop it.

Then I elaborated:

Keep an eye on the Chicago DNC convention, infantile activists, the silent majority, creepy right-wingers, deranged left-radicals, Democrat candidates bowing out, the spawning of a new generation of disillusioned ex-lefties disgusted by fellow travelers / useful idiots who support obvious psychopaths who reinforce their fanatical ideological commitments… Hopefully no political assassinations or bombings on US soil!

I’m not claiming to have prophetic foresight here.

I am claiming that I have something much, much better. I have 1) a modest knowledge of history and 2) even better, an energetically-cultivated independence of thought.

I read histories from political moments before this particular funhouse era. Do you really not understand that any history of totalitarianism is just as much about its own time as it is about the 1930s? For this reason, you’ve got to read histories written in a variety of times. You’ve got to read what totalitarians said about themselves. If you read contemporary ideologues like Timothy Snyder, Jill Lepore, Nikole Hannah-Jones and the like, you aren’t reading history — you are reading partisan editorial. This should be obvious to any critical thinker, but it is far from obvious to readers of NYT history bestsellers who read these books and are just shocked by their relevance to what is happening today!

And I read philosophy, so I can understand events from a plurality of logics. This enables me to try them on in turn, compare what each reveals, and find one that provides intuitive, cognitive and moral clarity on whatever I’m concerned or perplexed about. This hard work enables me to think things outside the narrow circular rut of Progressivist thought, and to see stark truths of which rank-and-file Progressivists are utterly oblivious.

If you are not reading philosophy, I promise you that you are running a philosophy you passively adopted through casual socialization. I have yet to meet an “original thinker” who thinks even slightly originally. Progressivists are ideologically automated to rethink the independent truths of the likeminded, and automatically dismiss thoughts from outside their logic as propaganda delusions.

But I am burying the living shit out of my lede under an avalanche of flex.

What I really want to do is make a new observation, and to mint a brand-new coinage. This morning I was expressing my belief that Kamala Harris can win this election. Here is what I said:

We live in a Taylor Swift Age where a stuffed sequined leotard can become an object of extreme adoration for no reason at all but a psycho-social need to adore.

I believe the autonomous mass-mind known as Progressivism can pull a “swiftvoting” propaganda operation to make Harris into a shining idol of hope for a Trumpless future.

I believe Harris can win.

Swiftvoting. That’s pretty good. An astroturf campaign to implement an engineered vibe-shift. Swiftboating for femme Gen-Zers and olds trying to mimic them.

And I bet you think you know why I think she’s a phony, terrible candidate. According to your omniscience, I can’t abide a woman candidate of color. If you had any capacity for self-reflection, which you do not, you’d see that the swelling backlash against progressivism has everything to do with this reflexive compulsion to condescend and progsplain people’s own motivations to themselves. You think you know better than I do what motivates my thinking? You? You’re an ideological automaton whose programming diverts self-reflection to harmless subroutines that simulate self-awareness.

The ressentiment generator

Biography, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics

I just said out loud a thought that has been gestating in me.

I posted it in response to Radical Radha‘s excellent Substack article, “Applying the Bhagavad-Gita to modern life”.

My danger is fury toward progressivism and its mind-boggling hypocrisy. Progressivism itself is blatantly guilty of everything it projects on patriarchy, whiteness, heteronormativity, etc. I’m constantly — obsessively, compulsively — trying to turn progressivism’s critique back on itself, trying to make progressivists acknowledge what they are really doing. I’ll say “Do a search and replace on DiAngelo, replacing ‘White’ with ‘Woke’ and you can see what’s really going on.” But it never works. They refuse to apply their principles to their own movement. They will never “do the work” when it threatens the real source of their privilege and power. Etc. Etc. Etc.

But in my better moments I suspect the problem has nothing to do with choice of target, and that the root problem is with the critical logic itself. Regardless of target — regardless of whether a real oppressor or some phony surrogate is in the critical cross-hairs — this philosophy itself is a ressentiment generator, and whoever uses it will radiate misery.

Permanent designer hat

Design, Politics

Here is why I’m reading Fritz Perls: The interlacing intellectual traditions that birthed gestalt psychology also birthed human-centered design. They are sibling traditions with much to learn from one another.

There is an issue, a problem; and there are opposing parties: the terms in which the problem is stated are taken from the policies, vested interests, and history of these parties, and these are considered to be the only possible approaches to the problem. The parties are not constituted from the reality of the problem (except in great revolutionary moments), but the problem is thought to be “real” only if stated in the accepted framework.

But in fact neither of the opposing policies spontaneously recommends itself as a real solution of the real problem; and one is therefore continually confronted with a choice of the “lesser of two evils.” Naturally such a choice does not excite enthusiasm or initiative. This is what is called being “realistic.”

The creative approach to a difficulty is just the opposite: it tries to advance the problem to a different level by discovering or inventing some new third approach that is essential to the issue and that spontaneously recommends itself. (This then would be the policy and the party.) Whenever the choice is merely and exclusively the “lesser evil,” without envisaging the truly satisfactory, it is likely that there is not a real conflict but the mask of a real conflict that no-one wants to envisage. Our social problems are usually posed to conceal the real conflicts and prevent the real solutions — for these might require grave risks and changes. If a man, however, spontaneously expresses his real irk, or simple common sense, and aims at a creative adjustment of the issue, he is called escapist, impractical, utopian, unrealistic. It is the accepted way of posing the problem, and not the problem, that is taken for the “reality.” We may observe this behavior in families, in politics, in the universities, in the professions. (So, afterwards, we notice how past eras, whose social forms we have outgrown, seem to have been so stupid in some respects. We now see that there was no reason why a spontaneous approach, or a little more common sense, could not easily have solved their problems, prevented a disastrous war, etc., etc. Except that, as history shows, whatever fresh approach was at that time suggested, was simply not “real.”)

Most of the reality of the Reality-principle consists of these social illusions, and it is maintained by self-conquest.

Phenomenology, Pragmatism, Existentialism — application, reflection, re-application, re-reflection — iterated until both practice and account of practice are internalized and made extensions of one’s own being — heart, soul and strength.

Designers should never “take off their designer hat.” Design is a better mode for doing everything a person can do — politics, friendship, marriage… and worship.

When I say “design” I do not mean what past generations of designers meant.

I certainly do not mean what design technocrats mean: envisioning a utopian world, and actualizing that utopia into a new, better reality. Design technocrats see themselves as revolutionary heroes with a vision, a plan, faith and courage to take action — cutting through all resistance to make things better for all. It encourages us to use all available power to treat those who question or resist our utopian plans as vicious (small-minded, unimaginative, greedy) and invalid, if not nonhuman — mere obstacles to overcome.

This kind of revolutionary technocratic attitude is narcissism, and anathema to design as I know and love it.

This vision of design neglects design’s very essence — the hard work that precedes the technical work — the hard work of going to the rough ground of reality, getting in touch with it, experiencing it, participating in it, learning from it and intuiting for ourselves what seems relevant and salient.

And we don’t do this work alone. We do it with others. Inevitably we find that we intuit reality differently, and these different intuitions produce different truths.

A crucial designerly faith: while these initial truths are true to some degree, they are never true enough. We collaborate with others to instaurate ever-better truths. The truths bring us closer to reality and they allow us to find agreement, or at least alignment, with other people.

This idea that we should just overwhelm other people with power because we, ourselves, know best — and those other people can be explained away into inhumanity — this makes us unreasonable, inhuman. It makes us into enemies who can only be met with violent force. People who cheerfully advocate revolution never imagine themselves subject to the revolutionary violence. Revolutionaries unconsciously assume the superior power they pretend to lack. Revolution is the fantasy of the privileged-in-denial.

Sadly, few people will meet us as equals and design with us. As long as people think they can ignore us, or overwhelm us or annihilate us they’ll continue to do so. But if we accept that we must live together and prioritize our life together over our own narcissistic utopian ideals we can start making progress — not toward some set revolutionary goal imagined by some prophetic genius — but away from a state of affairs we would prefer to put behind us.

Coming together on approaches to reform the real world: this is the part of design that matters most. If we do the work before the work — the political work — the engineering efforts we employ to effect the changes will create peaceful, second-natural improvements to our lives.

None of us knows better, least of all those who believe we know best. We only know best when we know together.

Design is human-centered design

Design, Design Instrumentalism

The introduction of human-centered methods to design did not just improve design methods. It didn’t simply improve the quality of design work.

The introduction of design research — the essence of human-centeredness — fundamentally transformed design.

It radically differentiated what engineers always meant by design from what designers mean by it — and what we all now implicitly mean when we speak of design.

A similar essential change might be in store for design as we move from design intended for solo use, centered on one person at a time to design meant to mediate interactions between multiple persons, each of whom is part of the other’s experience.

For years now I’ve experienced philosophy as a kind of design. I don’t mean that the theoretical concept occurred to me. I mean I noticed that I had already for some time been evaluating philosophies as designed artifacts. And I don’t only mean that I was assessing the objective content of the philosophies as well-designed or poorly-designed. More importantly, I was noticing how I responded to the world itself mediated by the philosophies I internalized as I read them. The medium of philosophy is its message, not the content of propositions or arguments. I treated the philosophy as an invisible mediation of my experience of life, which got worse or better, based on the deep design of the philosophy.

I call this understanding of philosophy design instrumentalism.

I now believe philosophy should be a kind of polycentric design.

We must design philosophies for interoperability within culture, or we are committing design malpractice.

Cosmopolitan provincialism

Politics

Marxism never did manage to establish international working class solidarity.

The working class of the early twentieth century was too widely dispersed and separated by physical distance and culture. Individual workers had no opportunities to form interpersonal relationships with workers from other nations. Interconnecting technologies were lacking. National identities turned out to be a much stronger social bond among workers than common economic interests, and this fact was exploited to extremes by the national socialist fascists of the mid-20th century.

But where the working class failed to form international solidarity, we, the international managerial class, have succeeded. We have formed a very strong international class with shared economic interests, our own globalist ideology, our own shared cosmopolitan culture, our own shared corporation-friendly values — and, most of all, techno-social networks of interpersonal relationships spanning national boundaries.

By strong, I mean two things. 1) We feel much stronger loyalty to fellow managerial class members who share our culture than other of different classes within our own nations. And as a class we are overwhelmingly strong — so strong, in fact, that we no longer feel any need to pretend to respect the beliefs or lifestyles of those of the lower classes. We invent who they are and what they think and why they are, and do and say and think. We despise their religions, their loyalties, their aesthetic values. We despise them as people.

Consequently, the working class hates us. They hate us the way all oppressed people hate their oppressors.

The international managerial class believes, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that we are leftist.

After all, leftism has always been international.

But what the international managerial class really seeks is international capitalist domination over all human life, micromanaged by the managerial class. It is an international class supremacist movement, the furthest possible thing from leftism — and from liberalism. We are the direct opposite of who we believe themselves to be.

To the managerial class, we ourselves are the We of “we the people” and the Our of “our democracy” We know what is required to survive climate change, domination of the powerless, managing our own runaway inventions (AI, automation, GMOs, etc).

We have the skills, expertise and ethics to take care of the problems of the world (again, problems we ourselves created) and so we should have the power requires to take care of these problems.

These problems, created across national boundaries, are too vast for nations to manage.

Nations stand in the way of this great global project.

Anyone within a nation who attempts to preserve or recover national sovereignty is a nationalist, which to a globalist is a close neighbor to fascism, if not covert fascism.

Any nation with a strong national identity of its own, ruled by people with greater loyalty to their own nation than to the international managerial class is fascist adjacent if not outright fascist.

Most progressivists I know are extremely authoritarian, uncritical, unreflective, conformist and naive realist. They believe otherwise, of course, because authority has told them that conformity to what everyone calls “critical thinking” makes them independent thinkers. When they use the ssme conceptual repertoire snd logic to independently come to exactly the same conclusions as each other, that is because the truth is the truth. Part of that truth is that people who don’t think like they do are naive realists, unaware of how social forces trick unthinking dummies to believe what is in their own interest. Since they are not subject to such things, they deserve to have all the power and benevolently dominate society for its own good.

I’ve come to call this metanaivity. Metanaive managerial classers are naive realists who believe in everyone else’s naive realism, but believe their own belief in naive realism immunizes them against succumbing to it themselves, which, of course, guarantees their hopeless succumbing.

When I try to explain any of the above to people who have internalized their class identity, they become hostile and morally suspicious. They more or less say “I don’t know what you mean, but I know I don’t like it.”

This is cosmopolitan provincialism.

Agonism overview

Philosophy, Politics

From Chantal Mouffe’s Agonistics:

Let me briefly recall the argument I elaborated in The Democratic Paradox. I asserted that when we acknowledge the dimension of ‘the political’, we begin to realize that one of the main challenges for pluralist liberal democratic politics consists in trying to defuse the potential antagonism that exists in human relations. In my view, the fundamental question is not how to arrive at a consensus reached without exclusion, because this would require the construction of an ‘us’ that would not have a corresponding ‘them’. This is impossible because, as I have just noted, the very condition for the constitution of an ‘us’ is the demarcation of a ‘them’. The crucial issue then is how to establish this us/them distinction, which is constitutive of politics, in a way that is compatible with the recognition of pluralism.

Conflict in liberal democratic societies cannot and should not be eradicated, since the specificity of pluralist democracy is precisely the recognition and the legitimation of conflict. What liberal democratic politics requires is that the others are not seen as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries whose ideas might be fought, even fiercely, but whose right to defend those ideas is not to be questioned. To put it in another way, what is important is that conflict does not take the form of an ‘antagonism’ (struggle between enemies) but the form of an ‘agonism’ (struggle between adversaries).

For the agonistic perspective, the central category of democratic politics is the category of the ‘adversary’, the opponent with whom one shares a common allegiance to the democratic principles of ‘liberty and equality for all’, while disagreeing about their interpretation. Adversaries fight against each other because they want their interpretation of the principles to become hegemonic, but they do not put into question the legitimacy of their opponent’s right to fight for the victory of their position. This confrontation between adversaries is what constitutes the ‘agonistic struggle’ that is the very condition of a vibrant democracy.

A well-functioning democracy calls for a confrontation of democratic political positions. If this is missing, there is always the danger that this democratic confrontation will be replaced by a confrontation between non-negotiable moral values or essentialist forms of identifications. Too much emphasis on consensus, together with aversion towards confrontations, leads to apathy and to a disaffection with political participation. This is why a liberal democratic society requires a debate about possible alternatives. It must provide political forms of identifications around clearly differentiated democratic positions.

While consensus is no doubt necessary, it must be accompanied by dissent. Consensus is needed on the institutions that are constitutive of liberal democracy and on the ethico-political values that should inform political association. But there will always be disagreement concerning the meaning of those values and the way they should be implemented. This consensus will therefore always be a ‘conflictual consensus’.

In a pluralist democracy, disagreements about how to interpret the shared ethico-political principles are not only legitimate but also necessary. They allow for different forms of citizenship identification and are the stuff of democratic politics. When the agonistic dynamics of pluralism are hindered because of a lack of democratic forms of identifications, then passions cannot be given a democratic outlet. The ground is therefore laid for various forms of politics articulated around essentialist identities of a nationalist, religious or ethnic type, and for the multiplication of confrontations over non-negotiable moral values, with all the manifestations of violence that such confrontations entail.

In order to avoid any misunderstanding, let me stress once again that this notion of ‘the adversary’ needs to be distinguished sharply from the understanding of that term found in liberal discourse. According to the understanding of ‘adversary’ proposed here, and contrary to the liberal view, the presence of antagonism is not eliminated, but ‘sublimated’. In fact, what liberals call an ‘adversary’ is merely a ‘competitor’. Liberal theorists envisage the field of politics as a neutral terrain in which different groups compete to occupy the positions of power, their objective being to dislodge others in order to occupy their place, without putting into question the dominant hegemony and profoundly transforming the relations of power. It is simply a competition among elites.

In an agonistic politics, however, the antagonistic dimension is always present, since what is at stake is the struggle between opposing hegemonic projects which can never be reconciled rationally, one of them needing to be defeated. It is a real confrontation, but one that is played out under conditions regulated by a set of democratic procedures accepted by the adversaries.

I contend that it is only when we acknowledge ‘the political’ in its antagonistic dimension that can we pose the central question for democratic politics. This question, pace liberal theorists, is not how to negotiate a compromise among competing interests, nor is it how to reach a ‘rational’, i.e. fully inclusive, consensus without any exclusion. Despite what many liberals want to believe, the specificity of democratic politics is not the overcoming of the we/they opposition, but the different way in which it is established. The prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions or to relegate them to the private sphere in order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere. Rather, it is to ‘sublimate’ those passions by mobilizing them towards democratic designs, by creating collective forms of identification around democratic objectives.

Pragmatic metaphysics, continued

Metaphysics, Pragmatism

I’m having a fruitful conversation with Digitalap3 in response to yesterday’s post, Pragmatic metaphysics. It inspired one possible answer to the question I posed: What pragmatic difference is there between pantheism and panentheism?

I think the “difference that makes a difference” (to put it in Rortian terms) may be that pantheism sees nature as a stable, intelligible order, and panentheism does not.

Pantheism conceives both nature and God to be available to us through reason. We can expect linear progress in knowing more and more deeply and thoroughly.

Panentheism, on the other hand, expects deep, epiphanic disruptions to our understanding. Reason is always tentative, and its stability is never long assured.

By this understanding, Thomas Kuhn’s innovation was the introduction of a panentheistic conception of science!

I’ve said before that mine is a metaphysics of surprise. Maybe this gets at it:

Pantheism is a metaphysics of radical reason.
Panentheism is a metaphysics of radical surprise.

Pragmatic metaphysics

Judaism, Metaphysics

I have a philosophical problem fermenting in the back of my mind: Is there any pragmatic difference between pantheism and panentheism? In other words, if we trace what follows from believing pantheism (the faith that sees the universe as identical to God) versus what follows from panentheism (the faith that sees the universe as part of God, in other words a subset of God), do the consequences diverge in any significant way?

Pragmatic metaphysics

Metaphysics, Philosophy, Pragmatism

Obviously, we cannot conceive something inconceivable prior to acquiring the capacity to conceive it.

But so what? Some realities are inconceivable. Some realities are incomprehensible. Why should we care? Is it such a problem that some things elude our understanding?

It would not matter if it were not for this truth: the as-yet-inconceivable attracts our attention and energy, and gives our lives purpose. The problem is not that we should already conceive or comprehend what we do not yet understand, but a living, active relationship with being who is beyond our understanding is a fundamental condition of a meaningful, fulfilling life. Understanding is a valuable by-product of such a participation in transcendent being.

This is where the Pragmatic Maxim is indispensable.

Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

When we reach toward the inconceivable or incomprehensible, we cannot grip the “object” of our awareness (the ungrippable reality beyond our reach) but we can, in fact, work out some of the consequences of this incapacity, as well as some of the consequences of the possibility of acquiring a new capacity to comprehend what has been, so far, incomprehensible.

Strange. I wrote the passage above two days ago. Today, I was looking for an old post and stumbled upon exactly this same thought, which I’d forgotten.

I’ve never thought of pragmatism as something opposed to ontology, or as a methodological alternative to ontology, but this morning I am seeing it that way. I think mine is a pragmatist metaphysics, interested less in what transcends us, than in how a finite being (like each of us) interacts with being understood as transcending its finitude, and how such interactions are experienced. It is metaphysical because it concerns itself with transcendent being, but it chooses to not fruitlessly speculate on what is “behind the veil” but instead the properties of interactions that take place across the veil-line, especially the ones that surprise the anticipations, expectations and norms that comprise mundane existence.