I worry about dilettantes as much as master, for example people working
in bioart potentially releasing organisms into the environment without
understanding the chemical flows of biomes and organisms (no one
understands all of this today!). One of the things I've learned to respect
is the hardness of science; I'm interested in the foundations of math for
example and since category theory and its offspring have flourished, I
feel lost, and lost for good reason - these things are complicated and
require a lot of study and commitment. So the dilettante worries me as
well...
- Alan, but yes !
On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, Gretta Louw wrote:
Oh, and let's revive the dilettantes! No more supposed experts, would-be
'masters'. Surely no one who uses this language - even in relation to
ostensibly abstract problems or inanimate matter - has read and understood
anything about intersectional feminism, digital colonialism and the corrupt
power structures that permeate every aspect of human 'progress'.
Let's have the *delight* in (self/personal) discovery, knowledge, exchange,
exploration, and the humility of non-experts joining fields of knowledge,
bridging gaps, applying so-called expert knowledge. Marion Schwehr (German
literature and media scholar) and I are working on a new lecture performance
loosely titled 'Dilettantes Unite!', which I am beginning to think will include
a critique of accelerationalist/neo-liberalist notions of mastery...
Sent from the road
On 25 Apr 2016, at 07:52, Gretta Louw <gretta.elise.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
Death to the ludicrous, imperialist notion of 'mastery'!
I lean more towards Alan's thoughts on the role/impact of humans but think that
this is probably besides the point because, yes, we are all heading towards an
end and a new beginning and more ends anyway. I'm the meantime, though, this
idea of 'mastery' - the belief that anything approaching it is even possible -
seems to be at the heart of the majority of suffering; that which we cause
ourselves (humans) internationally, inter-culturally, locally, personally,
psychologically, but also the damage that we inflict on environments and other
species. This is where #additivism is inflential: embrace the abyss; surrender
rescue/savior fantasies; find the best and weirdest thing to do in the
meantime. Queer everything.
g.
Sent from the road
On 25 Apr 2016, at 03:01, John Hopkins <chaz...@gmail.com> wrote:
"21. We declare that only a Promethean politics of maximal mastery over
society and its environment is capable of either dealing with global
...snip...
it discovers only in the course of its acting, in a politics of geosocial
artistry and cunning rationality. A form of abductive experimentation that
seeks the best means to act in a complex world."
Good excerpt -- I couldn't manage the patience to drive through that whole
manifesto -- I feel the answers do not need such bloviating -- & anyway, I've
got to work on my water-harvesting landscaping, prune my grape vines, and turn my
worm farm :-)
What is said there, I've been writing into a practice-based curriculum at
http://ecosa.org -- the idea of systems-thinking approaches to holistic
un-mastery of the biosphere that we are merely transitory parts of. I
fundamentally do not like the concept of design, though, as it pre-supposes
changing that which flows around us. Maybe an adaptive, consciousness-raised
going-with-the-flow ... sensual improvisation that would include, perhaps, the
removal of our selves from living viability. If this approach was wide-scale
enough, the population drop would start the process of a post-human
re-balancing of the planet's dynamic equilibrium.
jh
--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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