The Plundering Continues Unchecked

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Here is Columbia University Professor Robert Lieberman commenting in the highly regarded journal Foreign Affairs on the politico-economic war being waged by wealthy elites:

The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years; foreclosures have forced millions of Americans out of their homes; and real incomes have fallen faster and further than at any time since the Great Depression. Many of those laid off fear that the jobs they have lost -- the secure, often unionized, industrial jobs that provided wealth, security, and opportunity -- will never return. They are probably right.

And yet a curious thing has happened in the midst of all this misery. The wealthiest Americans, among them presumably the very titans of global finance whose misadventures brought about the financial meltdown, got richer. And not just a little bit richer; a lot richer. In 2009, the average income of the top five percent of earners went up, while on average everyone else's income went down. This was not an anomaly but rather a continuation of a 40-year trend of ballooning incomes at the very top and stagnant incomes in the middle and at the bottom. The share of total income going to the top one percent has increased from roughly eight percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today.

Read the entire article @ Foreign Affairs

[ h/t BLCKDGRD ]

Check Out Related Crazy-Making Stories:

• Big Business Getting Richer
• The Story of Citizens United v. FEC
• Class Wars Rage On
• Goldman Sachs Earns 250m as Punishment for Fraud
• Capitalism: A Denial Story
• Wall Street's Top 10 Lies of 2010
• Shock, Awe and the Psychology of Economic Warfare
• Harvey on the Crisis of Capitalism
• The Money Masters

Think Like A Fist

A federal jury in Salt Lake City has convicted environmental activist Tim DeChristopher of two felony counts for disrupting the auction of over 100,000 acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling. DeChristopher was charged in December 2008 with infiltrating a public auction and disrupting the Bush administration’s last-minute move to auction off oil and gas exploration rights on vast swaths of federal land.

A student at the time, DeChristopher posed as a bidder and out bid energy company reps for 22,000 acres of land with no intention to pay in an attempt to save the property from drilling. The jury deliberated for nearly five hours on March 3, 2011 before reaching its decision. He now faces up to ten years in prison. After the verdict, DeChristopher emerged from the courthouse and addressed his supporters:

They tried to convince me that I was like a little finger out there on my own that can easily be broken. And all of you out here were the reminder for all of us that I wasn’t just a finger all alone in there, but that I was connected to a hand with many fingers that could unite as one fist and that that fist could not be broken by the power that they have in there.

That fist is not a symbol of violence. That fist is a symbol that we will not be misled into thinking we are alone. We will not be lied to and told we are weak. We will not be divided, and we will not back down. That fist is a symbol that we are connected and that we are powerful. It’s a symbol that we hold true to our vision of a healthy and just world, and we are building the self-empowering movement to make it happen. All those authorities in there wanted me to think like a finger. But our children are calling to us to think like a fist.

Consider that this passionate young man may serve 10 years in prison for "disruption" of an auction while the wealthy financial managers who undermined and ravaged the world economy and put millions of people out of work are allowed to continue earning million dollar salaries without even so much as being reprimanded. Just think about the kind of world we have to live in for this to be allowed to happen.

Watch news coverage of the ruling @ Democracy Now

Bill McKibben weighs in here: Taking a Leap and Pointing the Way

What We Still Don't Know

What We Still Don't Know (2004) is a 3 part series exploring the Big Questions of life and human existence in a vast and strange cosmos. The film was developed and narrated by Sir Martian Rees and directed by Srik Narayanan. I can't endorse all or even most of the positions entertained in this series, but the videos do provoke speculation and there's nothing wrong with that. Enjoy:

Are We Real? [48 mins]

There is a fundamental chasm in our understanding of ourselves, the universe, and everything. To solve this, Sir Martin takes us on a mind-boggling journey through multiple universes to post-biological life. On the way we learn of the disturbing possibility that we could be the product of someone else’s experiment.



Why Are We Here? [48 mins]

Everything you thought you knew about the universe is wrong. It’s made of atoms, right? Wrong. Atoms only account for a measly 15% of everything that exists. The mass of the universe consists of something so mysterious and elusive that it has been dubbed ‘dark matter’. Martin Rees explores:



Are We Alone? [48 mins]

In this episode Sir Martin Rees investigates the possibility that life exists on planets beyond our own. He unveils an unsettling scientific debate that has startling consequences for us Earthlings. Do you believe in aliens?

Actualism and Derivitive Metaphysics

"As for me, I’m a good old “actualist.” For me, all that exist are specific entities of a determinate nature..." - Graham Harman

Hey, at least I agree with Graham Harman on something! All assemblages or objects are specific entities of a determinate nature - exactly. And this is precisely what I call onto-specificity.

Like Graham I also think topology is "derivitive". Which is why deriving a virtual substantiality from actual material-energetic assemblages seems to me to be a reification or hypostatisation of certain aspects or general patterns expressed by fully present sets of properties.

Capacities and powers are only generated by particular entities with specific properties in relation (in specific environments), and are not, I argue, a "potentiality" that objects withhold. The co-local manifestation of certain complex situations, networks or arrangements are catalytic events generated by the direct but partial mingling of assembled properties. Through such events, alliances or encounters each entity (or actant  as Bruno Latour calls them) contributes their onto-specific potencies (extensive and intensive properties), which are then expressed and augmented, or diminished or enhanced, affecting emergence, maintenance, perpetuation or degeneration.

Those are the broad features of what is and what can be as I understand them. Now if I can just get Harman to commit to direct-but-partial causation, all will be right with the world... ;-)

UPDATE: Graham Harman responds to this post here: "direct but partial contact"

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC

Below is the most recent video from the people who brought you The Story of Stuff series. This installment deals with the disastrous Citizens United ruling by the U.S supreme court. If you don't know what happened with that then watch and be amazed:

Bottom line: corporations can now legally spend unlimited amounts of money in order to influence USA elections. Sounds like a good idea huh... not so much. The Corporatocracy is now stronger than ever."We the people" is no longer.

Foucault on Structure, Event and Power

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From Foucault, Power/Knowledge (1980:114):

[ h/t/ Fabio at Hypertilling ]

From The History of Sexuality (1976:92):

"Power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization: as the process which, through ceaseless struggle and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or even reverses them; as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies.”

The Monstrosity of Things

Over at Larval Subjects Mark Crosby commented (here) on Bryant’s version of the thesis that objects “withdraw” from their relations. I think Mark hits it squarely on the head when he writes:

"It’s not WHOLLY a function of the 'external events themselves', but neither is it WHOLLY a function of the 'internal organization of the object'. It’s a function of BOTH, and the feedback obtained only by their interaction. So, I can see no way to correctly say that they never 'touch' each other." [source]

I can think of no way that someone can adequately argue that “external events” and “internal organization” do not interact directly. I accept a formal closure based on the functional thresholding or affective governing powers of a system/object, but I would also argue that the immanent character of cosmological properties (materiality as such) affords a unified (or “flat") ontological plane of reality within which it is possible for objects to directly (but never fully) interact and affect each other.

This is what I mean when I say that there is an ontological intimacy between or among objects which makes them vulnerable to modification, mutation, destruction and hybridity. Perhaps we could call this the monstrous quality of things – the horror that not only Kurtz witnessed but from which we ourselves often recoil?

Responding to Mark's comments Levi had this to say:

I think it’s important to preserve those instances where an acting object produces it’s own events. Otherwise objects would be purely passive. In my view operations can take place within objects that are purely a product of the dynamism of the object. I think this is Kant’s singular contribution (the one that gets Deleuze all excited). In the second and third critique, Kant conceives a mode of self-production that isn’t merely an entity being activated by an external stimuli. This was the inspiration of both his moral law (divorced from all “pathological” motivation) and his aesthetic insights. The bizarre thing about a “synthetic a priori” judgment is that it is something that arises entirely from an agent yet creates something new. This, I think, is what needs to be preserved in a theory of auto/allo-poietic objects… This “a priori” creativity. [source]

And I understand Levi's point here. There is something of a 'remainder' which is specifically generated from the particularity or singularity of objects that seems to get lost in discussions that characterize causality or interaction in terms of the general temporal flux and flow of properties. The unique powers of objects must be acknowledged. I get that. Objects/assemblages have an efficacy all their own that is absolutely irreducible. I agree.

What I suggest is that this individual efficacy or affective potency is embodied in the emergent properties of objects - as expressions of an object's fully manifest composite configuration within particular space-time conditions. And this emergent substantiality of objects (its unique potency) is never completely cut off from the immanent realm of ancestral finite ("sensuous") qualities. There is an intrinsic intimacy between assembled properties (things) that affords the possibility of their interactions as well as their ubiquitous vulnerability to change. Such is the flesh and flow of the cosmos.     

UPDATE: Tim Morton agrees with me about monsters, sort of:

“We can assume that that these objects are monstrous. And when we study evolution what do we find? Monstrosity everywhere we look. What's more, these objects, consisting of other monstrous objects, can form monstrous affiliations with other monstrous objects in any which way. Everywhere you look, monsters.”

- Tim Morton

Objects, Expressions and Colocality

What I appreciate about Levi Bryant's blogging efforts is his willingness to continue clarifying his thoughts for his readers. Trust me when I say the value and generosity of that is not lost on me.

In that vein, Bryant has posted some further remarks (here) clarifying his take on the dynamics of objects. Here he is riffing on their intrinsic openness:

From afar, notes Lucretius, the sheep look as if they are not moving at all. But were we to closely approach them, we would discover that they are frolicking about, taking little nips of dewy grass and playfully dancing about with one another. And so it is, argues Lucretius, with all objects. Although the rock over there appears to sit still, it is in a constant state of motion or activity... [F]or OOO there are no final units. It’s turtles all the way down without any primordial turtles.

And Levi elaborates on the processual nature of objects as autopoietic and allopoietic systems here:

A key feature of these autopoietic and allopoietic machines is that they maintain themselves through the production of events. The time of the object is a time in which the components of that object or machine must (re)produce its components from moment to moment. It is this processuality that constitutes the substantiality of objects. It is this process through which an object (re)produces itself that is the being of an object. Far from being something that just sits there as the Greeks had it in their folk ontology, these machines are ongoing activities. If these machines are nonetheless objects, then this is because there is a unity to this process that renders them discrete entities in their own right. These processes, as it were, are the “substantial form” of the machine or object. A key point that follows from this is that objects are not identical to its parts. The parts of an object come and go, sometimes getting destroyed, at other times moving out of the object and landing elsewhere, while that substantial form, that processuality, remains. If that’s not “evental” and “processual” enough for you, I just don’t know what you’re asking for.

Fair enough. And I am inclined to agree with everything Bryant writes here. Objects, or what I prefer to call assemblages, are processual compositions with irreducible onto-specific (individual) patterns. Agreed.

Where I differ, I think (?), is where Bryant claims that the “substantiality” of an object (what I am calling here its pattern) is somehow distinct, or more than, or withdrawn from, or not identical to the actually occurring parts (properties) that are in ongoing relation to each other and the affording environment. For me, the pattern, or diagram (DeLanda) or substantiality of an object is an expression of its constituent properties (parts) as generated in relation to the context in which it exists. This is what I call colocality: all objects or assemblages are simultaneously relational (ontically open) and individuated (operationally closed). Thus, for me, substantiality is not in the object/system, but rather an emergent result of the ever-present interactions between matrices of properties in situ.

However, regardless of what I think, you should go read Bryant’s characteristically lucid and insightful post for yourself: here.

UPDATE: S.C Hickman has an interesting post up over at Dark Chemistry responding to the post mentioned above where he delves deeper into Bryant’s ontology (here). Hickman’s posts are always well worth the read so check it out. Here is a sample:

An object maintains itself through its connection to time and irreversibility, which are built into the system not only at the structural level, but also at the level of its components and elements. Its elements are operations. Disintegration and reintegration, disordering and ordering require each other. It is this processual aspect that I think Levi is supporting of the polar effects of this systemic interplay of entropy and negentropy, disintegration and reintegration which is the self-organization of the object and its components. Time is the key to this whole process. And as Luhmann confirms systems "based on events need a more complex pattern of time". This is where I believe Levi implies his "difference that makes a difference", when Luhuman tells us that events "are happenings which make a difference between a 'before' and a 'thereafter'. They can be identified and observed, anticipated and remembered only as such a difference. Their identity is their difference".

Read More @ Dark Chemistry

The Shadow of Objects

Levi Bryant has a post up (here) responding to a commenter and referring to Hickman’s post linked below where he reiterates his views:

“The point is that the appearance or manifestation of the object has nothing to do with the existence of the object. The object’s manifestation is secondary to its substantiality as an object. It is for this reason that objects cannot be reduced to their properties or qualities as someone like Hume would like to do. Qualities are like a rind that are but expressions of an object’s substantiality.” [source]

Bryant then goes on to suggest an explanation of change based in his framework which, as far as it goes, is strait forward and logical, but which seems to grant objects a virtual substantiality beyond their actual properties. In short, I argue that Bryant elevates the 'shadow' of objects, the trace or signature of an object’s temporal actuality, to the status of essence - or what Bryant calls the “virtual proper being” of an object. But why do this?

Change can be “explained” by accepting that all objects, to varying degrees, are always already open systems. The substantiality of objects is a result of their assembled extensive properties intensively expressed in constant relation to their environment (including other objects). Thus all entities are embodied temporary beings vulnerable to modification and destruction - whether individually or in relation to their existence as part of another assemblage.

On an individual scale we can move from an object’s emanating qualities inward to its withdrawn structural properties without crossing any significant ontological divide before arriving at its organizational core.

For me, then, all entities are pulsating depth achievements (cf. Ivakhiv) with various potencies (or capacities) unleashed within the matrix of a simultaneous occurrence of composition and context. In this view nothing is “reduced” and nothing more is needed.

S.C Hickman on Variations of OOO

S.C Hickman combines a fantastic prose style with precise summaries and riffs on philosophy, theory and a few other delicacies. His short insightful posts are truly an ‘object’ to behold (pun intended). Here is an excerpt of Hickman’s latest on possible differences between Graham Harman and Levi Bryant’s versions of Object-Oriented-Ontology (OOO):

The appearance of an object either to us or another object will always be partial or perspectival, for the simple reason that it reveals itself only through its intentional properties or features and does that through a negotiation and translation that is a distortion of the real objects hidden interior life. A real object is autonomous which always-already is independent and withdrawn, not fully manifested in any relationship of any type except through the interaction in that field or volcanic core where all change manifests itself. We do not need to worry over appearances, objects can be real and independent, withdrawn and sleeping and dormant without being either invisible or transparent. Objects can exist without relations; yet, as Harman has reiterated, it is only in relation that objects perceive.

I will hold off on discussing the issues of language, metaphor, hyperbole, etc. for now, except to ask why we need so many strange obfuscations of terms that seem to distort rather than clarify. By this I am referring to Levi's use of virtual proper being and local manifestation as against Harman's real and intentional objects. I see that there is a difference in emphasis here, that VPB seems to imply a potentiality; ergo., the reason for the need in equating Levi's terms to Molner's powers and properties.

Read the entire post @ Dark Chemistry

I agree with most of what Hickman is saying here. I have argued the same: why inject a term like “virtual proper being” when the notions of capacity or powers do the same work. What ‘value is added’, as my colleagues would say, by suggesting an ontological division between an assemblage’s properties and its capacities to affect? Why posit an additional virtual aspect withdrawn from the “manifest” where objects are more real than real? An object’s powers are its properties as they are expressed in relation. And because objects are never without some relations, their efficacious substantiality is constantly becoming and being expressed. The virtual, then, is simply the trace or signature, or shadow cast by the actual embodied entity.

But let me also be quite clear: with the minor exception of Bryant's use of the notion of "virtual proper being" (and even then I can see a place for such a notion just not the place Levi argues for) I think Bryant's project is an outstanding example of laser sharp intelligence, learning and insight - and a framework I very nearly agree with in its entirety.

UPDATE: Graham Harman has responded to Hickman's observations with a clarifying post of his own about the differences between Bryant's framework and his own philosophy: here. Below is an excerpt:

Levi is more sympathetic to a notion of “the virtual” than I am. Levi’s real objects don’t have qualities, whereas mine do. Among other implications, this makes him even more sympathetic than I am to the models offered by DeLanda and Bhaskar, which I admire but of which I am also critical for placing the real action outside individual entities. That’s precisely what Levi likes about them, however.