Agamben wrote, the lapidary phrase that Napoleon uttered when meeting Goethe in Erfurt in October 1808 is well known: Le destin c'est la politique : «destiny is politics». This affirmation, which was perfectly intelligible at the time, even if apparently revolutionary, has completely lost its meaning for us today. We no longer know what the term "politics" means, and even less will we dream of seeing our destiny in it. "Destiny is the economy" is rather the refrain that so-called "politicians" have been repeating to us for decades now. And yet not only do they not give up defining themselves as such, but the parties to which they belong continue to be called "political" and the coalitions they form in governments and the decisions they never cease to make declare themselves "political".
And Gabriel Marcel says in a lecture he gave in Germany in 1962-
Justice! Truth! I pronounce these words with particular reverence , but when I listen within I have to confess they evoke nothing more than a faint and muted echo. Or to use another image, these two words are like inscriptions carved into the facade of a public building; we simply pass them by, no more moved at the sight of them than we are by anything else that has degenerated into commonplace…. I rather think it is a question of waking up, or more precisely of arousing ourselves. For if what I said above is true, it indicates that we in the West are in a general state of deep spiritual torpor as far as truth and justice are concerned.
And perhaps all the more so because we live in a well-ordered and regulated—I might almost say, a neatly pigeonholed—environment where life is lived on a broader plane and under almost perfectionized stipulations…It is not my present purpose to cull from the works of philosophers, past or present, their considerations about justice or truth and then in a work similar to theirs manipulate my findings so as to present some sort of resounding consensus. I hardly think this would manage it in our thinking we are fated to perish in technocratic delirium, no matter what political form it assumes—as this is simply a matter of detail, not of essence.
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Does humanity face this fact? Sometimes. And is this one of those times? No. Why? Propaganda and cognitive dissonance. “It’s only the West favoring nuclear war for Israel. Nothing to worry ourselves over. It’s nothing like a dangerous moment after all in the Middle East. “
No Arch-Duke was killed. And it is good sign that mobilization of military forces is ongoing to include China, Russia, Iran, Israel, USA and non-state actors like sleeper cells or armed insurgency fighters like Hamas and Hizbollah. Good because once for all time the West will finally win the war to end war. Or some sort of justification along the lines of if we go about daily life without concern or a murmur of protest all shall be well.
And we must recognize as well that humanity has been overcome by Technique and subsumed in Technique and machined to fit Technique in a way that was not previously possible until Covid. Covid in the end was the silent weapon- invisible, not isolated, believed in so passionately so all were compelled to hide their human face to save their or another’s life under a mask like a gibbering fetishist. And enough do still today to be a perpetual reminder the insanity took root. When in an era of coarsened sensibilities, Max Picard reminds us, "we have no wish to be reminded of the whole man, we do not wish wholeness; on the contrary, we wish to be divided, and we are pleased in our state of division and do not wish to be disturbed. For that reason we do not contemplate the human face. Today we have ceased to hope for a transformation to show itself in a human face. That is why we dare divide people into distinct types, and hold them there. It has always been so in periods when the astonishing was no longer expected: the people were separated into types. And the people seem to take kindly to their being imprisoned in the typical, they themselves hold the doors tightly closed in order to shut out the astonishing. But the astonishing is always capable of breaking through the bars of any type. “ And in our time it is not Hitlerism or Stalinism but the ASTONISHING Covid Totalitarianism which united all nations thanks to WHO (not Smersh, but a different RED HAND drenched in blood and ideology playing war) and this is not the Marvelous alluded to by Picard!
Ellul: “It is quite right to say that technique is only made of means, it is an ensemble of means (We shall return to this later), but only with the qualification that these means obey their own laws and are no longer subordinated to ends. Besides, one must distinguish ideal ends (values, for example), goals (national, for example), and the objectives (immediate objectives: a researcher who tries to solve some particular problem). Science and technique develop according to objectives, rarely and accidentally in relation to more general goals, and never for ethical or spiritual ideals. There is no relation between the proclamation of values (justice, freedom, etc.) and the orientation of technical development. Those who are concerned with values (theologians, philosophers, etc.) have no influence on the specialists of technique and cannot require, for example, that some aspect of current research or other means should be abandoned for the sake of some value.“
On the difficulty of determining who exactly must act to subordinate technique to moral ends:
To adopt one of these first two ethical orientations is to argue that it is human beings who must create a good use for technique or impose ends on it, but always neglecting to specify which human beings. Is the “who” not important? Is technique able to be mastered by just any passer-by, every worker, some ordinary person? Is this person the politician? The public at large? The intellectual and technician? Some collectivity? Humanity as a whole? For the most part politicians cannot grasp technique, and each specialist can understand an infinitesimal portion of the technical universe, just as each citizen only makes use of an infinitesimal piece of the technical apparatus. How could such a person possibly modify the whole? As for the collectivity or some class (if they exist as specific entities) they are wholly ignorant of the problem of technique as a system. Finally, what might be called “Councils of the Wise” […] have often been set up only to demonstrate their own importance, just as have international commissions and international treaties [….] Who is supposed to impose ends or get hold of the technical apparatus? No one knows.
On the compromised position from which we try think ethically about technique:
At the same time, one should not forget the fact that human beings are themselves already modified by the technical phenomenon. When infants are born, the environment in which they find themselves is technique, which is a “given.” Their whole education is oriented toward adaptation to the conditions of technique (learning how to cross streets at traffic lights) and their instruction is destined to prepare them for entrance into some technical employment. Human beings are psychologically modified by consumption, by technical work, by news, by television, by leisure activities (currently, the proliferation of computer games), etc., all of which are techniques. In other words, it must not be forgotten that it is this very humanity which has been pre-adapted to and modified by technique that is supposed to master and reorient technique. It is obvious that this will not be able to be done with any independence.
On the pressure to adapt to technique:
Finally, one other ethical orientation in regard to technique is that of adaptation. And this can be added to the entire ideology of facts: technique is the ultimate Fact. Humanity must adapt to facts. What prevents technique from operating better is the whole stock of ideologies, feelings, principles, beliefs, etc. that people continue to carry around and which are derived from traditional situations. It is necessary (and this is the ethical choice!) to liquidate all such holdovers, and to lead humanity to a perfect operational adaptation that will bring about the greatest possible benefit from the technique. Adaptation becomes a moral criterion.
I am speaking up using philosophical writers because I have read them and struggle with them and grow from my conversations with the thinker and the thought. What is said needs be said again.
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