xeromass
10-24-2014, 07:09 AM
Interesting blog, that could explain why in this Muslim society women are fighting on front lines and are considered more or less equal.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/HAPPIDROME-Part-One
In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border everyone talks about the enemy - IS - and the frightening ideas that drive them. No-one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them.
But the moment you look into what the Kurds are fighting for - what you discover is absolutely fascinating. They have a vision of creating a completely new kind of society that is based on the ideas of a forgotten American revolutionary thinker.
He wanted to create a future world in which there would be no hierarchies, no systems that exercise power and control individuals. And the Kurds in Kobane are trying to build a model of that world.
It means that the battle we are watching night after night is not just between good and evil. It is also a struggle of an optimistic vision of the future against a dark conservative idea drawn from the past.
...
In his solitary confinement Ocalan began to read. And in 2002 he found a book by Murray Bookchin called The Ecology of Freedom - The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Despite the title, Ocalan was inspired by Bookchin’s arguments - and it changed the way he saw the world.
It made him realise - Ocalan said - that all systems of power create 'submissive persons’, and that the only way to really create a true revolutionary world was to build one without any hierarchies. He turned his back on Marxism and nationalism and proposed instead a completely decentralised system of government - run by local committees.
It was modelled on Bookchin’s ideas - and Ocalan sent out instructions to all militants that they should read The Ecology of Freedom. He even sent a letter to Bookchin asking to meet him - but Bookchin was too ill. Two years later in 2006, when Bookchin died, the PKK saluted him from their mountain hideouts as - “one of the greatest social scientists of the twentieth century.”
Then came the Syrian civil war - and the Kurds in the north of Syria used the chaos to create a series of free enclaves - one of which is the city of Kobane. The Kurdish group who did this is allied with the PKK - and it seems that they have set up free self-governing communities in these areas that are inspired by Bookchin’s ideas.
It is a fascinating story - but in our cynical age such ideas seem unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky experiments.
...
The film then goes to another promoter of this utopian future - an experimental psychologist called B.F. Skinner. He outlines a new way of controlling and ordering people. It is no longer possible, he says, to tell people what to do. In an age of individualism and mass democracy people won’t accept that any longer. Instead you reward them for behaving in the ways you want them to.
You make them happy, and they feel that they are in control - because by doing something they get the reward.
...
The film records an experiment in a mental hospital in San Bernadino - California. The patients are given rewards in the form of plastic fake money if they do what the doctors consider the right social behaviour. They can then use that money at meal-times to buy their way onto a “nice” table - with tablecloth and flowers.
Those without the rewards have to eat - as one of the nurses puts it, “in less elegant conditions”.
What emerges in the hospital is a new, ordered hierarchy created by a system of reward - but one where the patients don’t feel controlled - instead they feel “empowered” because it was through their actions that they received the reward. Skinner makes clear in the film that he sees this as a model for how to run a future kind of society.
Watching these sections of the film does make you think that what is being described is spookily close to the system we live in today. And that maybe we have misunderstood what really has emerged to run society since the 1980s.
The accepted version is that the neo-liberal right and the free market triumphed. But maybe the truth is that what we have today is far closer to a system managed by a technocratic elite who have no real interest in politics - but rather in creating a system of rewards that both keeps us passive and happy - and also makes that elite a lot of money.
That in the mid 1980s the new networks of computers which allowed everyone to borrow money came together with lifestyle consumerism to create a system of social management very close to Skinner’s vision.
Just like in the mental hospital we are all given fake money in the form of credit - that we can then use to get rewards, which keep us happy and passive. Those same technologies that feed us the fake money can also be used to monitor us in extraordinary detail. And that information is then used used to nudge us gently towards the right rewards and the right behaviours - and in extremis we can be cut off from the rewards.
The only problem with that system is that the pigeons may be getting restless. That not only has the system not worked properly since the financial crash of 2008, but that the growing inequalities it creates are also becoming a bit too obvious. The elite is overdoing it and - passive or not - the masses are starting to notice.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/HAPPIDROME-Part-One
In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border everyone talks about the enemy - IS - and the frightening ideas that drive them. No-one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them.
But the moment you look into what the Kurds are fighting for - what you discover is absolutely fascinating. They have a vision of creating a completely new kind of society that is based on the ideas of a forgotten American revolutionary thinker.
He wanted to create a future world in which there would be no hierarchies, no systems that exercise power and control individuals. And the Kurds in Kobane are trying to build a model of that world.
It means that the battle we are watching night after night is not just between good and evil. It is also a struggle of an optimistic vision of the future against a dark conservative idea drawn from the past.
...
In his solitary confinement Ocalan began to read. And in 2002 he found a book by Murray Bookchin called The Ecology of Freedom - The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Despite the title, Ocalan was inspired by Bookchin’s arguments - and it changed the way he saw the world.
It made him realise - Ocalan said - that all systems of power create 'submissive persons’, and that the only way to really create a true revolutionary world was to build one without any hierarchies. He turned his back on Marxism and nationalism and proposed instead a completely decentralised system of government - run by local committees.
It was modelled on Bookchin’s ideas - and Ocalan sent out instructions to all militants that they should read The Ecology of Freedom. He even sent a letter to Bookchin asking to meet him - but Bookchin was too ill. Two years later in 2006, when Bookchin died, the PKK saluted him from their mountain hideouts as - “one of the greatest social scientists of the twentieth century.”
Then came the Syrian civil war - and the Kurds in the north of Syria used the chaos to create a series of free enclaves - one of which is the city of Kobane. The Kurdish group who did this is allied with the PKK - and it seems that they have set up free self-governing communities in these areas that are inspired by Bookchin’s ideas.
It is a fascinating story - but in our cynical age such ideas seem unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky experiments.
...
The film then goes to another promoter of this utopian future - an experimental psychologist called B.F. Skinner. He outlines a new way of controlling and ordering people. It is no longer possible, he says, to tell people what to do. In an age of individualism and mass democracy people won’t accept that any longer. Instead you reward them for behaving in the ways you want them to.
You make them happy, and they feel that they are in control - because by doing something they get the reward.
...
The film records an experiment in a mental hospital in San Bernadino - California. The patients are given rewards in the form of plastic fake money if they do what the doctors consider the right social behaviour. They can then use that money at meal-times to buy their way onto a “nice” table - with tablecloth and flowers.
Those without the rewards have to eat - as one of the nurses puts it, “in less elegant conditions”.
What emerges in the hospital is a new, ordered hierarchy created by a system of reward - but one where the patients don’t feel controlled - instead they feel “empowered” because it was through their actions that they received the reward. Skinner makes clear in the film that he sees this as a model for how to run a future kind of society.
Watching these sections of the film does make you think that what is being described is spookily close to the system we live in today. And that maybe we have misunderstood what really has emerged to run society since the 1980s.
The accepted version is that the neo-liberal right and the free market triumphed. But maybe the truth is that what we have today is far closer to a system managed by a technocratic elite who have no real interest in politics - but rather in creating a system of rewards that both keeps us passive and happy - and also makes that elite a lot of money.
That in the mid 1980s the new networks of computers which allowed everyone to borrow money came together with lifestyle consumerism to create a system of social management very close to Skinner’s vision.
Just like in the mental hospital we are all given fake money in the form of credit - that we can then use to get rewards, which keep us happy and passive. Those same technologies that feed us the fake money can also be used to monitor us in extraordinary detail. And that information is then used used to nudge us gently towards the right rewards and the right behaviours - and in extremis we can be cut off from the rewards.
The only problem with that system is that the pigeons may be getting restless. That not only has the system not worked properly since the financial crash of 2008, but that the growing inequalities it creates are also becoming a bit too obvious. The elite is overdoing it and - passive or not - the masses are starting to notice.