Technical Domination and the Efficient Soul

Infinite space and a finite imagination! The irony! Imagination ought precisely to be that which saturates, supersedes, demolishes the bounds of reality. Today this has been reversed, and this is the node of our despair. We cannot think outside of that which is, and thus we cannot progress. 

I was reading recently of the role of the image (my reading habits are so eclectic and fleeting that I cannot recall the author - possibly Montaigne, but it may be Freud or Baudrillard - perhaps even the dormant author in my mind, for dreams too often taint that over which they nominally appear to have no control). This author claimed that great visual art must be idealistic in that it shows us a possible future world to which we would otherwise have no access. Great pieces of art are windows looking onto unforeseen utopias. My contention is that the category of art has collapsed today because this progressive, radical edge has been eliminated. Great art is divergent, it creates possibilities, it loosens our shackles but for a moment. Crucially, it opens up the space for radical action. Modern art, however, is convergent - we first assume the arbitrary material state of the world and use this to discover the lost remnants of our imagination, which can then be employed in the efficient functioning of existing power structures. It is almost impossible today to find a piece of art which is not a tepid, failed inversion of capitalistic values. Warhol is the high priest of this philosophy. To be quite fair, however, I recognise that art must forever challenge the status quo, whatever it is. My point is simply that capitalism is so utterly perfect at subverting rebellion and turning it to its own advantage. It is as though the Hegelian dialectic has swallowed itself. Can it really be said that religion survived its treatment by Bosch or Blake in the way that capitalism survives that of Basquiat and Banksy?

And yet I naively hope that the laws of probability require an ultimate endpoint of all oppressive systems, and indeed this seems to be in accordance with any sensible view of economics (of course the problem today is that people seldom are sensible - economists are almost bred to believe that the economy is a divine artifact which cannot be meddled with and which knows no senescence. This is true totalitarianism). It may only be at the end of the lifespan of a system that the imagination can be rekindled, reappropriated, resurrected. It may be only after we have been freed that we may free ourselves. 

Two memories make themselves known to me. First, I recall a philosophy lesson at school in which one censorious, prudish girl suggested that philosophy is pointless and that we should all devote our time to more fruitful pursuits such as the attempt to cure cancer. In the oppressive smog of stupidity this averment had produced I could not contain my fury. There is no point whatever in living if we do not have the right to question, it is the foundation of our very civilisation. A cancerless life is a healthier one, a safer one. A thoughtless life is no life at all. She desired, as most do in today's world, an animal life, an unthinking eternity of exploitation and false love. Arbitrary everything. The abrogation of the soul. An uncomfortable life and a comfortable death. The bizarre reasoning of the serially deluded.

I am reminded of a passage by Baudrillard in his book America. I am presently rather obsessed by his ideas and, therefore, this post draws heavily on them, and more still on the exceeding beauty of their expression. Such is my chameleonic, plagiaristic writing style. Besides, life itself is a plagiarism. Nothing can be new, just as energy cannot be destroyed. Rather, ideas can only be better-stolen, reformulated in novel ways. 

'This country is without hope. Even its garbage is clean, its trade lubricated, its traffic pacified. The latent, the lacteal, the lethal - life is so liquid, the signs and messages are so liquid, the bodies and the cars so fluid, the hair so blond, and the soft technologies so luxuriant, that a European dreams of death and murder, of suicide motels, of orgies and cannibalism to counteract the perfection of the ocean, of the light, of that insane ease of life, to counteract the hyperreality of everything here.' 

Anyway, the second incident occurred rather later, and I let it pass unchided (unchidden?). The kind of scientific, almost mechanical person who makes these statements is interesting to note. The faces change but the dead soul within is everlasting. In this instance I was being told that it was a great shame that we were born so soon, because in the future we may develop the technology to live forever. What imbecile could desire such a fate? This is the promise of modernity - infinite everything, unceasing juvenescence, a world of smiles. To me, this can only lead to gross upset: artificial intelligence, for example, will likely be the end of the human race. Radicalism in such a world is precisely to renounce the gift, or rather to render it inert and redundant. Such offers could not be made in a better world. They should seem at odds with the very air. I admire the Green Party in their attempts to move us toward a zero-growth economy, for example - it is clear that we cannot ravage the planet indefinitely. The rasping maws of humanity will not cease to snap until everything has been destroyed, and then they shall turn upon their owner. Such is the terror of group logic. 

Infinite meaning, infinite commutativity, the endless imposition of arbitrary happiness. Such is man's fate. Today death is dead, and life itself is its own negation. A false welkin of blazing ideology, a spectacle of passivity. Indentured boringness.