>Andy wrote, A whole politics of "getting the numbers" then flows from
>this which is not only based on a conception of human society as little
>coloured dots in a Venn Diagram, but actually creates such a type of
>society. In other words, we live in a society which is actually structured
>as a formal logical conception.
>Eugene wrote: I wonder what you mean by creates such a type of society.Do
>you mean that through the election practice people start thinking
>formally? Do you mean that this practice makes people believe that they
>think formally while actually they do not (i.e., creates a certain false
>ideology)? Or do you mean that this practice makes people prioritize
>formal logic as the logic? I agree with you that something related to
>formal logic "hooks on" the existing practice of the Western election
>process guided by the formal logic (as if the formal logic is correct).
>The question for me is what exactly is this "something"?
Very broadly, ways of thinking and ways of living mutually create and
sustain one another, don't they. Of course, in this relation, living and
acting has a position of primacy over thinking, captured in aphorisms such
as "One must eat before one can paint" or "One must have something to talk
about before one can talk". But the relation is two-way noetheless.
It is of course not just parliamentary democracy which creates and sustains
a culture of formal thinking, it is also the ubiquitous practice of
exchanging products of labour under contract rather than actually
cooperating with other people. Commercial TV has a lot to answer for as well.
Specifically, what I am saying about the practice of voting for governments
in large geographical electorates would be like this. (i) The job or career
of deciding how we should live we give to an institution remote from our
own lives, so we externalise our selves and put our ethical powers into an
alien body which then rules us; (ii) because our vote is just one vote
among 100,000 votes of other people with whom we have no relation at all,
we are aware that the will created in the form of a powerful state is not
our will, but that of an external, alien force (why bother to vote?); (iii)
thus when pondering on the meaning of our lives and how we should live we
have already externalised out selves from ourselves. This is the first
pre-requisite for formal thinking, external relation-to-self. Then, a
public political life is conducted on our behalf in which any question can
be carried if 50.1% of the population can be persuaded to vote "Yes"
(although plebiscite is not the normal way of deciding, the system
approximates to plebiscite); this means that a political actor has to
redefine a question so as to assemble the 50.1% under "yes" and people are
reduced to carriers of external characteristics of being for or against
on the various isolated aspects of the issue. This produces what people
call "politicians with no vision" and "thinking which only goes as far as
the next election". It is the difference between the General and the
Universal. For example, when there was a plebiscite in Australia over
getting rid of the monarchy and having a republic, the question was so
posed that when you added the number of monarchists to those who wanted a
popularly elected head of state, they outnumbered those who were willing to
accept as a second-best a head of state nominated by parliament (note the
fact that people wanted an Individual directly responsible to the people,
not a creature of the politicians). The two diametrically opposite camps
both voted "no" and we are stuck with a monarchy, which had the support of
only a small minority. Thus politicians treat people not as citizens and
actors within a community, but as carriers of "opinions" or "attributes".
They address themselves not to citizens but to opinions.
TV and other forms of mass media funded by advertising are not only one-way
forms of communication, but are also designed to address the 50.1% or to
target "audiences". Thus again people are atomised and reduced to passive
receivers possessed of preferences and opinions, not as human beings. Every
question is detached from the form of life in which it arises and treated
abstractly. People's knowledge is not a knowledge from their own life, with
consequences from their own actions, but a stream of arbitrarily assembled
news-bytes and images, fabricated in studios.
These institutions which promote and sustain formal thinking are not 100%
of human life in modernity; real life is complex and multifaceted, and
people think mostly formally, but not entirely and not uniformly. But
capitalist democracy and formal thinking mutually reinforce and sustain one
another.
Andy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 01 2003 - 01:00:11 PST