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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 3 - 07 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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> | [Redo in progress. I'm going to be redoing this essay during this week (at least). I wrote the first draft in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time. I'm not happy with it. Of course, I'd appreciate any comments while I am working on this revision. In the past I've done my work on a word processor and then imported it into the wiki all at once. This time I'm going to try working mostly on the wiki, so it may look a little ragged.] | | | | |
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< | Orienting My Professional Life | >
> | The Key to All Mythologies | | | | |
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< | [revision in progress. I wrote this in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time, and now that my summer job is a bit slow, I'm trying to make it closer to what I was actually trying to say.] | >
> | "You don't have to change the world" -- Prof. Moglen during one of our last classes | | | | |
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< | A Strategic Perspective | >
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> | For the past few years, I've tried to figure out how to understand how groups of people function together. There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires -- something like a more detailed understanding of Freud's super-ego that is at once an intensely personal and collective entity. If I could understand how groups of people created collective desires, then I could act intelligently in collective movements. I would be like an ant in Arnold's anthill that understood how it all actually worked. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where Pompidou broke up an coalition of worker's unions and bourgeois students by dissolving the representative assembly, which reminded the members of the coalition of their differences by forcing them to chose representatives. There's someone who knew how collectives behaved. On a slower and more repetitive plane, there's the entertainment industry that creates and profits from collective desires through movies and music. If I could understand how collectives behaved, then I could act effectively within them. I could change the world. | | | | |
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< | In the past I oriented myself either religiously or politically. I thought that if I did unto others as I would have them do unto me, then the big picture stuff would all work itself out. Politically, if I voted democrat and I was a good liberal, then eventually the world would realize its mistakes and “progress”. But I’ve gradually lost faith that if I do the right things on a micro-level the larger things will fall into place naturally.
My first paper explored an alternative to these smooth and teleological ideologies by embracing the irreducible complexity of the real world. There’s a certain nihilistic joy in bathing in chaos – “complexity so intricate, none can fathom it” as Wylie puts it – but while necessary for creativity, such aesthetic disorganization can become impotent and aimless when taken to the extreme.
Rather than burying my head in facts or steering by faith alone, I need to learn how to see things strategically from a global perspective. I need some way to structure the flood of information from the outside in order to orient my work in the world. How can I do this in a livable way, so that I’m not a martyr to the real? How can I avoid just sticking my head in the sand and plowing ahead with whatever practice I end up having – hoping in the end that it will serve a good purpose?
I need to develop my ability to read large-scale events. Let me try to use the methodology of this class by applying different disciplinary approaches in a conciliant manner. | >
> | The upshot of this obsession is that I've been drawn to authors that attempt what George Eliot calls "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaberation between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" through a materialist philosophy of just about everything. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics which promises a rational explanation for everything. |
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