Re: nettime The insult of the 1 percent: Art-history majors
I think you have to view Conard in context. Or a variety of contexts. One of those contexts has to be the announcement today that David Koch has made a $35 million gift to the Smithsonian to fix their (very old) dinosaur halls. Koch, it must be noted, is: (a) Generous: he's given $100 million to NYC's Lincoln Center -- for their ballet theater, no less! -- as well as millions more to other museums and arts-focused non-profits. (b) Considered one of the Great Right-Wing Satans by many on the left. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/koch-gives-smithsonian-35_n_1474389.html My point is that I don't think over-generalizing from Conard's absurd comments is necessarily very helpful. He's one guy. He's entitled to his opinions, however ignorant we think they are. But there are people with significantly more complex relationships to the world(s) of ideas, art, culture, and wealth. Koch is one of them. I don't agree with most of his political views, but he is evidence that there are people whose motivations as part of the 1% are not as simple-minded as Conard's--and not as simple as the rest of us often assume. Sascha Sascha D. Freudenheim Doubt is humanity's best friend. http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/ http://www.sascha.com http://twitter.com/SaschaDF On 5/3/2012 2:43 AM, Brian Holmes wrote: Edward Conard works for Mitt Romney's firm, Bain Capital. He is part of the .01% and he is true to his class. A New York Times reporter interviewed him on the occasion of his soon-to-be-released book (which you should probably steal if you want to read it) called Unintended Consequences. As usual, it declares that the superrich do us all a world of good, even though all they want is more for them. In Connard's case, he already has enough to crush us like flies. Check out his world view, as reported by Adam Davidson: # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Edufactory Debt Deptt: Alex Gavic is our hero!
Hi Patrice and others, As your example illustrates, turning down college education as a strategy for avoiding debt is a smart thing to do for one's economic future these days. However, avoiding that debt trap as a political action also entails turning onself away from being exposed to critical thinking - both as a history and as a discipline. As Brian points out, increasingly, the degree that allows one to pay off that educational debt lies in pursuing the security or energy sectors - probably not much critical theory to be found there. So, is there a place for critical thinkers to emerge and counter the hegemonic discourse that is not dependent on subjects coming from institutions that are increasingly being determined by their facility for unit shifting? At the moment, like most 'exciting' art practice, this critical work relies uncomfortably on a system of patronage that lives off the very thing it critiques. So, how does a snowboarder get their facility for engaging critically with the system they're playing within - or has it happened that by squeezing tuition, here comes the most wonderful way of creating heaps of willing subjects, happy (if they were lucky by their birth circumstances) with their rewards? I keep thinking some new forum will emerge that fills the space left by the atrophy of humanities funding. I can't imagine the form it will take, or how the fluency with critical practice will ebb and flow in the future. Not sure how to end here, so going to the optimistic and back to analogy, I go to the snowboarders: the response will be shaped both by the weather and how s/he chooses to engage with it. cheers, Colin # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Edufactory Debt Deptt: Alex Gavic is our hero!
Hi Coline, Patrice and others mmm, just because someone is fortunate enough to get into college (with or without debt), does not necessarily mean 'critical thinking' will occur. It is a misconception that academia consists of, or possesses a greater volume of critical thinkers than elsewhere. This idea does not reflect Heath Bunting's, Stewart Home's, mine and many other people's, experiences outside of institutional educational systems... As a working class lad, I had to hack my way around 'static' defaults systems due to lack of privilege. One example regarding an early experience can be read here 'How a Library Saved My Life.' http://www.furtherfield.org/blog/marc-garrett/how-library-saved-my-life Wishing you well. marc garrett www.furtherfield.org As your example illustrates, turning down college education as a strategy for avoiding debt is a smart thing to do for one's economic future these days. However, avoiding that debt trap as a political action also entails turning onself away from being exposed to critical thinking - both as a history and as a discipline. ... -- Other Info: Furtherfield - A living, breathing, thriving network http://www.furtherfield.org - for art, technology and social change since 1997 Also - Furtherfield Gallery Social Space: http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery About Furtherfield: http://www.furtherfield.org/content/about Netbehaviour - Networked Artists List Community. http://www.netbehaviour.org http://identi.ca/furtherfield http://twitter.com/furtherfield # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The insult of the 1 percent: Art-history majors
Ed: what I see in the words and actions of a Connard is desperation and an identity crisis. Yes, I think you are right . . . well beyond Connard, the ruling class is in seriously bad shape! The *problem* with neo-liberalism is that GIMME MORE is not a class cohesive or even satisfactorily motivating prime-directive. In an every-man-for-himself world, how does *society* organize itself and not just degenerate into hand-to-hand combat -- among the elites themselves? This lack of coherent cultural purpose has been a hallmark of the West since at least WW II, when it went through its last rotation of the elites. If the goal is to eliminate the authoritarian personality (i.e. code for those who adhere to traditions) and to generate a series of synthetic images for people to rally around -- as first detailed by Dutch futurist in his 1953 The Image of the Future -- then what are you left with? Chimeras? Memes? Video-games? If the empires of the future will be empires of the mind and psycholog ical warfare against peacetime populations became the primary operating mode of the newly dominant elite, then eventually the lack of anything enduring must catch up with you. That *eventually* is now. For a while, the artificial *global* conflict between FREEDOM (i.e. the CIA's 1950s/60s cultural Cold War) and WORLD PEACE (i.e. the Soviet response, which after the mid-70s purge also became the CIA's mantra, as institutionalized by the 1984 launching of US Institute for Peace) could hold things together. But all this has been off the table for 20+ years now! What can replace it? Global War on Terror? Not very successful as a popular meme in an age of machinic (and mercenary) warfare. China is stealing our secrets? Replaying the precious bodily fluids argument of Dr. Strangelove and occupying the front pages of the NYTimes daily, this is likely to be heavily featured in the 2012 Presidential election and appropriately tagged as the global version of blame the other guy. Save the polar bears? In a world where the BRICS will add a *billion* people the middle-class (i.e. driving a car and not a motorbike) over the next 10+ years and where the ideology of globalism has collapsed, everyone knows that Kyoto isn't going to work. Now Stewart Brand has become an eco-pragmatist. The recognition that the US has no *strategy* and cannot rise above legislative deadlock is, after all, obviously the *fault* of those who are supposed to be in charge is now almost universal. So, like Trilat-honcho Zbigniew Brzezinski and the lead US correspondent for The Financial Times, the various mouthpieces all write their hand-wringing books . . . which no one bothers to read. And this deep cultural incoherence is substantially amplified by the Net, since we are all living in nettime . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The insult of the 1 percent: Art-history majors
On 05/03/2012 04:40 PM, Sascha D. Freudenheim wrote: My point is that I don't think over-generalizing from Conard's absurd comments is necessarily very helpful. He's one guy. He's entitled to his opinions, however ignorant we think they are. But there are people with significantly more complex relationships to the world(s) of ideas, art, culture, and wealth. Koch is one of them. I don't agree with most of his political views, but he is evidence that there are people whose motivations as part of the 1% are not as simple-minded as Conard's--and not as simple as the rest of us often assume. You know, Sascha, I am afraid you are the very example of the person whose opinions should no longer count in intellectual debates. Because you are unable to take a stand. You are unable to even see the ground you are standing on. Sascha D. Freudenheim, I'm sorry but you are a useful fool for the ultra-rich. You are willing to accept the fact that they are buying our cultural institutions and will use them to promote their control. For you, society is complex: the ultra-rich are after all, very smart, they have good taste in art, their motivations deserve to be weighed carefully. So, in short, you will apparently do as you are told, probably in order to lap up some milk from your master's bowl, or maybe just because you naively admire what are, after all, the good people, those nice millionnaires who make generous gifts to formerly public museums and also to devastating Political Action Committees. I remember that when the subject of student debt came up, you explained how it was something like a moral obligation for spoiled middle-class kids to pay for the expensive colleges they freely chose to attend. In other words, for you, there is no crisis of education, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the sacrifice of our public educational system and its replacement by one based on debt bondage and indenture. In other words, for you, the system is fine, maybe a little ambivalent: Koch might have some bad sides, but he also has some good sides... This is what I call neutrality. It exists in Europe and Asia as it does in North America. If this kind of neutrality continues to be voiced by so-called intellectuals, well my friends, we are cooked. Literally. Climate change will destroy the planet and Koch will have saved the Met's dinosaurs! Occupy Wall Street was started by a few dozen people. If all of us on this list of thousands of people would use our brains, our writing, our art, our professional positions, our social networks, to stand up against the control of our societies by the ultra-rich and to set up programs of constructive study in order to find new forms of governance and new cultural figures of desire and of solidarity, I reckon we could actually change the world. It is the neutrality of intellectuals, the propensity to take refuge in an abstracted vision of complexity, and the willingness to be on the take but not on the give, that has, in part, led to this pass. I believe the great majority of us (unlike Sascha) now see that the situation is threatening indeed. What can we do about it? OWS shows that we can do something about it. And if OWS is not the complete and total answer? Does that mean we should sigh and go lap up some dinosaur milk? No, I don't think so. As a returning Iraq vet said when he saw all the cops hasseling and arresting the protesters in New York, There is no honor! There is no honor! That's all he could say. This guy was so shocked to see people being arrested for trying to practice democracy, that's all he could say. It's like the woman I heard the other day, who's son is still in jail after twenty years, on the strength of a confession wrung out of him by torturers on the Chicago police force, all she could say was, It's not fair. It's just not fair. It's not fair. The vet forced the police away from the protesters. The mother struggles to get her son out of prison, and to help all the others like him. It isn't fair. And there is no honor in formerly democratic societies that are now ruled by the ultra-rich. But we are writers and artists and scholars and engineers and programmers and art-history majors. We have to say more. We have to do more. We have to learn to do it together. Things are a little more serious now. Whew. It's hard to face this situation, but at some point I think one has to face it. There has been a little too much Sascha D. Freudenheim in all of us over these last years and decades. I am open to constructive collaborations. Let's get to work. best, Brian # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The insult of the 1 percent: Art-history majors
Wow, Brian! Nothing like an ad hominem attack to take the discussion to the next level of intellectual heft and seriousness. With my middle initial included no less! I think your conclusions are absurd, both of my position(s) and about the environment you're supposedly examining so clearly. Yes, I did (apropos Occupy Student Debt) argue against that movement. I don't think it's a moral obligation for spoiled kids to pay for their expensive educations. I think people have a moral obligation to pay their debts and not just walk away from them because they've intellectualized a rationale for why they shouldn't have to owe the debt any more. Nor do I think there isn't a problem in (higher) education--I just don't think that abandoning debt is the answer to that problem. It's pretending that Robin Hood-ism is the same thing as actual social change. But that's the last battle. In this one, I'm not neutral. Far from it. I just find some of the attitudes and positions articulated here and elsewhere to be a whole lot of intellectual wankery--more words than actual action to help the people who really need help. It's a lot easier to attack verbally people like Conard than it is to close the laptop and go out and find someone who needs help and actually help them. Sascha Sascha D. Freudenheim Doubt is humanity's best friend. http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/ http://www.sascha.com/ On 5/4/12 11:15 AM, Brian Holmes wrote: On 05/03/2012 04:40 PM, Sascha D. Freudenheim wrote: My point is that I don't think over-generalizing from Conard's absurd comments is necessarily very helpful. He's one guy. He's entitled to his opinions, however ignorant we think they are. But there are people with significantly more complex relationships to the world(s) of ideas, art, culture, and wealth. Koch is one of them. I don't agree with most of his political views, but he is evidence that there are people whose motivations as part of the 1% are not as simple-minded as Conard's--and not as simple as the rest of us often assume. You know, Sascha, I am afraid you are the very example of the person whose opinions should no longer count in intellectual debates. Because you are unable to take a stand. You are unable to even see the ground you are standing on. ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The insult of the 1 percent: Art-history majors
Thank you, Brian. I agree with much of what you've written below, especially: It is the neutrality of intellectuals, the propensity to take refuge in an abstracted vision of complexity, and the willingness to be on the take but not on the give, that has, in part, led to this pass. Jodi From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org [nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] on behalf of Brian Holmes [bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, May 04, 2012 11:15 AM To: nettim...@kein.org Subject: Re: nettime The insult of the 1 percent: Art-history majors On 05/03/2012 04:40 PM, Sascha D. Freudenheim wrote: My point is that I don't think over-generalizing from Conard's absurd comments is necessarily very helpful. He's one guy. He's entitled to his opinions, however ignorant we think they are. But there are people with significantly more complex relationships to the world(s) of ideas, art, culture, and wealth. Koch is one of them. I don't agree with most of his political views, but he is evidence that there are people whose motivations as part of the 1% are not as simple-minded as Conard's--and not as simple as the rest of us often assume. You know, Sascha, I am afraid you are the very example of the person whose opinions should no longer count in intellectual debates. Because you are unable to take a stand. You are unable to even see the ground you are standing on. ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
