Euphoric Crisis – From the internet to the New Emancipation

"...other things being equal, we can say that the philosophy which certain biologists, geneticists and linguists today are busy manufacturing around ‘information theory’ is a little philosophical ‘crisis’ … in this case a euphoric one."*

What would a euphoric crisis look like today? How would information theory look if it produced euphoria, then articulated the euphoria to a crisis? Which of these two conditions, euphoria and crisis would it be correct to emphasize? 

These questions beg the ultimate question: Could information theory really determine a euphoric crisis? The empirical answers, of course, abound in the positive. They are rooted in our virtual and material lives. Surely the relationship between information theory and euphoria is becoming clearer by the day.

At every juncture of our lives the smart phone connection offers access to advanced telecommunications in a seamless network of experiential bliss. It is ubiquitous, ushering in the horizon. Never before in human history has it been possible to experience on a daily basis the euphoria that exists because of the internet. This is not a little philosophical crisis, as called out by Professor Althusser in 1971, it is a big one! It is the crisis of all established forms of philosophy.

This is the crisis that results from the impending unrestricted circulation of knowledge. In this moment, it may in fact be possible to achieve a nearly continuing state of machine induced euphoria. These days, 40 years after Professor Althusser’s comment it could be called wonderment. Such is the stimulation the digital always already makes possible.

This is not to be confused with the simulation the digital also makes possible.

The crisis is the stuff of a new kind of emancipation in which the conditions for the sensuous life are achieved. Every emotion is concentrated like a laser beam of perfect energy. It is a practicum of participation, in which the public dances on the horizon. The individual feels fully realized, liberated, unconstrained, momentarily transcendent.

I make a phone call, from anywhere, and successfully connect – euphoria. 

I wish to speak to my daughter in Boston and I hear her immediately – euphoria.

I speak to my son on the line in the same city – euphoria.

I look for a song, long forgotten and find it – euphoria.

I discover the song, its title and a moving picture of the artist – euphoria.

I stop the video to examine the pock marks on the singer’s face – euphoria.

I start then stop again as I look at the base player’s overlong fingernails – euphoria.

I whistle along to a happy tune, within a cocoon of the present – euphoria.

I look at the photo of Ken Wark and think about a conversation we had in 1992 with Meaghan Morris– euphoria.

I listen to “Dolphins” by Tim Buckley on You Tube– euphoria.

I reminisce about a friend whose image appears on line – euphoria.

I cannot be constrained - …

The infinity of possibility is terrifying. The foundation of the crisis is this terror. Old disciplines like philosophy cannot describe this terror, therefore it cannot claim it. For his part, Professor Althusser could never imagine this, especially the interconnection of geneticists with information theorists.

Who could predict that DNA would be the basis for the crisis? Now it is because it describes information theory, connected as it is to the internet.  Even the subject, “I” is removed from the DNA project, a field described by nanotechnology. The “stuff of life” is a series of structures, where “I” do not exist.

The experience of euphoria gives way to another set of possibilities – to call it reality would be misplaced. It is post-human sensibility.  

And in the post-human the crisis for philosophy is with us. Euphoric is a word – probably not the right one. So it is necessary to move into the transdisciplinary domain, where the usual conditions for analysis fade away. Under these conditions philosophy is terminated as an otherwise dead weight on the analysis. The transdisciplinary project makes it possible to get to the end point more speedily.

Emancipation is what human beings desire. The burden of life is finally realized in death. It is why death is the solution for those people who kill themselves, because it is the perfect realization of freedom.  All the prophets say this, suggesting that to become a prophet one must work out how to convey the hopelessness of life and replace it with emancipation in death. To be able to tell that story is to make a claim to prophetic insight.

Should the digital life be prophetic? This may be the end point of information theory euphoria. Certainly it marks the end point of life as it has been known. It is the beginning of the end of the crisis.  

*Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, 1971.

"Wilful blindness" and News International - old and new on the internet

Is is possible to get a handle on the goings-on around News International? Surely anyone who watched the interviews of Rupert and James Murdoch, Rebecca (look at my big, red hair!) Brooks to the UK House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sports Committee on Tuesday 19 July, 2011 would be hard pressed to reach any conclusion but one - this is a massive organization run by hundreds of ambitious managerial neophytes who do whatever they can to impact the bottom line.

No one in civil society, with its laws that demand certain decency standards, expects to see and hear executives say they do not know what the neophytes do! But there it was. Perhaps on this basis alone, News International as a company, is too big.

The best question of the day was the one about "wilful blindness."

Q 269 Mr Sanders: "Finally, are you familiar with the term "wilful blindness?"
James Murdoch: "Mr. Sanders, would you care to elaborate?
Q270 Mr Sanders: "It is a term that came up in the Enron scandal. Wilful blindness is a legal term. It states that if there is knowledge that you could have had and should have had, but chose not to have, you are still responsible."

It could be the touchstone for any discussion of corporate analysis in the context of digital communications. The point is not to discuss the details of the Murdochs and Rebecca Brooks et. al., but to understand how "wilful blindness" translates into the communications and media fields.

(Can someone please count the number of times Rupert and James admitted that they did not know, or had no knowledge of, or were unaware of? If this is not willful blindness, then is it incompetence? These are important questions for media, to which civil society entrusts the informing, entertaining and education of citizens. Then again, the very idea of civil society itself must be in debate because the internet suggests new theories of civil society, namely that of a global state of flux.)

The task is to recognize how the internet may enhance "wilful blindness," making it possible for new types of behavior to come into play. These types of behavior, as my theory of proletarianization suggests, are the unregulated ones: the values and ideologies that civil society has previously managed. By managed I mean suppressed. (Note that Rupert Murdoch himself mentioned human nature in the hearing.)

Like all astute people, Rupert's mention of human nature is utilized as a countervailing strategy to avoid responsibility for doing things that are unacceptable in civil society. If people are fundamentally interested in human nature, then the media must engage in the presentation of weakness, of evil and of good, which are its characteristics. According to this world view, people are viewed as fundamentally good or evil and it is here where the business opportunity arises. The argument goes that business is merely meeting and channeling human nature. The role of business, of the media, is to recognize that and allow it to flourish. This is liberty, the characteristic of emancipation.

At the time it was used at News of the World and elsewhere in News International, phone hacking was a means of exposing human nature.

If you have read this far, you will know that you do not need to be Einstein to realize where this line of thinking leads. It leads to excess, to admitting and allowing human nature to flourish, regardless of the consequences.

In the unregulated internet domain, you allow human nature to flourish and you do so by not applying old ideas like "wilful blindness" because that's irrelevant in the new era. It's a wonderful circuit of syntactical logic, cultural politics and the displacement of Enlightenment ideas.    

Any review of the phone hacking scandal could utilize "wilful blindness" as an analytical tool with which to evaluate the phone hacking activities. It would be a way of elaborating on the political economy of the media.