On 26 Mar 2019, at 1:15, Brian Holmes wrote:
Despite Ted's excursions into aviation history, which at least he
finds
brilliant, plus the general manly readiness to cut the throat of, one
doesn't know exactly whom, we have gotten no further in terms of
understanding the situation than what you have transcribed. It's still
about a badly designed plane "fixed" by a cybernetic patch, in a quest
for
profit that knows no bounds.
"excursions into __________ history, which at least he finds brilliant"
seems like a pretty fair description of your own often-lengthy
contributions to the list, Brian. Many of them are interesting, and I
admire your commitment to untangling and reweaving disparate postwar
intellectual and institutional threads. We need much more of that, in
the US especially. But like your work with Bureau d'études, the value
of those broad sweeps breaks down where the rubber meets the road, or in
the case of aviation where somewhere between aerodynamics and
instrumentation. Which is why, I guess, after "looking for something
analogous in discursive spaces like this one," you've abruptly
rediscovered the importance of the specific problem. But, as I described
in some detail, cybernetic thought has been baked into aviation for
decades. If anything, it's the other way around: aviation-related
research was baked into cybernetics even as that new 'science' was being
invented: some of the key players were working on applied problems
brought into focus by aviation, ranging from fire control, to various
applications of radio, to mission planning. So it's not a patch, it's
the entire premise of how that industry works on almost every level.
Fixing this one problem in a more sane, humane way would do nothing to
resolve the countless areas where dilemmas with similar origins or
structures *will* arise. And much as aviation served as one of the main
vectors for distributing that style of thought globally, reforming some
of the field's dominant design philosophies could do so as well.
As for slitting the throats of "one doesn't know exactly whom," no. I
wrote:
And that begs an important question that leftoids aren't prepared to
answer because, in a nutshell, they're allergic to power: what *would*
be appropriate punishments for people who, under color of corporate
activity, engage in indiscriminate abuses of public trust.
Andreas argue that long prison terms are good enough. That answer is
easy, because it has the patina of history. But it ignores the disparate
real conditions in prisons, which — in many contexts leftists would
agree — are far from good enough. I have some vague idea that over the
last several decades a few people spent some time thinking about the
history and philosophy of punishment. In nettimish contexts (as opposed
to ground-level activism in judicial and penal fields), most of that
thought was applied to critiques of punishment — certainly more than
to imagining new and maybe even constructive ways to address the scale
and complexity of corporate criminality. Caricaturing people who'd say
we should think about that as "manly" throat-slitters is dishonest and
dumb. But my larger point was that systematic reform will require
dismantling corporate mechanisms for obfuscating and escaping individual
culpability. So, when you say...
How to express a necessary anger in a way that increases both people's
willingness and actual capacity to act politically? It's the
unanswered
question I take away from the thread.
...I'd suggest that you start with the anger that's in front of you
rather than invoking some romantic notion of diffuse righteous anger so
you can position yourself as its philosopher. I offered at least one
concrete answer: the labor activism of flight attendant unions, which I
think has forced the Trump administration to do an about-face twice.
There are others avenues, but finding them may require some excursions
into 'aviation history.' If you aren't willing to do that, or at least
to respect it, you won't get anywhere beyond unanswered questions.
Cheers,
Ted
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