Thursday, December 19, 2013

HUXWELL

The NSA crisis is interesting because it reveals the limits of our political frames. For once, perhaps for the first time in history, has power evolved faster than society, using the latest technology and communication stunts. It has changed the value of words and the reality of citizenship (its "old" meaning, should I say) and morphed it to its desire. The media's involvement in this transformation is astounding - but logical, given the concentration of papers, TV and radio channels into the same few large hands. We live in a formidably frightening mixture of Orwell and Huxley mixed into a monstrously beautiful androgyne drinking soda and dancing to commercials, claiming it is "free" and that any attempt to prove the contrary is threatening its "freedom of speech and expression" - not as a minority, mind you, but as a majority. In front of such a creation (at least, Frankenstein was not "evil"), one can only be at a loss. 
The only way to react - and this is, in my eyes, what is missing - is to dissipate the hologram and to look at who is controlling the machines. Because, strangely enough, there are PEOPLE controlling the machines - and these people have an agenda. Unfortunately for them (and for us), they are not very good at controlling these machines (yet) and the flesh flashes underneath the metal, like the the weak points of a medieval armor. And these PEOPLE are NOT the corporations, believe it or not - the corporations are mostly profit-driven and will seize any chance to maintain their profits, through publicity, corruption and, eventually, murder. But corporations don't really care who buys their products - they can be white, black, asian, gay, not gay, muslim, christian, jewish, atheistic, hindu, sikh, buddhist, whatever. As long as they buy, no problem. 
The real danger comes from when politicians (thank you Reagan, Thatcher and Blair -among others) began to think of citizens as products and politics as a corporation. Yes, I mean "products" and not "consumers" - or rather, today, as both. But the "product" aspect is important, because a product has only value as long as it represents something - real or symbolic. By metaphorizing the citizen into a product, our politicians have erased its only, true, important "value" - which is to be a part of the society he/she is living in. Pursuing the metaphor (and believing in it), politicians have turned voting into a choice in front of a gigantic soda-vending machine - you want the blue drink or you want the red drink? Same difference. 
This is, simply put, how we are fucked. The corporations fuck people other places (I am mainly talking about the supposedly democratic West) and they do it horribly well -here, they just jump on a yacht our politicians have arranged for them, happily drinking their champagne and enjoying the ride while it lasts. But politicians (by politicians, everybody with some sense will know of whom I am talking about) fuck us here and now, by subverting the words that used to give (some sort of) meaning to our citizenry, in order to re-install a feudal state, with the media as the Church. And if we want to fight this, we have to get back to the words, to their real meaning and value, and counter-attack. Full force. We have to dissipate the holograms, show the machines and the suits who are piloting them - and give THEM back their names. This is the only problem witrh Wikileaks, Snowden etc. : they don't give enough names. We need the names. We need to identify the pilots and fight them where they are. We need to distrust them - if they want you to vote, don't vote. If they don't want you to vote, vote. We need to re-establish a "Social contract" like Rousseau had foreseen, based on equity and true representativity. "How?" will ask the cynics, the losers or the vassals. Yes, how? That is the great question, the one we have to think about, seriously. We are now living in the age of a new dictatorship, the "authoritarian democracy" - and like I said, it is so new we are at a loss with words, expressions, and counter-definitions. But not for long if we focus and concentrate and what is REALLY important. On climbing on the machines to get those fuckers out. We just have to read the instructions. They must be somewhere. I am sure they are. We just have to look and look.