Responsibility and the Event

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Königin Europa, älteste Darstellung

Should I flee a situation that makes it impossible to follow my conviction properly?
Am I complicit of the situation’s wrongdoings if I do not escape?
Am I a traitor if I leave the situation if it’s rules go against my vision?
Do I have the responsibility to do my part to transform the situation?

These questions could be asked in a variety of contexts:
1. A judge in the Nazi regime
2. An engineer that is ordered to trick the emission tests
3. A politician who has to realize an unpopular decision
4. A citizen of a rural area or of a country with low income levels

The openness of the future contains both risks and opportunities. We can trace the openness back to the constraints of  the past though.

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How to Relativize the Importance of the Effable?

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In one previous blog post, Herbert Hrachovec conducted a careful analysis on moving away from the visible domain, based on Mona Haydar’s account of wearing a Hijab as spiritual practice. This was definitely more substantial than what I did earlier when suggesting an isomorphism between a.) Hijab for protecting the body and b.) closed borders for national security. Both might be characterized by a resistance against their assets (or even their “essence”) being consumed or threatened by others. In contrast, Herbert starts with listing possible ways of resistance to globalization and consumer society and then highlighting one speciality when taking the Hijab as a spiritual practice:

Haydar’s “act of resistance” is primarily directed away from the body. “I am so much more than just a body.” (M.H.) Not “just a piece of meat walking around in the world for anybody to consume.” (M.H.) It’s not just frantic economics that is at stake here. This particular sign of resistence, Haydar’s hijab, indicates an extra-physical realm.

This extra-physical realm, in the words of Haydar is “a soul, that is ineffable that lives inside of me”. How to point towards something ineffable? Herbert: “Using a tangible tool like the head scarf to mediate a dramatic switch to an intangible insight”.

I am finishing the year of this blog with something unfinished: This posts adds three further positions/techniques/examples for giving clues that relativize the importance of the effable. May they be impulses for 2019.

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Leaving Immersion?

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What makes a technique useful is that it responds to problems of the focus domain. An expert, who is using techniques is useful, if she is responsible and cares about the object of this expert domain. For example, a good project manager cares about everything that is involved in a project: people, the project goal, the means to achieve it, the timeline it requires. In every community obviously there are some who care more and some who care less. The challenge is: Why do we care? Wouldn’t we be better off if we just cared for ourselves, and just appeared to be caring while we would just be caring for ourselves?

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Philosophy graduates will be in great demand by 2030? And then?

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… this is the headline of a post shared by the Facebook page “Philosophy matters”. The post has likes and comments of people who sympathize with philosophy, or have an education in philosophy. I read the linked article, and posted a comment expressing my concerns about the mismatch between the headline and the content of the article. The latter is mostly about the usage of technology in education, while the first focuses only on philosophy graduates. Later I realized that the word “expert” in the headline is crucial for both. Philosophers would learn how to play the role of an expert in a corporate environment, delivering assessments on demand. That’s what the headline suggests. At the same time, I would add, philosophers would be aware and make aware that expertise is not the whole story on the journey called education.

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Not just to consume. 7 lose points on security, obscurity, and authenticity

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Here are seven lose thoughts on security, obscurity, and authenticity and how such properties would be relevant on individual, societal, and systemic levels. The following is delivered in raw, unpolished format with gaps that might resist simple consumption. May the gaps be anchor points for further analysis.

 

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If Libussa had a Blockchain

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The hesitant Austrian writer Franz Grillparzer and his drama “Libussa” from 1848 inspired Herbert Hrachovec and Walter Seitter at the end of a podcast to diagnose contemporary democracies and the role of money. That diagnosis could benefit from a reference to recent developments in monetary systems by bitcoin and blockchain. And the other way around: The “elimination of middlemen” through cryptography and peer to peer networks is an idea that can benefit from hesitation.

 

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Gott ist tot. Mini-Transzendenz und Aufmerksamkeit

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Zuletzt erschien ein Podcast in der Philosophischen Audiothek, der einen Vortrag von Ernst Tugendhat von 2002 neu kommentiert:

Den Ausgangspunkt bildet die durch Nietzsche zugespitzte Aussage “Gott ist tot”, und dadurch die Erkenntnis, dass der Bezug auf Übernatürliches nicht (mehr) wesentlich zum Menschen dazugehört und ihn bewegt. Was bleibt ist: Menschen gehen, so der Titel des Podcasts, über sich hinaus. Zwischen einem selber und Gott gibt es ein weites Feld für Überschreitungen, das zwar nicht übernatürlich ist, aber auch nicht völlig vereinnahmt werden kann. Auf dieses Feld zielt die immanente Transzendenz ab, dessen Ausgestaltung im Podcast erörtert wird. Ich verharre in diesem Blogpost erst einmal beim Ausgangspunkt und lasse dann meine Lektüre zu Michel de Certeau, Pierre Manent, und einen Veranstaltungsbesuch über die Generation Y miteinfliessen, um zu sagen: Die immanente Transzendenz enthält keine inhaltliche Vorgabe, wohin die Reise geht. Sie stellt uns vor Herausforderungen, wenn es um die Bildung einer gemeinsame Stimme geht, die für eine Sache fortschreitet. Dieser Mangel kann durch mächtige Interessen (z.B. ökonomisch oder politisch) ausgenutzt werden.

 

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“Anstößig ist die Lokalisierung”

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Agnes_Prammer_Happiness_is_here_ToonTown
(c) Agnes Prammer – Happiness is here (January 2016, Tokyo)

“Anstößig ist die Lokalisierung”, schreibt Herbert Hrachovec zwei Blog-Posts vorher. Er nimmt Bezug darauf, wie eine seiner Studentinnen (m/w) ihre Anregung zur Lehrveranstalltung in die Tat umsetzte. Statt darauf zu warten, dass die Lehrperson die hiesige Lernplattform modifiziert, verwendet die Teilnehmerin eine existierende Facebook-Gruppe um ihren Vorschlag gleich in Gang zu setzen. Dadurch erhielt sie eine größere Leserschaft – größer als der Kreis des an Teilnehmern beschränkten Seminars und konnte außerdem ihrem Impuls sofort nachgehen. Die Lehrkraft weist darauf hin, dass Facebook nicht der geeignete Ort ist, ein Seminar zu organisieren: Die Kräfte gehören lokal gebunden.

Es folgen Überlegungen die nahelegen, die Begriffe Immanenz, Transzendenz und Offenbarung im Licht von Smartphones, Cloud Computing und Immigration neu zu denken.

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plain text

Posted on by Andreas Kirchner Leave a comment

ASCII was very carefully designed; essentially no character has its code by accident. Everything had a reason, although some of those reasons are long obsolete.
–kps

As digital natives we tend to take for granted the significant efforts of intelligence that enabled the global tech revolution. Here is one small detail about ASCII control characters, which are for example still used to some extend in terminals (ssh).

What we can learn here is compactness and elegance. But let’s not transfigure the past. Maybe it’s a lesson about the temptations of universality.

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