Man as it were has grown tired of spiritual freedom and is prepared to renounce it in the name of power, with which to order his life, both inward and outward. Man has grown tired of himself, of man, has lost the confidence in man and wants to leap off to the supra-human, even though this supra-human be a social collective. Many of the old idols have been toppled in our time, but many new idols have likewise been created. Man is so constituted, that he can live either with a faith in God, or with a faith in ideals and idols. In essence, man cannot consistently and ultimately be an atheist. Having fallen away from the faith in God, he falls into idolatry. We can see the idol-worship and the fashioning of idols within every sphere -- in science, in art, in statecraft, and in national and social life. And thus, for example, Communism is an extreme form of social idolatry.
http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1932_377.html
Veneziani notices that Western society realizes the essence of Marxism: “radical atheism and materialism, internationalism and universal non-belonging, the primacy of praxis and the death of philosophy, the domination of production and the universal manipulation of nature, technological Faustianism and equality that realizes itself as homogenization.” The new globalist liberalism, Veneziani observes, absorbs the lesson of Marxism, purifying it of all prophetic, gnostic and anti-modern slag, and of solidaristic suggestions.
Therefore we can say that the West is Marxism’s full secularization, as well as its perfect realization. It is Capitalism that absorbs Communism, using it to erase religious sacredness and national sacredness, a goal it could not have reached in any other way.
Agamben adds -Italy, as the political laboratory of the West, in which the strategies of the dominant powers are elaborated in advance in their extreme form, is today a country humanly and politically in disrepair, in which an unscrupulous and determined tyranny has allied itself with a mass in the grip of a pseudo-religious terror, ready to sacrifice not only what were once called constitutional freedoms, but even all warmth in human relations. In fact, believing that the greenpass means a return to normalcy is really naive. Just as a third vaccine is already being imposed, new ones will be imposed and new emergency situations and new red zones will be declared as long as the government and the powers it expresses consider it useful. And they will pay the price first and foremost the very ones who unwisely obeyed.
In these conditions, without putting down every possible instrument of immediate resistance, dissidents need to think about creating something like a society in society, a community of friends and neighbors within the society of enmity and distance. The forms of this new clandestinity, which will have to make itself as autonomous as possible from the institutions, will be meditated and tested from time to time, but only they will be able to guarantee human survival in a world that has devoted itself to a more or less conscious self-destruction.
September 17, 2021
Graphene oxide can be converted to graphene using the bacteria Shewanella oneidensis".
[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]
"Shewanella oneidensis is a bacterium notable for its ability to reduce metal ions and live in environments with or without oxygen. This proteobacterium was first isolated from Lake Oneida, NY in 1988, hence its name.[1]
S. oneidensis is a facultative bacterium, capable of surviving and proliferating in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. The special interest in S. oneidensis MR-1 revolves around its behavior in an anaerobic environment contaminated by heavy metals such as iron, lead and uranium. Experiments suggest it may reduce ionic mercury to elemental mercury[2] and ionic silver to elemental silver.[3] Cellular respiration for these bacteria is not restricted to heavy metals though; the bacteria can also target sulfates, nitrates and chromates when grown anaerobically."
[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]
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The building of parallel economies of an empathetically-driven community size (Dunbar's number?) sounds like a wise strategy. But we should be wary of the dark, flip-side of the coin ... cronyism and nepotism — which likewise hasten the fall of the all-encompassing corporate nation-state (or world-state).
Another tactic to hasten the fall of the techno-feudal panopticon is 'Quiet Quitting' and its counterparts in 'Quiet Firing' and 'Quiet Hiring'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule
During the course of having spent half a lifetime observing both corporate and academic institutions typical of Japan, that latter strategy has been going on for quite some time. Like community building, the work-to-rule also would seem to depend heavily on individual temperament and social/self awareness. But in thinking about bureaucracies of the past and in other countries, it is probably a universal strategy, though probably more or less subconscious and preceding the more conscious and pro-active tactic of building communities.
Just some random thoughts while fiddling with my digital time card, watching the clock, and pretending I am busy, here at a public school on a West Tokyo afternoon. I rest my case. 😂
Cheers!
That Berdayev passsge is gold.