An attempt to reconcile my politics with my philosophy

At the risk of offering anecdotal evidence, in my experience, arborescent thinking often leads to people compartmentalising their political allegiances and their philosophical leanings into two seperate entities. I suspect am guilty of this myself, but my excuse is that the immediacy of politics often make them collide with philosophy, which is often more of a long term goal. This seems quite contradictory, and is a model that has failed to work throughout the Western world until one section, the Far Right, gave up on utopianism all together, with the Left soon following with the collapse of the Soviet Union. These defeatist attitudes have left us in a state of aporia. We now seem to live purely in the present: if someone strikes you, you strike them back, often in the name of peace. In the end, as in the Middle-East/USA conflict, we forget who threw the first punch, and if we're lucky to be actively literate, recall the morally bankrupt British hand in the formation of Israel or the States' support for Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, but to no end goal. One is reminded of the comical conflict between the offenders and the defenders in Finnegans Wake, who eventually become one all-encompassing concept: the fenders.

I sometimes think that as beings with a functioning cerebral cortex, we have to be hypocritical, or at least non-doctrinal. When philosophy or science, both, I agree with Rorty, types of literature, become dogmatic, they cease to be good philosophy or good science. Yet the scale of the hypocrisy must be measured. Being flexible does not have to mean supporting Israel when you did not support apartheid South Africa. (In fairness, commentaries on Hamas have very much resembled what Reagan and Thatcher said about Nelson Mandela; although I of course agree with Edward Said that Palestine is still waiting for its version of Mandela.) And surely, the best way to solve a problem like Israel/Palestine, to continue using a topical example, is for all concerned parties to look at what the country must eventually become in order to be allowed to co-exist with the modern world - a cosmopolitan liberal democracy not unlike South Africa - and work backwards from there.

What is my preferred end product? I am unashamedly an anarchist. Yet all movements that seem to be a step in the direction of anarchism range between distasteful and downright cruel. Take, for instance, economic libertarianism, which shares an incestuous bed with both anarcho-capitalism and Randian Objectivisim. I am in this sense a socialist and a Left-winger, largely because the Marxists, in setting themselves up as mutual enemies of capitalism, have had the largest successes in criticising the status quo (with the possible exception of Bakunin, one of the first to rightfully point out that dogmatic Communism would lead to totalitarianism). So whilst I agree with, say, anarcho-syndicalists, in many respects, I can't help but feel they are focusing their efforts in the wrong area. The biggest question anarchism has had to face (I have witnessed and participated in some beatdowns in debates against my fellow anarchists over this subject) is healthcare. Hence, why I have rarely agreed with a quote more than I agree with the utilitarian William Godwin's:

"Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind; and that, however we may be obliged to admit it as a necessary evil for the present, it behoves us, as the friends of reason and the human species, to admit as little of it as possible, and carefully to observe whether, in consequence of the gradual illumination of the human mind, that little may not hereafter be diminished."

The more I look at the world around me, as officials close down my local libraries and my government fails again and again to make education a priority, I realise that those in power realise this, too, and continue to make their assault on knowledge in order to prolong their necessity. One should look no further than the frankly despicable recent election campaigns in the United States. John McCain's vow to run a clean, respectful campaign resulted in him calling his opponent everything from a sexist to a terrorist sympathiser to a Marxist to an elistist (any one of which I would probably have welcomed were they aimed at me ;)). And now we discover Barack Obama's claim to end torture and the British government's claim to condemn it were not only false but conspiratorially so.

The problem with philosophical anarchism is that it breaks down by the very nature of its passivity. The zeitgeist of what is right and what is wrong has most usually been changed by radical or revolutionary individuals, such as Gallileo or Martin Luther King, who broke down the consensus in order to create a new one. Unfortunately people such as the women's suffrage campaigners did not compell people by the moral superiority of their arguments but at the force, passion and single mindedness they delivered them with. We must then draw inspiration from publications such as Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which could, within the sphere of scientific thought, be seen as a violent act, taking into account the effect it had on preconceived notions of, say, spectroscopy. Because the truth is that every lie our governments tell us, every library they close, every piece of spin a company puts on a product, is an act of violence, and we must respond by spreading knowledge and tearing down falsehoods in order to be in a situation where we can turn the other cheek, in the manner described by Tolstoy in his seminal treaty The Kingdom of God is Within You, without fear of being struck by an ignorant and powerful fist. That is the sick irony of the situation: that the analogy of the battlefield is inescapable, and we must find when and where the ends justify the means.

I do not, then, agree with neo-Luddites, who have more in common with the prosophobic Right than they would care to admit. Quite the opposite. If we can create a culture where our philosophic and our scientific progresses are paramount, we can achieve the socially-just, transhuman world we so desperately need in order to vindicate ourselves as a species. Already we can talk of germline engineering and celular manipulation of longevity in nature.

Vice-President Joe Biden posing with futurist
Steve Jurvetson, a photo that has disarmed my cynicism, however briefly.

I think this might be why I do a literature degree. Anarchy needs literature like birds need wings. There is something frightening and beautiful about both, which is why I was drawn to them. But in truth, anarchy is not alone in this respect. As Shelly put it:

"Reason is to imagination as the instrument is to the agent, as the body is to the spirit, as the shadow is to the substance."

"The great instrument of moral good is the imagination, and poetry administers to the effect by acting on the cause."

"Ethical science arranges the elements that poetry has created."

J.G. Ballard of course concurred but went a step further, saying that all fiction writers should be scientists. Whatever our political differences it might not be a bad thing to emphasise the things in life that matter, i.e. how we're all going to live together. Pride, partisanship and patriotism be damned if they get in the way. Long live science, literature and the arts. In my fictionalised review of the Sk-Interface exhibition I seemed justifiably frightened by a marriage of the three. But one guiding the other is probably not a bad idea at all, as long as that which is being lead does not fear rebelling from time to time: intellectual rebellion is the only way we truly advance.

Only Skin

Bored, I smoked a vial of 20X salvia and made my way across town to the ‘Sk-Interface’ exhibition I’d seen advertised at FACT. I tried to picture the person who’d come up with the name ‘Sk-Interface,’ but my imagination failed me after ‘dropped out of college in second year to explore east Asia.’

What first struck me wasn’t the darkness, or the fear of the unknown. It was the feeling I’d arrived somewhere.

I walked past two students crouched together on the floor. They were laughing about something.
Sometimes it’s difficult to imagine I’m a student too. They all fit so many stereotypes in that they’re trying to escape stereotypes. Autumn-coloured scarves, long or spiked hair, satchels, Converses. Proud avatars being washed unwittingly away in a sea of conformity. They might as well be wearing uniforms. Maybe the next dictator will let people choose what they conform into forever.

I approached the first exhibit. To say it was repulsive would be akin to calling the Eiffel Tower tall: in the right area but nowhere near the right word. They were what appeared to be threads of skin hanging in round glass jars. My guidebook informed me they were ‘semi-living’ sculptures in the form of miniature jackets. ‘Victimless leather.’ I knew somewhere someone was celebrating, but just for the moment I couldn’t imagine why.

Supposedly, due to the value of the incubators, they were still growing, and would continue to throughout the exhibition. Maybe if I came back in a week they would fit a mouse.

My way only sparsely lit, I made it over to the far wall, where a projection showed an operation taking place. Despite an eerie David Lynch-esque soundtrack and the mechanical whirring of a nearby 3D clinostat providing the only narration, I quickly got the picture: a man was having an artificial ear inserted into the inside of his forearm. This, I later discovered, was an ear with Internet and Bluetooth capability. Again, I’m quite sure I missed the point.

It reminded me of an Australian I’d once met who’d had rare earth magnets installed under his fingertips. When asked what was the point, he told a long-winded story about being able to distinguish between different types of catfood tins. He claimed he was able to amuse himself for hours on end simply going through his girlfriend’s cupboards and handling her cat’s meals for the week. I had to ask whether there was any practical benefit (besides becoming a serial molester and connoisseur of tin cans) before he told me it had saved his life. Once, whilst working on a construction site, he had very nearly laid his hand on an unlabelled electric cable before a sensory phenomenon in his fingertips warned him not to. He learned not soon after that the cable contained a voltage charge of around 1,000. Consider, he told me, that it would only take about 60-100 volts to kill a man of his size through atrial fibrillation. When I asked him why he hadn’t been wearing gloves the conversation quickly dissipated.

Other exhibitions were equally ‘alternative.’ A magnetic resonance scan of an artist’s brain filled out with luminescent moss. A patchwork quilt of animal cells, both human and non-human. A collection of vaginal cells with a shape cut into them, designed to symbolically ‘re-virginize’ continually.

After that I needed a bit of a breather, so I knelt in a corner before the surgical video. Hopefully, this made me look mysterious. By the minimal light I read through what exhibits I had not yet visited. They were located in Gallery 2, which I knew was upstairs by the bar. Simply thinking of going back out into the light, away from the vacant faces of artsy students and the comforting sound of the Random Positioning Machine, felt akin to having to get out of bed too early in the morning. My sense of ‘arriving’ had been replaced by one of belonging. As little as I liked it, this gallery of grotesqueries had briefly become my world.

A girl stood by me staring in my direction. She was dressed like an art chick; boots, tied back hair, glasses, scarf, overcoat, fingerless gloves. I’m sure I’d never seen someone stand so still before. I thought she was looking at me, but as I came to my senses somewhat, I realised she was looking above me, reading the description of the ear man’s surgical procedure. From her face beneath her bifocals, I imagined she got the point far better than I did. But it was only imagining.

She left me crouching beneath a 50 x 50 photo of white-gloved hands scissoring through someone’s skin. Soon after, I too stepped out into the light.

The light, and two other exhibits. One, above me, was a series of national flags made out of leathered skin. They repulsed me until it dawned on me that that was the desired effect. Beside me was a corridor of coloured fabrics, painted with ‘thermochronic inks.’ A troupe of teenage girls were having fun pushing their hands and faces into the fabric, then recoiling to see the perfect white imprints they had left behind. Aware that people were watching me deface this work of art, my slightly-trembling hand likewise pushed hard against a strip of bright purple, and made a similar impression in the ink. I put it back on again slightly skewed, so it looked like I had ten fingers.

Upstairs held perhaps the most unnerving exhibit. A small, out-of-the-way area was bathed apathetically in a white light that, while pale, was enough of a contrast to the rest of the gallery to make it seem like a twisted, metallic version of the corridor promised us when we near death. I had to squint.

Slightly thrown by a feeling of uncertainty (perhaps mirroring the comfort this white semi-corridor seemed to have with itself), all I could register was writing on the far wall, and a woman sitting perfectly still to my right. I wondered if she was part of the effect, or even whether I should be there. I didn’t look at her but I could feel her stare in my temples.

I began to read. The piece read like a confession, or a manifesto. It told me things about Randy, things I wish I could remember. All I know is that Randy is not like you or me. He’s a concept, a clown, something to be feared and pitied, a dark spokesman. I don’t know why I remember this but I do. The light was too bright.

You can go through there if you like, the woman said to me.

Where?

There’s a door. There.

She pointed to the end of the corridor. Stepping forward, I saw a white outline of a doorway. I thanked her and, after a brief hesitation, gingerly pushed my way through.
I immediately wished I hadn’t. The tiny, badly-lit room I found myself in struck my brain hard through the salvia. I thought of war bunkers and clanking steel and the Ministry of Love. Worse, there was a noise I found infuriating. Supposedly, it was the same wavelength interrogators use in sensory deprivation torture.



















There was furniture in the room. A desk, a cabinet, and a television table. On the television was something’s face: a round mass of curly black hair with a foam ball for a nose, wearing dark sunglasses. This, I fancied, was Randy. The film treated me to his face and body from a series of angles. The psychological effect was undeniable. I wanted out but I couldn’t help stay. My feeling of curiosity was undulled by drug-and-audio-assisted fear.

In a drawer of the cabinet I found a portable television showing the same film of Randy. I left, only catching the other exhibits briefly on the way out.

Techo-advanced gimp suits. The effect of napalm on human cells. Through door, sunlight. Streets and streets of vacant faces all branches in the hive. If you're looking for a good time. Vomit on Seel Street and a drone becomes a queen briefly before losing itself in the crowd once more. Honey for the children.