Towards a post--Liberal metaphysics (neo/post-positivism)

Post-positivist deconstruction is the cutting edge of ex-humanism...

Postmodern dystopian film: Terminator (1984), The Truman Show (1997), Gattacca (1998), The Matrix (1999), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Island (2005). This genre has opened a new field for metaphysics. The classical metaphysics is mysticism (Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Sufism); the new metaphysics is an exploration of the nature, applications and implications of virtual reality as a man made metaphysical space, emergent in the post-fordist era. What is real ? "Real" is whatever we perceive "real" to be, but real has no verifiable intrinsic essence per se. "Real" is defined by language and symbols; dynamic narratives and images. "Real" can be constructed and de-constructed.

The postmodern understanding and internalization of the implications of relativity, perspective and perception (dubbed 'post-positivism') debunks the narrative of "cogito ergo sum". The contention that "I am" is only a thought. To state that "I am" because "I think" is self contradictory. "I am" has no objective existence because it is a thought (an idea) that has no material basis, as such it can not be considered evidence of existence. Ultimately, no one can know for certain if they exist or not. If "I" is a tought, then what is considered to be "THE SELF" has no objective existence. The idea of "The Self " is a subjective construct - not natural. Ergo: "Identity" is both meaningless and disposable. The element of psyche that hides behind the notion of "The Self" is an aggregate of, mostly contradictory, subjectivities. Perfect subjective consistency would be impossible for humans to attain because they will always lack total information awareness. "Personae" (how the group subject perceives the single subject), is an entirely disposable and projected subjectivity. Subjectivities are the product of the psychic interaction of the subject with dynamic narratives and symbols of a de-ontological and social nature. The dynamic narratives and sub-narratives that inform humans evolve as organisms evolve in relation to time and space, dynamic narratives are to humans what software applications are to machines.

Post-positivist deconstruction also has implications regarding the notion of Time-Space. "Past" and "Future" have no objective existence outside thought. The past is selective memory - memory that can be deleted or edited. The future is only projection - at best educated wishful thinking. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, for a valid reason. "History" is the selective narrative of selective memory - no historical or journalistic narrative can claim to represent "truth", as long as in context of constructing a given narrative of events the historian or journalist subjectively decides what information to present or omit. Because it is a subjective process, the decision to omit or present information in context of a narrative will always be influenced by biases of a social, cultural -or even political- nature. No existing historical or journalistic narrative is "truth" - there only exist competing narratives of "the past" or "current events". The notion of "the present", is problematic because it assumes that time-space is not dynamic, it is thus premised on a false view of static reality that denies ongoing organic transformation processes that, although not perceptible to humans, do take place - case in point the problem of quantum physics. The "laws of physics" as perceived by humans break down at the level of quanta... "the present" is constantly ceasing to be and becoming and there is no guarantee that what comes-to-be is "better" than what ceases-to-be. The notion of "better" (constitutive to "progress") is subjective. So back to the original questions: What is "Real" ? What is "Truth"? Is "Truth" the same as "Reality"? What is real is relative to perception and perceptions can be managed. What is truth is limited to available - always imperfect - information. Truth is not the same as reality, because the information that premises notions of truth is always imperfect. Perhaps the substitute for an answer that will never be discovered is to recall and accept the maxim of Socrates: "I do not know what I do not know".

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post-script:

Yesterday I understood that in Sweden, the managed appearance of "humanitarianism" is only a mask for xenophobic dislike of foreigners. The Swedish political class is very clever; they know that for geographical and historical reasons, latent xenophobia is part of the collective psychology in this society - like a hidden narrative in the collective subconscious. They focus group, they triangulate, they craft language and they spin it; they appeal to this latent fear of "the other" with targeted messages and coded symbols in order to collect votes. In Sweden, populism has been synthesized with perception management as a practical means to administer a nativist herd morality. The Swedish political class really believe in the narrative of "Sweden". They believe that it exists. The premise of all psychosis is to believe that a perception, that in fact has no material substance or basis, has a material substance and basis. Note that this is not a commentary on metaphysical belief systems, but a commentary on a perception that is popularly considered to be "materially true". Sweden is only a narrative, ultimately just an idea, and not a material entity. What "actually exists" in "material reality" are eight million blond people living on half a forested peninsula. Now I understand what Noam Chomsky meant when he defined the populism of the 20th century fascists and Bolsheviks as a dynamic application of "organic entity theories". The nationalism of the political class that governs the Swedish State is definitely organic, almost pathological. No wonder I am having so much trouble with the police... The anti-identity, anti-national narrative that I subscribe to is the living anti-thesis to the dynamic narrative the Swedish State promotes as a means to facilitate the collective management and control of the society. In entering into a post-collision jujitsu with the Swedish State, I have come to experience in situ what Nietzsche meant by the antagonism of Man against the Herd. Maybe the police are correct after all, when they say they must keep me under surveillance in a secured building in order to protect their society. I am a potentially disruptive element. I am Yin and the police are Yang. The Syndicalists and assorted leftists who associate with them are all wrong; it is not the cheap alcohol or the steady flow of welfare checks that keep the people loyal to the political class, and it is not the policy of "repressive tolerance" that maintains social cohesion. I am afraid it is much worse than that:

Swedish nationalism is a State-managed dynamic narrative that results in collective psychosis.

-veremos.

The Bankruptcy of the Western Left.

”La apariencia de administracion profesional es en realidad la administracion profesional de apariencias.” - El Libertario.

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Anti-globalisation has died a quiet death in its sleep…

Total ideologies and total solutions are obsolete. They became obsolete in the mid 1990’s. The anti-globalisation ‘upsurge’ of 1999-2003 was the last hurrah of the 20th Century Western Left. It is “objectively true” that “another world is always possible” and that such a world COULD BE built on the basis of “social and ecological solutions”, but it is clear now that the so-called ‘movement of movements’ calling on these slogans failed. It simply evaporated. The demonstrations against global capital and war became ritualised. Social democrat careerists penetrated the organisational networks and degraded the programmatic horizon to the level of electoral work in favour of the social-liberal wing of capitalism. These finks were aided in the process by “Trotskyist” opportunists more interested in selling their propaganda and paraphernalia than in advancing the cause of anti-capitalism. Former members of the Black Bloc mutated into armchair activism pretending to be “anarchist”, “feminist”, or “green”; illustrating what Situationist social critic Guy Debord once denounced as “the spectacle”. The Western Left has retreated to the ‘safe’ confines of Academia and Media. I do not mean to say that it is not worth it to read the works of Noam Chomsky or to listen to Pacifica Radio, to browse the pages of World Socialist Website or surf the Indymedia domains. All this is necessary to get “The Truth”. Yet, in doing so one must remember that one is interacting with narratives and symbols that have no objective substance.

The war is coming and there will be no ‘general strike’ to stop it. There will be no second coming of Lenin, Trotsky, Mao or Che before the tactical nukes and white phosphorus begin to hit. ‘Shake and Bake’ with no Soviets. The coming war will decide if the neoliberal capitalist world of the 21st century is going to be unipolar or multipolar. It cannot be both. Looking at the recent historical pattern it is likely that the Real War is just around the corner. The 2001/2003 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2006 Israeli war against Hizbollah (and subsequent asymmetrical warfare continuums) are only a precursor for the horrors that are to come. In all cases: The 20th Century Left is DEAD. It tried to save itself in the 1999-2003 period of anti-neoliberal ‘upsurge’ by co-opting information technologies and by modifying its traditional “class warfare” narrative with language and concepts borrowed from Ecology and Feminism; and it did accomplish in this manner the brief flash of an anti-capitalist mood – but it did not stop the imposition of neo-liberal capitalism (so-called “market democracy” sic.) as the official ideology of globalisation. The ‘Multitude’ of Negri fizzled out into the mass of consumers.

The bankruptcy of the Western Left

It is clear that the Western Left has no theoretical solutions; save to appeal to recycled social democrat formulas. Tactically it has become suicidal. In the United States, the “Turtle-Teamster” project opted for exactly this course by following Kerry in 2004. With the possible exception of the few principled elements who bravely followed Ralph Nader, the bulk of the “1999 Movement” of “Battle of Seattle” lore died on November 2, 2004. Kerry destroyed the North American anti-globalisation and anti-war movements – with the help of the anti-globalisation and anti-war activists themselves. The Democrat party was able to – once more- perform its systemic and historical role as gravedigger of social movements. The same process of co-option happened again in lieu of the brief upsurges of social outrage in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster and with the recent Immigrant Rights movement. As long as North American anti-capitalists and progressives do not take the step to admit that there is no “lesser evil” they will never advance. The United States anti-capitalist progressive community is still under the influence of Liberalism: The belief in “constitutional rights” and related illusions. “We The People” really means “We the WEALTHY people”. The United States anti-capitalist intelligentsia and progressive media workers know this fact, but they continue to prefer to not draw appropriate conclusions.

In Western Europe the official death of the upsurge came in the summer of 2005 with the Glenn Eagles-7/7 fiasco in the UK. A mixture of ritualised demonstrations in context of police repression (cynically dubbed “post-anarchism” by some), “Make Poverty History” co-option (orchestrated by Bono, Madonna and the Labour Party), and well-timed ‘false flag’ terrorism did the job. And it was over. Fast forward to 2007: “Everyone is a Feminist” has become fashion in the West European “left” café scene. Lately the German and French “Greens” are working closely with their respective neo-Conservative parliamentary counterparts in Berlin and Paris. There is a widespread and blatant upsurge of anti-Arab (and anti-Russian) racism throughout Western Europe. The term ‘Islam fascism’ is making the rounds in the editorial pages of the mainstream news media. The European presidency is fast working to introduce “American conditions” into the Euro zone, meaning that a wave of continent wide mass lay offs with no or drastically reduced unemployment benefits will impact the working class. The truth is that a depressingly demoralising form of lifestyle ‘anti-capitalism’ has become the norm among former anti-war and anti-globalisation activists. The social-liberals have joined the political Right.

Meanwhile – on both sides of the Atlantic- the targets of neoliberal repression and austerity – immigrants and the unemployed – find themselves with no organised movement to appeal to for redress. No hope but a crude survivalism in context of overall post-social erosion and grotesque narratives of “national security” and “generational war” …

Unless socially and ecologically concerned people (re-)act.