+++
Nettime began as the end of a war. The First Cold War ended, and people wondered what role the network culture of computer technology might play in the aftermath. The contrast to digital space — machine, industrial, instrumental, conglomerate — was clear. Of course hopeful and positive visions proliferated, appropriate for beginnings even or especially of aftermaths. Ganesh symbolizes this in shorthand. Nothing gold can stay of course, despite being nature's first green, so utopia filled in with a mix of good and bad. + 1950 was like today: the start of a war. One had recently ended, a bit more recently than our recent end of course, but still. Consolidating the peace and setting forth lines to engage the non-peace ahead was the project. You can call this "trade deals." It was more or less corrupt as hell, a global hobnob of warlords, spy chiefs, domestic surveillors, and cigar-chomping industrial goon-chieftains. Constitutional democracies were of course involved, but the process was almost totally mercenary, arbitrary, and untransparent. Peace makes any deal seem great. + Today we are in a gray middle zone. The Second Cold War is here, but its duration and lineaments are not yet geologically settled. It could disappear in a puff of handshakes and toothy grins. It could devolve into nuclear ashes or a deluge of gray nano-goop. It can't be known yet exactly what the conflict will do, nor for how long. We do however know some basic forces, questions, and points of collision. The First Cold War was a war of autarky and containment. Two wartime economies decided to slug it out in a battle of blocs dressed up as two separate philosophies. Today we don't quite have that. More like, two arms fighting over the same shirt. This has pros and cons. One good thing about 1950 was that it passed. Jumpy Joe McCarthy fizzled out, as did the no-civil-rights and no-voting-rights era. Democracy got more democratic again after awhile (although one can argue that state corporate cronyism of the Soviet or Hooverite stripe, take your pick, is about as democracy as you can get). The big business of today's world, this conclave of Nationalist Autocrat Global Alliance, may be big business, but big business is not good. It's admitting this of course now, with no pretense of goodness, certainly near-term, but the planet is not fooled and is hurtling toward death. The NAGA conclave will not, of itself, fix this hurtle. + What will? The only thing that ever could, if at all: human experience and experiment in all the sciences and all the arts, the culture network of all such woven in with all planetary and human nature as they exist in the actual event. The ship of all states afloat on the sea of the biosphere hoping to reach port in a city just and sane. Can all sides of the blocs now starting and ending wars cooperate to avert the worst and articulate the best? Skip the whole thing? Possibly not. But what else do idle fingers have to do but type? And as the I Ching hexagram, chosen randomly and lastly for this email — Hsiao Kuo, Preponderance of the Small — says: "[I]n the present hexagram it is the weak element that perforce must mediate with the outside world. If a man occupies a position of authority for which he is by nature really inadequate, extraordinary prudence is necessary." THE JUDGMENT Preponderance of the small. Success. Perseverance furthers. Small things may be done; great things should not be done. The flying bird brings the message: It is not well to strive upward, It is well to remain below. Great good fortune. Excellent cultural adaptation, we should also note, has averted some terrible wars. The concept of Experience, which was medievally largely Arab, who had got it from Greece, who also gave it to Rome, and which Asia Major had of course in the Tao, vedas, Zen, and elsewhere, and the Diné (Navajo) had in both forms, Biniik'eh and Doo t'áá biniik'eh, is the only viable cloth not tattered and mildewed beyond all hope of a tailor. Time to get sewing! https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/biography/experience-and-experiencing/ +++ -- # 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: https://www.nettime.org # contact: [email protected]
