For a Critique of Vulgar Reason.
Tags: Crisis, Capitalism, Ecology, Activism, Gender

“Il messaggero non is important” Stigmata, 1999.

So, I believe that in order to understand the consequences of the greatest structural crisis in the history of mankind, and its multidimensional manifestations in the real world, an original, objective and engaged response from both the humanities and political activists will be needed. This task necessarily involves understanding the symbolic and relative nature of social and materialistic relations in history.

Although the use of knowledge generated by the human sciences for military or mental control purposes is not something new in the processes of domination of the dominant classes, its appropriation by the postmodern State Ideological Devices — PSIs (Althusser, 1970), which were enormously enhanced by the recent advances in information and communication technologies via cyber platforms, by the ubiquitous algorithms and popularization of smartphones.

As it was predicted in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (MARX, ENGELS, 1848), the State has always been (and will be) at the service of Consortia of Oligarchic Classes. Such (transnational) Consortia, in possession of state resources, have historically hacked social institutions to perform “surgical interventions” in multiple layers of the social fabric, to reframe the meanings of the real, social representations and social consciousness (with dramatic impacts on the psyche of individuals ) and thus guarantee the continuity, in time and space (in history) of its Class hegemony.

However, a critical look at the history of Capitalism reveals a constant instability and inability to sustain bourgeois values, ideologies and institutions in the face of Capital’s irremediable contradictions. The powerful forces liberated by the French Revolution (1789–1799), imbued of humanitarian and social justice ideals, have since then been transforming the world in an increasingly accelerated and frantic way far from those noble ideals, turning them into something else. We will return to that point later.

Jean Baudrillard in the book “The symbolic exchange and death” (1976), affirms that, in modern times, the relentless acceleration of time makes the necessary organizing character of the supporting narratives of bourgeois civilization unfeasible since, in the face of such an innovative frenzy, the symbolic field only subsists in the precarious form of the “simulacrum”: arbitrary and unrelated representations of the real. Thus, the ideologies, the original utopias, which propelled the bourgeois revolutions or even the socialist utopias, become self-simulations, artificial narratives originating in the centers of power that need to be replaced from time to time to feed the agendas and interests of the ruling classes and its discontents.

Thus, if in modernity the truth is the first victim of war, in postmodernity, meaning (representation, sign and meaning) took the place of truth. Our tragedy is that, in the current public debate, we insist on interpreting the real in the light of the simulacrum (precarious mediation of the real) without realizing that the simulacrum is par excellence an “epistemological obstacle (Bachelard 1938) to the knowledge of that same reality. We live, therefore, in the “post-truth” era: a situation in which, when it comes to creating and shaping public opinion, objective facts have less influence than appeals to personal emotions and beliefs. (wikipedia, 2020) Everyone and nobody else has the prerogative of the truth because it is no longer possible to locate it in the “real” since the parameters on which people are based to interpret the real are incessantly destroyed / reconstructed to make way for the future. Therefore the revolt against the system, it’s a revolt against the future (COSMOPOLIS, Cronenberg, 2012)

To use a recurring example of simulacrum, I call attention to the advent of “identity politics” understood as ideological devices, which have infected the entire social fabric. The identitarianism reconfigured by the AIEs gained strength in the late 90s through the hijacking (instrumentalization) of the libertarian agendas that emerged in the midst of countercultural movements and civil rights in the 60s (Feminism, anti-racism, LGBT, environmentalist etc.) and it is part of a “psyop” strategy (psychological operation, cultural war) with well-defined objectives: infusing hatred and divisions between people, movements and parties, so that no one can act more clearly and rationally, often to the detriment of their interests and thus prevent any movement of criticism of Capitalism’s class contradictions. (LEIRNER, FERREIRA, 2020)

The efficiency of psyop is demonstrated by the profound and uncritical assimilation of identity narratives, whether by the academy, intellectuals or social movements. However, because one is “unconscious” (or resistant to criticizing) such arbitrary “reality”, the social scientist or political activist due to his belief in outdated simulacra is vulnerable (to false consciousness) and, therefore, susceptible to believe that, (historical!) meaning attributed to the ideological construction of the bourgeois world, by the western bourgeois episteme (Cartesian, mechanistic, rational) established by the bourgeois institutional framework (Republicans, Democrats), by bourgeois values ​​(Human Rights), by the conflict within bourgeois democracy (i.e left / right dichotomy) still have some substance or “sense” when in fact they were metamorphosed into simulacra. The cognitive dissonance results from the desperate search for meaning whether to “save the planet”, capitalism with a human face, socialism, fascism, anarcho-primitivism or any other narrative created by chaos engineers (EMPOLI, 2019) that is still relevant to sustain accumulation capital and keep the capital accumulation growth functioning at any cost.

Although it may seem contradictory to the thesis supported until now, criticism of devices like that is conditio sine qua non to overcome such predicament. It is essential to differentiate them from authentic and historic civil rights causes and relentlessly denounce them as cultural fraud. The role of the humanities is crucial in this process. Anyone who wants to overcome this condition must start from the recognition of these historical antecedents if one wants to make use of a transformative praxis, either for himself, in politics, in academia or in social life.

A final note on the mention of the film Stigmata at the beginning of this article. The author starts from the premise that the exercise of criticism in a society immersed in simulacra and unable to think objectively, although necessary, can be inglorious as the individual does not have the resources of the State (or of the Oligarchies) to influence an environment so contaminated by artificial narratives. Since narratives are easily absorbed by all social specters, any “dissident” is immediately stigmatized, including by their own peers in function of their political, sexual, economic agendas, etc. which are somewhat paradoxically engendered by the very immanent contradictions of the bourgeois social order. The dominant narratives (simulacra), seem to have an “ad hominen” built-in device (referring to an argument in which the opponent’s own words are used to challenge him) that acts in the psyche as a defense mechanism of the dominant narrative. Therefore, it is necessary to kill the messenger to hide his dissenting and / or challenging message.

Finally, humanity finds itself in an unprecedented civilizing impasse. Either continue to believe in the myths of infinite growth and it´s relentless mechanisms of creative destruction (SHUMPETER, 1942) of Capital, at the cost of an increasing state of structural chaos and social schizophrenia, or seek alternatives that are consistent with ancestral human needs and with the ecological systems that support the life of all living beings on the planet. As a first step, it is essential to combat the perception crisis (CAPRA, 2003) produced by Cultural War and its suicidal simulacra and adopt critical models that lead to a profound transformation in our perceptions, thoughts and values, that is, it requires a radical paradigm shift.