m of care – mar 30
what is war – comparing/connecting graeber and farocki
notes/quotes (27 here):
Christopher Emsden from co @chcemsden
nika: reading from david – on some societies not having war.. reading from doe: social substitutability.. can kill any soldier.. it’s almost invariably necessary to employ some combination of ritual, drugs and psychological techniques to convince people, even adolescent males, to kill and injure each other in such systematic yet indiscriminate ways.’
khan filling the gaps law.. hari present in society law
nika: on games and rituals turning into war.. systematic violence by killing.. stop being play and become a war
steven: both are interested in seeing why war comes about as it does.. on atomic as logical conclusion of tech.. max energy w max effect.. that ties into what graeber saying war as a simplification.. for farocki.. war is a machine that does simplifications.. graeber.. says violence is the most predictable thing.. the end of dialogue and war is logical conclusion of that.. beyond that this connection between production and warfare.. ie: in debt he talks about rise/origins of money.. money is product of war.. wars are there to make markets.. so both very interested in how war connects to production..
norton productivity law – it takes getting nothing done to make us human again – Quinn Norton
graeber unpredictability/surprise law – a social theory of action where surprises/unpredictability are the basis of humanity – david graeber (interps/paraphrases)
steven: on david’s bully pulpit.. one of reasons violence continues to exist is because humans aren’t good at it so become spectators.. so perpetrator, victim and audience.. problem not so much violence.. but when it is spectated and isn’t responded in connecting ways..
thurman interconnectedness law – when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman
simona: on humans not being good.. in debt .. on age of capitalism.. says luther was obliged to take sides
steven: graeber has commented on our understanding of civ is that in order to be civilized have to restrain baser instincts w/in .. since prone to violence. graeber says that’s false premise.. but by that logic.. humans always at threat of war.. only when can control.. can live peacefully.. can’t be a polis w/o there being a police.. much of what doe sets out to do is disapprove that.. connects back to nika’s opening quote about society’s that practice warfare less.. and shows war more about production et al
vassily: (zanaida: question on what david thought of modernity).. i think his essay on .. never was a west.. rather than modernity.. i would guess he didn’t use the term
michael: in films we watched.. the machines maxing production and then turned back to violence.. david has a lot of connections to B and violence.. not so much on tech.. david sees violence used to create a structure of value.. violence creates structure of hierarchy..
graeber exchange law.. graeber values law.. et al
michael: david has a lot of enthusiasm for tech.. but says more creation under free society.. under patriarchal.. more weapons et al.. i think what david thinks of tech is not what we think of tech.. more the creativity side.. a war tech doesn’t solve people’s needs to eat.. so david doesn’t think of it as creative.. he talks about how we see tech as an extension of B
vassily: i think they’re talking about same think.. ie: david’s notion of interp labor.. understanding someone means imagining self in their place.. and how interp labor distributed unevenly..
vassily: on techs now being knowledgeable and ignorant.. amass so much data.. hardly capable of any interp labor.. so similarity between farocki and graeber’s work..
simona: quote: not even dead will be safe if enemy wins.. i asked myself.. who is this enemy.. constitutes self by being the winner.. because constitutes self by war.. war not just about opposition but about fixed id’s.. obliges us to be on one side or other.. so no schismogenesis.. creation of new id’s.. this is what makes the subject of power.. our enemy
simona: also david’s politics of magic.. on rulers can’t stand magic.. if magician a fraud.. makes you think power based on ability to convince others they have it.. so same w ruler.. so war not just org’d by violence.. but by contest.. most important exercise in war is this make believe.. constitutes/fixes borders.. problem is when metamorphosis is not permitted
siddiqi border law.. marsh label law
simona: quote from debt: ‘we assume world org’d into societies and that all people know which one they are in.. very rarely the case.. we accept our only id is to belong to state.. on not knowing what country you’re supposed to belong to’
zinaida: screenshare of pics from farocki’s film.. pictures of war – on tech innovation toward production et al.. on math standing for violence.. resonates w david’s ref to money.. turning things into calculations
lit & num as colonialism et al
zinaida: ton he controlling gaze.. not about presence of weapons et al.. but means to calc.. when human relations turned into math violence takes place
graeber violence/quantification law – when one looks a little closer, one discovers that these two elements—the violence and the quantification—are intimately linked
zinaida: in a way.. violence is embedded in every day life.. always there.. it’s the exercise of power.. and war is the final stage of this interaction.. where no interaction.. just .. end of convo
steven: warfare when practiced.. becomes means and end as one.. process is the outcome in absolute destruction of the other..
christopher: on the speed by which people get excited by war.. people go from apathy to rallying around flag.. crusade.. even people who will suffer materially.. curious why that happens.. there’s interp labor and interp *maintenance.. just really curious about **speed on which we rally..
khan filling the gaps law: these cynical groups..step in and actively groom/provide whatever it is that our young people are lacking in their lives.. these groups try to fill those gaps
happens because of missing pieces
*siddiqi border law and **why leap ness and why it’s not a fantasy to think we could
[simona in chat: While human beings have always been capable of physically attacking one another (and it’s difficult to find examples of societies where no one ever attacks anyone else, under any circumstances), there’s no actual reason to assume that war has always existed. Technically, war refers not just to organized violence but to a kind of contest between two clearly demarcated sides. As Raymond Kelly has adroitly pointed out, it’s based on a logical principle that’s by no means natural or self-evident, which states that major violence involves two teams, and any member of one team treats all members of the other as equal targets. Kelly calls this the principle of ‘social substitutability’7 – that is, if a Hatfield kills a McCoy and the McCoys retaliate, it doesn’t have to be against the actual murderer; any Hatfield is fair game. In the same way, if there is a war between France and Germany, any French soldier can kill any German soldier, and vice versa. The murder of entire populations is simply taking this same logic]
[nika in chat: The same is true of warfare. As Elaine Scarry points out, two communities might choose to resolve a dispute by partaking in a contest, and often they do; but the ultimate difference between war (or ‘contests of injuring, as she puts it) and most other kinds of contest is that anyone killed or disfigured in a war remains so, even after the contest ends.]
[vassily in chat: Sounds good, Luis. So: about the affinity between violence and commerce, see ‘Turning Modes of Production Inside Out’; about the notion of interpretive labour, see ‘Dead zones of the imagination’]
luis: we aim to have these mtgs last wed of every month
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be you. 