Sanity Restored?

This past weekend I travelled with 20 new friends, mostly from my housemate’s NGO “Operation Groundswell“, to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington DC. You can see my photos here. The trip itself was quite an adventure – friday morning we left, were interrogated at the border, went to a new england bluegrass festival in Maryland on Friday night, and I think I slept a few hours on an easy chair. Saturday we put together our costumes and drove from Betertton to the Suburbs of DC, where we caught the overcrowded metro into downtown. We arrived quite late – about 2pm, and it wasn’t until about 2:30 that we (after almost completely losing each other), found a place where we could both hear the rally and see a screen. The only part of the rally I really cognized was the closing speech, which I highly recommend you watch, or at least read these excerpts from wikipedia. To me, the most moving lines of that speech were these:

This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear–they are, and we do.

But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus, and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.

First Nations Women Speak about the Tar Sands

Last night I attended an event which included three first nations women speaking on the topic of the Albertan Tar Sands. I did not expect to learn anything new, or for the event to be particularly ground-breaking, but I wanted to attend to show solidarity with the organizers, speakers, and because such events are often good places to meet other people with similar ethical concerns (which in this case are concerns in the realms of climate justice and indigenous land rights). I was taken aback, therefore, when I learned important novel things about the tar sands and the kind of problems they are producing – and also when the talks gave the issue a moral weight I had not felt before.

While there were in fact many new things I learned about the tar sands, I’m going to concentrate on three: the new in situ mining method, the leakage from tailings ponds into the Athabasca river system, and the impact of tar sands on food sovereignty for northern communities. “In Situ” extraction occurs in places where the bitumen is more than 100 meters below the surface – where removing the “overburden” (a geological term for “the boreal forest and marshlands”, which sounds more than a little newspeak to my ears) is considered too difficult. Instead, hot steam is pumped underground, which melts the bitumen in place (“in situ“), and the bitumen is then pumped back up to the surface.

Why Rob Ford is (partially) right about Cyclists in Toronto

Rob Ford has gotten a lot of flack for a statement he made about cycling in Toronto. To quote the relevant section:

What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks, and sooner or later you’re going to get bitten. And no wonder, roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. And my heart bleeds for them when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.

Now – to be clear, I in no way support Ford’s candidacy for Mayor. If you vote for Rob Ford, I will actually punch you in the face. Just kidding. But seriously, his opposition to Transit City is potentially disastrous. And, he’s probably a climate denier – his policies certainly are. But that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about how this statement he’s made is actually true – and the radical opposition to it reflects a peter-pan syndrome in leftists. It’s true that the roads we have built are not for bikes – and putting bikes on them is precarious. I don’t think people properly understand the dangers associated with riding in the city – in traffic – and I don’t think that if they did that building more bike lanes would increase ridership.

The bike lanes he is opposing in this speech are, I think, significantly worse than doing nothing to improve conditions for cyclists. Worse because they increase the perception of safety, but not real safety (at least not directly). To make a very simple point – most of these bike lanes are 1.5 metres wide, and sandwiched between traffic and parked cars. But, if you look at the Vancouver engineer’s cycling recommendations, it is a no-no to cycle within 1 metre of parked cars. So, just from a door-opening perspective, 2/3rds of the bike lane (which you are presumably meant to ride in the middle of) are unsafe. And if you think drivers have an incentive to look before they open their doors – just look at the case on Eglington where a driver having killed a cyclist was fined only 110$.

One might think the solution is Montreal-style separated bike lanes. But they also expose cyclists to very high risks of death due to the problematic situations they create at intersections. According to a whole slew of studies linked to the wikipedia page, the major danger to cyclists is not being rear-ended by cars, but being hit at an intersection. And, a variety of studies indicate that separate cycle paths create far more accidents at intersections. So, while you might be impressed when visiting Montreal at the number of children riding in the bike lanes – this is based on the perception of safety (or rather, their parents perception of safety), not the real risks they are exposed to – which might actually be higher than if they were riding in traffic.

Some researchers argue that the decrease in the perception of risk is itself a real cause of increased risk – and that the increased perception of risk in shared space (drivers mixing it up with cars) is a better way to increase safety. This might be true, but the risks still might be greater than people are willing to rationally absorb.

In a radical sense, if you are out doing something which you know is dangerous, and you get killed doing it – it is your fault. For example, if I’m driving home and I know there is a certain risk of being run off the road by a drunk driver, and that happens – then my death is a result of my free choice. The issue, therefore, is not to “figure out who to blame”, but to reasonably decide what risks we are willing to take on. Complaining at Ford because he speaks an inconvenient truth about risk and responsibility does nothing to improve the situation of cycling and rational risk taking in our society.

Ontic and Ontological Catastrophe

Gradually, the ontological catastrophe begins to manifest as an ontic catastrophe: the earth no longer allows for indefinite growth and ecological depletion. This is not because humans took the earth as “standing reserve” and set it up as energy to be put on hold for further ordering – but rather because they did not take it radically enough as standing reserve. The true, full grasp of the world sets up the earth’s ability to be depleted as one of the resources on hold, always to be accounted for. But capitalism, (which includes the various forms of state-capitalism of the Soviet Union and China), has nearly everywhere (or at least certainly – on the whole) failed to set up ecological depletion as a challenge to be overcome – as an energy which we can exploit but not too much.

On smaller scales, we sometimes do better. Take fisheries for example – individual fisheries have been closed due to fear of over-depletion, and re-opened only in harmony with the continued growth back to historical levels. Where the depletion of a resource is open and exposed, and can not be denied or obfuscated by the short term profit motive of capital, a resource can be saved. However, as is demonstrated by the possible effects of fish farms on fish runs, and the stark lack of regulation on those in-ocean fish farms – capital is unwilling to take precautionary steps to save a resource when the risks posed to it are not fully understood.

What is disclosed in this process is what, in a Nietzschean account, might be called the failure of man to receive his own destiny – current forms of life are not adequate to the truth of will to power (WTP). And, for that reason, WTP is actualizing itself primarily as greed and not as standing-reserve. The true actualization of thought as standing reserve would not be capitalism but a form of state socialism which neutralizes the contradictions of the market – i.e. chinese capitalism. But, this remains inadequately insatiable – because the chinese economic machine relies on precarious debtors (the US).

Perhaps the lesson in this is “standing reserve” is not something static – not something actualizable. It is, in a sense, always already actualized because it is a transcendental – but the world can never be made adequate to it (the world constantly refuses to be ordered according to our will for indefinite ordering).  The earth does not “jut through” world, but evades world. This is the lesson of infinite complexity, post modernism, etc.. – Not that the world is beyond us so we can’t know anything, but that knowledge is unjustifiable fidelity which has real effects.

Zizek and the paradoxical position of activism today

Activism today seems caught in a stalemate with itself. While the Battle of Seattle founded a generation of direct-action, anti-organizational chaotic intervention against neo-liberal world government meetings, they’ve failed to gain mass public support. For reasons which have been understood for decades, the media is excellent at not getting messages through which are damaging to corporate power in general, media organizations themselves being private tyrannies. And since liberals are scared to death of any acts which might provoke disorder (they are followers of Burke rather than Rousseau), there is little hope in convincing them through rational argument (although I’ll continue to try). But on the other hand, purely peaceful protests seem increasingly ineffective, and geared towards the personal satisfaction of those involved, rather than social or political transformation. Zizek holds something like this position with regards the 2003 anti-war in iraq rallies:

The massive demonstrations against the US attack on Iraq back in 2003 were exemplary of a strange symbiotic relationship, parasitism even, between power and the anti-war protesters. Their paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protestors saved their beautiful souls – they had made it clear that they did not agree with the government’s policy on Iraq – while those in power could calmly accept it, even profit from it: not only did the protests do nothing to prevent the (already decided upon) attack on Iraq, paradoxically, they even provided additional legitimaization for it, best rendered by none of than George Bush, whose reaction to the mass demonstrations protesting his visit to London was: “You see, this is what we are fighting for: so that what people are doing here – protesting against their government policy – will be possible also in Iraq!”

Heidegger and Russell on Technology and Politics

It is normal to draw a strong distinction between the way we think “technology” in analytic and continental philosophy. The traditional liberal, or analytic position is to claim the neutrality of technology, “technology is a means to an end”, whereas strange Heideggerians talk about “enframing“, “standing reserve”, and other German concepts that make no sense to liberals. Continental philosophers (including different varieties of Marxists and psycho-analytic post marxists) conceive of technology (or alienated labour) as something genuinely new, which has changed the fabric of human kind, and which is not neutral with respect to social-political problems faced by contemporary society. Liberals, and analytic philosophers, on the other hand, refuse to see technology as something tainted, and are often first to support the “build a better mousetrap” solution to any technological-ecological catastrophe.

There are a few reasons, however, why we might not want to so sharply divide the liberal from the continental tradition on technology, however. Firstly, if one actually reads Heidegger’s “Question Concerning Technology” (which is quite easy, in fact, since it is available for free online), one finds that Heidegger in no way disputes the standard, liberal, definition of technology as neutral:

The current conception of technology, according to which it is a means and a human activity, can therefore be called the instrumental and anthropological definition of technology.

Who would ever deny that it is correct? It is in obvious conformity with what we are envisaging when we talk about technology.

Heidegger’s essay certainly doesn’t conclude by positing the instrumental definition of technology, but importantly he does not dismiss it as false. His argument that situates technology as a “mode of truth” procedes from the everyday understanding of technology – one might say that for Heidegger, the instrumental understanding of technology is true, but not adequate. Not adequate because it does not sufficiently account for the affect technological thinking has on man’s being in the world. It is that non-neutrality – the transformative effect of technology on the way the world appears – which is normally seen as anti-liberal.

However, if one actually reads the eminent analytic philosopher, Bertrand Russell, on the subject of technology – one begins to wonder whether the discussion, or at least the concerns, are really so different:

This brings me to the second kind of idea that has helped or may in time help mankind;  I mean moral as opposed to technical ideas. Hitherto I have been considering the increased command over the forces of nature which men have derived from scientific knowledge, but this, although it is a pre-condition of many forms of progress, does not itself insure anything desirable. On the contrary, the present state of the world and the fear of an atomic war show that scientific progress without corresponding moral and political progress may only increase the magnitude of the disaster that misdirected skill may bring about. In superstitious moments I am tempted to believe in the myth of the Tower of Babel, and to suppose that in our own day a similar but greater impiety is about to be visited by a more tragic and terrible punishment. (google book link)

The shared concern, then, is the idea that something other than technology is required to take care of the situation in which man is placed by technology. The strong, although perhaps superficial difference, is this: for Russell the technological situation is characterized by the magnitude of power which resides in technological machines man creates. Whereas, for Heidegger, the technological situation is characterized by seeing the world technologically, by the technological form of truth, or of revealing. However, if we look closely at what is meant by the technological “mode of revealing”, we begin to see the complex relation between the technological mode of revealing, and man’s situation of excessive unbridled power which could result in disaster:

Regulating and securing even become the chief characteristics of the revealing that challenges.

According to Heidegger, in the technological form of revealing everything appears as something to be ordered and secured – or one might say, mastered. In fact, things literally appear as a challenge to be mastered. There is ample anecdotal evidence for this worldview – think of the settler mindset and its desire to tame and work the land, or the scientific value of endless progress towards understanding that which initially appears chaotic. For Heidegger, the complexity of man’s technological situation is, however, not characterized by the difficulty of the challenge (this we are constantly overcoming), but the difficulty of coming to grips with the situation of challenge itself:

enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering that blocks every view into the propriative event of revealing and so radically endangers the relation to the essence of truth.

Perhaps because Heidegger is a philosopher first, and believes strongly that philosophy has no social purpose, he frames the problem around man’s relationship with truth as such. Truth, for Heidegger, is essentially ambiguous – but this ambiguity is buried over in the frenzy of correctness as one is constantly engaged in the challenge of organizing and securing the energies of the world. (In true Heideggarian fashion there is also a reversal – this very burying over of the ambiguity of truth is a revealing of the mysterious nature of truth, hence the famous phrase from Holderlin: “Where the danger lies, the saving power also”). However, while the social effects of the technological way of seing things may not be his first priority, they are not totally absent from the discussion. In the post humously published Der Spiegel interview, Heidegger famously claimed his lack of faith in Democracy – and if we read this statement in context, we see the similarities between Heidegger’s and Russell’s concerns coming into line:

During the past thirty years [1936-66], it should meanwhile have become clearer that the planetary movement of modern technology is a power whose great role in determining history can hardly be overestimated. A decisive question for me today is how a political system can be assigned to today’s technological age at all, and which political system would that be? I have no answer to this question. I am not convinced that it is democracy.

…

I would indeed describe [conceptions of democracy] as halves because I don’t think they genuinely confront the technological world. I think that behind them there is an idea that technology is in its essence something human beings have under their control. In my opinion, that is not possible. Technology is in its essence something that human beings cannot master of their own accord.

The central assertion about technology is, then, that the essence of technology is not something we can “master” – one might say that mastering as such is not master-able. And considering the current precarious situation of man vis a vis both the danger of nuclear weapons and global warming,If we are to read this statement without prejudice today, we ought probably conclude that Heidegger appears to be on the right track – democracy, at least real-existent democracy, is not able to deal with the technological situation of the species. Russell, on the other hand, is resolutely pro-Democracy. But, if we return to Russell’s claim about technology, it does not appear that Russell thinks technology to be “masterable” either – he refers to “moral as opposed to technical ideas”. And for Russell, man as “moral” is decisively not something masterable:

Man, viewed morally, is a strange amalgam of angel and devil. He can feel the splendor of the night, the delicate beauty of spring flowers, the tender emotion of parental love, and the intoxication of intellectual understanding. In moments of insight visions come to him of how life should be lived and how men should order their dealings one with another. Universal love is an emotion which many have felt and which many more could feel if the world made it less difficult. This is one side of the picture. On the other side are cruelty, greed, indifference and over-weening pride.

Russell’s view of man as split between good and evil, or love and reason, is traditional – and while it is compatible with the notion of technical things as neutral, it is not compatible with the idea of politics as technics. The disagreement over democracy essentially concerns democracy’s ability to consider man as man, in other words, to be moral and not merely technical. Russell’s optimistic outlook for democracy conceives of democracy not as an idea put into force intentionally by man in order to order and secure desirable life, but rather something which organically develops over time:

Ordered social life of a kind that could seem in any degree desirable rests upon a synthesis and balance of certain slowly developed ideas and institutions: government, law, individual liberty, and democracy.

—

Moral ideas sometimes wait upon political developments, and sometimes outrun them.

The transformation of morals into politics is not a simple technical procedure. The question, then, is not whether or not politics is technics, but whether Democracy is adequate to the situation of man in which man everywhere seeks to master the world, and yet can not master his own mastering of it. Before man everywhere ordered and secured the world, there was no pressing need to secure the species against nuclear and ecological disaster. But today, the crisis is imminent: we have a limited amount of time to begin significant cuts to human C02 emissions, or we will face catastrophic climate change and potentially exterminate the species.  So, the question of whether democracy could be adequate to the moral need of humanity, in a time when its institutions so sorely lag behind that need, is a live question.

If we are to learn anything from Russell or Heidegger’s questioning concerning technology and politics, it is not adequate to remain at the level of discussing theoretical disagreements between them as philosophers. Of that there is plenty, sometimes conveniently presented on youtube. Rather, we should engage their thought on the level of its content. Anyone can engage with the content of this question, but only in conversation with these philosophers if one is willing to actually read them, which is something different from observing their propositions in order to argue with them and “prove them wrong”. Any genuine thinker is not simply “right” or “wrong”, but contributes to thinking on issues which concern the situation of man.

In Praise of Google News

I like physical newspapers. I like the feel of the paper, I like the way they become crumpled and “well read” when properly enjoyed. I like the different sections, the passing around the breakfast table. I especially like spilling coffee on them, or using them to cover a work area before beginning a messy project, probably involving glue.

But regarding the news, physical newspapers don’t cut it anymore. Each single one operates under a different complex of pressures, norms, and incentives. If you only read one, you’ll have a terribly skewed perspective. And if you read many, you’ll be inundated with paper, and you’ll have trouble acquiring them outside major cities.

Google news is in many ways a vastly superior alternative. Searching through thousands of newspapers around the world by key-word allows one to bypass the local biases, the regional political pressures, everything that spoils good reporting. Of course, there are always biases in anything you read – but being able to get a spectrum of facts from different world papers puts one in a better position to read through them.

I realized how dependant I was on google news (and its sometimes corollary – the facebook news page) when Chomsky started making a big deal on how, in the middle of the Wikileaks coverage on Afghanistan, new evidence that the American military assault on Fallujah has left a toxic legacy “worse than hiroshima” was not being reported in the American media. “Not being reported?”, I thought, that’s ridiculous. I had heard about it a day before his comment had been posted. But then when I looked back to Google News where I had read about it, I realized that all the stories on Fallujah were in papers like “The Belfast Telegraph”, “The Tehran Times”, “China.org.cn”, “The Socialist Worker”, “Arab News”. And that’s when it hit me – it’s trivial to access stories from these papers using Google News – you just search and click, completely simple, and (hopefully) transparent. But if you are reliant on North American dinosaurs like “The Globe” or “The Vancouver Sun”, “The New York Times”, you won’t find out about this.

I’m certainly not claiming that “The Tehran Times” or “The Belfast Telegraph” are better papers than the “Vancouver Sun” or “New York Times”. My point is, in fact, that I think claiming one paper is better than another, so I shall read paper X rather than paper Y, is radically 20th century – and has been surpassed and replaced by google news.

Democracy and the End of Metaphysics

Long I have desired to connect my interest in democracy and participatory politics, (i.e. unionism, syndicalism, anarchism etc…) with my interest in the work of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s philosophy is not explicitly democratic, and Martin’s actual political exploits leave much to be desired. Heidegger’s late position wasn’t so much conservative as anti-political, taking the stance that no current political thought was adequate the the situation of man gripped by the essence of technology.

This has always disappointed me about Heidegger – why is democracy so inadequate? Certainly in practice it has been inadequate – the climate crisis is evidence enough for that. If you want more evidence – wages have stagnated since the 70s, personal debt levels have skyrocketed, and reasonable economists are shut out of positions of power. But, there is something the idea of democracy which I think is worth saving – the idea that authority is in-itself part of the problem. Authority might just be, under capitalism, that which turns – in Heidegger’s words – humans are “en-framed” as “standing reserve“.

Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological.

And then I read, in Richard Semler‘s book “Maverick“, this passage:

The era of using people as production tools is coming to an end. Participation is infinitely  more complex to practice than conventional corporate unilateralism. Just as democracy is much more cumbersome than dictatorship. But there will be few companies that can afford to ignore either of them.

Iran’s nuclear program: Threats, Agression and “Crazy”

Two days ago, Israeli president Netanyahu has claimed that the only way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is U.S. threats of military action against Iran:

“There has only been one time that Iran actually stopped the program,” Netanyahu told Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday. “That was when it feared US military action.”

Netanyahu is, in short, encouraging the U.S. to threaten Iran with military action, in response to unproven allegations that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. The threat of force against an independant nation is a contravention of the Charter of the United Nations – article 2, paragraph 4:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Israel has also independently threatened Iran with military force to stop its development of a nuclear program – peaceful or otherwise. As reported in the BBC on July 6th:

“If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,” Mr Mofaz told Yediot Ahronot.

Threats of war are a serious problem. If we look at article one, chapter one of the UN charter, we find that the declared first principle of the United Nations is:

To maintain international peace and security, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

It’s a nice idea, no doubt. And if Obama and Netanyahu were to act on the simple principle that one should hold oneself to the same standards that expect others to meet, then there would be no impending war with Iran. But, there still could be the secret development of nuclear arms in Iran. It’s actually possible to say something relatively intelligent about this – Israeli historian Martin Levi van Creveld described Iran’s position in the region in a 2004 opinion piece in the New York Times:

Even if the Iranians are working on a bomb, Israel may not be their real concern. Iran is now surrounded by American forces on all sides — in the Central Asian republics to the north, Afghanistan to the east, the Gulf to the South and Iraq to the west. Shamkhani expressed Tehran’s unease at the American presence in an Al Jazeera interview broadcast late Wednesday, in which he hinted that some Iranian commanders believe they should strike first if they sense an imminent threat from the United States.

Wherever U.S forces go, nuclear weapons go with them or can be made to follow in short order. The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.

Though Iran is ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, most commentators who are familiar with the country do not regard its government as irrational. The only figure capable of inspiring Iranians to extraordinary sacrifices, Ayatollah Khomeini, died more than a decade ago. Even before then, it was Saddam Hussein who attacked Iran, not the other way around; since then Iran has been no more aggressive than most countries are.

In short, Iran is effectively being encouraged to develop Nuclear weapons by American imperialist foreign policy in the region. If we were to find that Iran was developing a bomb, we should not be in the least surprised – and we should not interpret it as an aggressive act at all but as self-defence.

But it’s worse, if Iran’s building of a nuclear bomb is interpreted as a rationally required response to American imperialism, then America could actually be considered responsible for a potential Iranian breech of the non proliferation treaty. This is because of how “aggression” was defined at the Nuremburg trials, (citing from the UN website on war crimes):

The Nürnberg Tribunal condemned a war of aggression in the strongest terms: “To initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Now, I’ll admit this is a bit of a stretch because the US have not engaged in a war of agression against Iran – but they have committed the crime of aggression insofar as Obama has continued to threaten Iran with nuclear war:

the U.S. will not launch a nuclear attack against any country that signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and abides by it, a loophole leaving both North Korea and Iran on any potential target list.

Obama should rescind this threat of first strike nuclear war, and change US middle east foreign policy to tolerate dissent. Supporting democracy means not supporting or enacting the overthrow of democratically elected governments.

Heidegger on Americanism and Democracy: in what way might the G20 exemplify our lack of a homeland?

The public hatred of Martin Heidegger after the Second World War is more due to his lack of condemnation of the Nazi regime, and his silence on the subject of concentration camps, than to his own involvement with the party in 1933-34. So I think it’s pretty important to understand why this response is absent from Heidegger’s later work. From whither Heidegger’s silence on the Nazis and the Holocaust?

Firstly, we might look at the fact that Heidegger’s silence on the Holocaust was only partial. He in fact did, in a 1949 presentation state

“Agriculture is now a motorized food industry – in essence, the same as the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers and extermination camps, the same as the blockading and starving of nations, the same as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.”