Society and individual, comparison with the organism (17/11/28)
The relations between a society and its individuals are interpretable as those between a society´s composition and the classification of its individuals. We must see, however, that in between a society and the individuals there are middle-systems, such as the institutions.
An organism mostly contains organs. Only about the lowest developed organisms, the prokaryotes (e.g. bacteria) you can hardly say that they have organs, because inside them the functional elements are swimming around, not contained by membrane hulls. The single-celled eukaryotes, on the other hand, have organs, called “organelles”, which are immigrated former prokaryotes (bacteria), having lost their individuality due to this integration, and so having become organs: Nucleus, mitochondria, plastides, and so on.
Multi-cellers historically are a composition from eukaryotic single-cellers, which, due to this compositional process, also have lost their individuality, their organism-character, and have become something like organs.
Organs are composed both spatially and functionally: They have spatial boundaries, and have limited function. Redundancy exists, apart from e.g. the two kidneys, especially with the cells (if you want to define them as organs). But cells too, except the few stem cells, are functionally specialized, so are functionally composed.
Now, by regarding biology, we may suspect: An organism-like composition from organs has for consequence, that merely the highest supersystem has got individuality. The subsystems are just organs, stripped of their individuality, serving the supersystem.
Those, who advocate a smart internet, or even a “singularity”, should stop to think: There can only be one being “smart” and an individual. In an excessive dataism, this would be the net. The humans first would be infantilized, then lose their individuality completely, and become mute servants, organs (with a limited function and a limited space, the latter being a virtual space in this case). So they would cease being organisms. Does anybody want that?
Authoritarian social systems, too, pursue this similarity with the organism: Followers of rigid kind of ruling speak of “volkskoerper” (This is a german word, meaning something like "population body", though "Volk" does not mean exactly "population" or "people", that would be "Bevoelkerung". "Volk" has a tribalist, ethnicist connotation). Do these folks want to give up their individuality? I would not care, but they should not be allowed to demand the same for decent people.
So, biological organs are, as said, composed both functionally and spatially. Traditionally, in a society, functional elements are also bound to certain places: Palace, town hall, offices, market places, and so on. It might seem that with digitalization, this spatial composition might dissolve: You can carry your notebook and your smartphone everywhere with you. But is it really so, that places play a smaller role?
I think, quite the contrary, only there is a shift from real space towards virtual space. Everybody who knows just a bit about computers, knows, that there is always the talk of “addresses”, and also knows the term “chat room”. The virtual space is much more effectively designable than the real one. I think that due to the digitalization of society, its functional elements become more organ-like, and society becomes more organism-like.
"Eugene Halton" <eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu> wrote:
Dear Atila,
Thanks for your interesting posts! Yes, "big data" can help establish facts in a dystopic world of dissembling disinformation and delusional denial of reality. But it can also act negatively as part of the overquantification of life, the counting numbers until only numbers count.
McLuhan's idea of a "global village" in 1964 pointed toward the possibilities of increased extended electronic communications, such as this list. But there is no "village." A village has properties much different from those of a global network. Villages promote strong ties of kinds that the global network tends not to. A very significant effect of living in the global network in everyday life is how it acts to confine the human creature within artificial screen worlds and schematas, not simply liberate it. A key challenge is in how to keep the human spirit in the forefront of “weak ties” communities.
McLuhan said in that 1964 work, Understanding Media: "By continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as servo-mechanisms. That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions."
This is lunacy, to propose servanthood to servo-mechanisms instead of mastery over them as means of living, whose purport we determine. Count me out of this Deus-ex-machina religion. Here I find the words of Prague-matist Vaclav Havel, from his op-editorial "The End of the Modern Era," in The New York Times, March 1, 1992) far more insightful than the ideas of McLuhan. What do you think?
"What is needed is something different, something larger. Man’s attitude to the world must be radically changed. We have to abandon the arrogant belief that the world is merely a puzzle to be solved, a machine with instructions for use waiting to be discovered, a body of information to be fed into a computer in the hope that, sooner or later, it will spit out a universal solution.
It is my profound conviction that we have to release from the sphere of private whim such forces as a natural, unique and unrepeatable experience of the world, an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypal wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion and faith in the importance of particular measures that do not aspire to be a universal key to salvation. Such forces must be rehabilitated."
Gene Halton
New Media studies, or the field of media ecology, as it is called today, addresses these kinds of issues. I agree with the authors in finding Peirce is relevant as far as the fixation of belief, hypothesis formation, and fallibilism - if we can utilize ‘big data’ technology to falsify claims, it can serve us well. Nowadays, Media Ecology privileges the subjects of ‘alternative news’ and ‘dystopia.’
I remember McLuhan's work well, and was in touch with his son Eric McLuhan discussing a project before he passed in the summer. M. McLuhan wrote of the global village in 1964, earlier and later, and wonder why it is listed as 2008? I will look up those references.
As an aside, McLuhan was trying to help promote Eric Havelock’s book Preface to Plato into a motion picture/movie in 1968. Havelock made good mention of McLuhan in chapter 3 of his book The Muse Learns to Write 1986.
Atila
On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 4:19 PM Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:List,The Brazilian Peirce scholar and semiotician, Vinicius Romanini, brought this this recently published and pertinent article to my attention. It employs Peircean concepts and methodology. Here's the abstract:Disinformation, dystopia and post-reality in social media: A semiotic-cognitive perspective
Published: 15 October 2018Gary RichmondPhilosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication StudiesLaGuardia College of the City University of New York718 482-5690
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