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It might be viewed by some as unpatriotic to question the Karp manifesto.
However it's really just normal QA. Opposition is true friendship -- as long
as it's loyal -- and the true lifeblood of the free world.
So here are a few crit options.
[Disclaimer: I won't discuss early modern art and lit here. I've overdone
those topics so if you want more info on current book and film projects feel
free to contact me directly.]
Start with Wikipedia, namely, Karp's dissertation: Jargon, aggression, and
culture in Talcott Parsons. (I can't read the full text, it's in German, nor
should anyone feel obligated to spend that much time — the topics are
illustrative enough.)
Parsons quote:
"Parsons believed that objective reality can be related to only by a particular
encounter of such reality and that general intellectual understanding is
feasible through conceptual schemes and theories. Interaction with objective
reality on an intellectual level should always be understood as an approach.
Parsons often explained the meaning of analytical realism by quoting a
statement by Henderson: "A fact is a statement about experience in terms of a
conceptual scheme.""
What is meant by "jargon" and "aggression"? Jargon means theory, i.e., pomo,
Freud, Marx etc. This is one key part of the old chestnut Habermas/Foucault
debate. Jargony vocab like that of much modern thought, Habermas felt, is not
neutral but aggressive/assertive, the equivalent of an offensive move in chess,
one which, furthermore, often seizes ground that cannot be inhabited much less
defended. (Habermas was reciprocally accused, with some validity, that
asserting principles like communicative freedom and universal rights was
"aggressively assertive" and hypocritically dependent on force. The gridlock
is obvious.) Yet Habermas and the Frankfurt School didn't have much of a
counter-assertive response. Almost all defense, and too immobile. How to
counter?
Benjamin died before figuring it out via his "critique of pure experience,"
ironically, on the run from Nationalist Socialism. The Bauhaus expats and
others also recommended art and literature as experience (Albers, Dewey), an
open system, for their heuristic, rather than instrumental "Reason" or brute
force "Authority." That was a great start and they left a powerful corpus of
work we can still benefit from.
However jargon often predominates in academia, partly because of turf
competition, and that's also where Karp and other tech libertarians are looking
for scapegoats and fearful of "woke" which used to be called "PC." They see it
as excessive self-criticism by democratic societies given their autocratic
adversaries permit very little, and this tips them over into propaganda and the
slippery slope of division by demonization. Hence the unavoidable echoes of
Marinetti in their manifestos.
+
Why the taboo on aggression? It's not just squeamishness; it's the golden rule
and the rule of law. War is hell that scorches earth, and trauma can squander
whole centuries. This is the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the
commons. To live and let live is the better way to go. In constitutional law,
they call it "passion," the fire which freedom's air enables in addition to
breath; how to moderate political passions is the Federalist Papers' key focus
and the reason Hamilton concluded by quoting Hume re "time and experience."
Peaceful resolution of conflict works best within a system of shared rights
where the winner only partly wins and the loser doesn't lose everything. This
allows better learning, via social and political adaptation, and avoids costly
conflagrations. One can see this as a key advantage of the "west," a hard and
gradually-won lesson still in progress that mixes bookkeeping and poetry, not
just the superior weapons Karp extols. You have to win the peace and be able
to avoid war, especially internal war, if you hope to do well sustainably;
moreover, arms races with unhindered escalation have never been smart strategy
and often are the worst choice (despite the impracticality of total permanent
disarmament). Even Judeo-Christianity doesn't exalt "the Prince of War." And
to be sure, a peaceful and just realm of restored international relations will
require peace among all major belief systems, what has been called De Pace
Fidei, in addition to peaceable personal conduct. However Karp like every arms
manufacturer must overrate his product's peaceful inner nature or face the
wrath of shareholders.
It's not at all clear that severing AI-GPT weapons companies from public
accountability is the magic potion Karp libertarians advertise it as. To be
honest that's warmed-over Mussolini and Schmitt or Schmitt-lite, and definitely
Lenin; one might call it the business model of compulsive escalation. Both
sides get over-eager to prevail, like WWI, firing up the production lines, not
considering in advance the damage and waste they'll cause for everyone.
Admittedly, part is certainly just Harringtonian property rebalance on a grand
scale, the frightened fedsoc response to aging conservative demographics
through social sculpture of the electoral college. Another part is the shift
from peace to war mode, which is kind of what is happening to the 2020's. In
wartime the hawks try to clip the doves -- it's a long tradition -- and
profiteering is the norm.
Yet there is a valid point buried here, qua Habermas and Benjamin (the latter
even strangely conceding something to Schmitt in re assertion by force, as the
"blasting open" of the Jeztzeit or at least some quiet disruption by the
flowering of ideas), i.e. that a reality-based international community does
have to be asserted rather than just dreamt of; it must be articulated in words
and images before it can be realized, and both of these require actual choices
to live life in word, image, and deed one way not another. In this sense the
problem of assertion is genuine both expressively (representationally) and
physically.
We also have today another parallel to the problems of 1950: a new primary
geopolitical rivalry coinciding with a new arms race. The soviets were to
nukes what China is to drones, and drones (plus their software) are the
business of Karp. It takes two to tango and the major authoritarian states of
today's world do not play nice -- just ask Ukraine and Tibet. Even if you
argue China didn't start the Second Cold War, they aren't doing a whole lot to
end it either. Rising powers, same as those they aim to replace, gravitate
toward cold war for many obvious and stubborn reasons, as Orwell made very
clear.
Which is to say, might makes right versus right makes might (MMRvRMM) is a
debate still very much in progress.
+
Wiener, Norbert was an influence on Parsons, and Habermas proper taught Karp.
Benjamin tried to find a theory of experience on which to base a "second
enlightenment" that might modernize Kant beyond coercive rationality but he got
distracted by theory (at times a German Achilles' heel) and war. Frankfurt
School expert Martin Jay wrote two great books on this ("Songs of Experience"
in 2005 and "Magical Nominalism" in 2025) which deserve full study ASAP. What
must yet be done today in words and images is to bring Experience to parity
with or even primacy over Reason (algorithmic rationality, rules, law) and
Authority (power, tradition, plain force). This is a new build but has
precursors: Lakoff, Benjamin of course (with caveats), Dewey, the Alberses,
Pater, Joyce, Proust, Tokarczuk, Pamela Smith, Adam Fix, Calvino, and even
others further back like Thoreau (e.g. Burns' new film), Emerson, and James,
plus more outside "the West" not to mention indigenous cultures. It's a big
tent, maybe the biggest. Conveniently, French writers like Foucault and
Bataille paid respect to experience as such, if moreso in their later writings,
so no one on any side of the issue has to start from scratch. It's not a magic
potion either, but it does have to be worked through to get to real peace.
Harari, another commentator on the risks and responsibilities of AI-GPT in
politics and economics, albeit with a different partisan affiliation than Karp
(birds of a feather as it were), wrote his dissertation about experience not
just war as the basis of historical narrative. Hinton also cited it in 1992:
"How Neural Networks Learn From Experience."
Karp makes many but perhaps not all of the same errors as Addressen and
futurism, failing the Marinetti smell test, e.g. James Joyce's still-apt
warning "machines is their cry," stepping in the turd-pile of Mussolini And
Goebbels Again. Yet we need not panic prematurely: 2026 America is not 1926
Germany, the Germany of Ernst and Grosz, not yet anyway. Panic serves mainly
the would-be oppressor and opportunistic swindlers. Even if SCOTUS spots the
unpopular GOP enough House seats in '26 to keep '27 and '28 oversight-free,
peaceful protest is still the stronger play than panic. Parsons himself got
hauled up on charges of leftism by Hoover, and Hoover feared peaceful dissent
far more than non-peaceful.
Here is the previous "not a good look" I'd wager Karp hopes to transcend, or
distance his ambitious project from, suggesting work in progress and even an
inner lack of complete confidence (which might be a good thing), though he
sadly mostly matches it:
"The manifesto pays homage to the Manifesto of Futurism (1909) by Italian poet
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944), who would go on to co-author the Fascist
Manifesto a decade later, which was used to describe the political platform of
Benito Mussolini. In one part, Andreessen rewords Marinetti's manifesto[β] in
the context of technology, writing "Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no
masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent
assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man."[16]
Andreessen ends the manifesto with a list of self-declared patron saints of
techno-optimism, with Marinetti taking his place alongside philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche, the fictional character of John Galt, and the
neo-reactionary philosopher Nick Land, among others.[1]"
+
What, then, to do? Continue peaceful protest and support fair midterm
elections (even when it doesn't work). Call it like you see it and be a little
brave when using the First Amendment. Take heart from Orban's example.
Remember too that the greater part of the tech-alt-right ascension is a
political (even Weberian) market realignment, the philosophico-cultural wedding
of a certain major party with the tech sector and their money, strange
bedfellows indeed, both sides emerging from messy divorces and on the rebound,
their nuptials taking place on spruced-up theological grounds but far from made
in heaven. AI-GPT has reached military relevance so we have entered a
fifties-style nuke race complete with anti-dissent purges, and Karp wants to
secure his market share as well as political connections. Like the two-way
crystal ball it largely boils down to crony capitalism, which has both ample
war-precedent and commonsense remedies, but most of the remedies grow from the
soil of public opinion articulated by a thoughtful citizenry i.e. sometimes
slowly.
One hopes the world political establishment still has some cooler heads left to
prevail, because the way you fight the war has real impact on whether there is
a peace at all, much less one that can be won. Never put spies in charge of
anything except spying if it is humanly possible to avoid. The wages of that
sin is Rasputin.
Thus we loyal opponents ought to emphasize First Amendment reliance near-term.
The pen is mightier, but only when you write with it. Online alt-history
fiction in authoritarian states, let's not forget, can apply even beyond the
usual suspects.
Also we might consider how to move on a bit from pomo and try to get back on a
realer plane somewhat more, should one wish, without abandoning the core
elements of imagination and poetry either. That might mean
Experience/Experiment vs. Reason/Authority, EEvRA and MMRvRMM. Meditation and
brain biology (or MaBB), contra both Parsons and pomo, do matter too, like the
recent Quanta article about scary AI stories and Varela, therefore the
Buddhist/Taoist/Confucian frame of reference re embodiment is relevant as well.
It can be a group discussion involving more than just the arms industry.
++++
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