Ruminations 28: The Archeology of Knowledge and the Certainty of Law

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is the last of a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

Law is meant to encase the knowledge derived from a polity within membranes of stability that make it impossible to pierce the membrane represented by the fundamental premises of a legal system without effectively declaring oneself outside the body politic within which it is enforced.  It isn't that one cannot piece the membrane, it is only that the disbelief necessary to engage in such practices makes it impossible to re-enter the social order thus encased. 

 

Ruminations 27: On Modernity, the State and the Great Migrations of Peoples

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

The tensions conflict between the need of states to assimilate migrating populations within its own political culture, the need of immigrants to protect themselves against the techniques and price of such assimilationist imperatives, and the incentives for states to protect the rights of their migrating populations (especially as they serve as inbound sources of wealth) describe not merely economic but also political conflicts made unresolvable under a theory of globalization that makes ¡borders transparent to capital and less permeable to labor.

Ruminations 26: On the Media, Manipulation, Work and Dementia

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

A fundamental contradiction of the current global situation, an impossible and irresistible momentum to reconcile the impossible--rhetoric and reality, crisis and mismanagement, symptom and cure. Dementia appears to be the fundamental character of an overworked state and its private corporate elites, the only solution to which is to work harder and without complaint, becoming indispensible even as mechanics of indispensability produces dementia.

Ruminations 25: The "Other" Rule of Law

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

Rule of Law has become the sacred fetish of institutions--public and private--under globalization. It implies a formal fixed meaning which is belied by its function in the contexts in which it is deployed. Rule of law is an empty vessel, filled with the beliefs and opinions of the masses for whose appeasement it is invoked.

Ruminations 24: AIG and the New Face of Controlled Economies

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

 Globalization has produced paradox. As states lose control of economic activity within their borders, as the borders of states become more porous, powerful private economic actors within states tend to acquire greater influence over the economic policy of states. When these private actors are able to conflate their collective interests and those of the state, the state loses power doubly--the first externally to the community of global actors and the second internally to a parochial economic faction.

Ruminations 23: An Ancient Basis for Creating Modern Non-State Regulatory Systems

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

The mob has become the most powerful force in a world that operated under the logic of globalization. Its most potent weapon is opinion and the cultivate of popular belief is the most important instrumental aim of sovereigns, all of whom are dependent on it and them.  Opinion makes use of might to create custom. And from custom proceeds justice that eventually serves as the basis for law.

Ruminations 22: Business Power, State Power and the Enforced Infantilization of the Individual

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

 In an effort to serve the individual, institutions have abstracted, aggregated and marginalized the individual within institutional structured created to serve them.  The institutional apparatus created to serve individuals now manages them as well.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the construction of the the monitoring and enforcement apparatus ostensibly erected to protect investors from the misbehavior of corporate agents.

Ruminations 21: Empathy

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

The specter of Titus (who destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem) and Hadrian (who banned Jews from Jerusalem and renamed the province Syria Palaestina) continue to haunt the land now within the control of the State of Israel. Israel remains a problem for the West precisely because the West remains unconvinced that two thousand years of religious teaching and  Roman Imperial judgement are wrong. Israel remains a problem for Islam precisely for the same reason--it is a superseded religion that remains as a bit of nostalgia and a part of their own religious archeology.  Within this construct, empathy is impossible but necessary.

Ruminations 20: Liberty, The Will and Act

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

States appear to preserve a sphere of liberty of conscience, and constrain liberty of action, especially in theocratic states.  Yet action ans conscience are linked in ways that make this distinction perverse. Conscience shackles the freedom of will and action; liberty is another way to suggest the limited framework within which conscience permits action.
 

Ruminations 19: Monkey Shines

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

As literacy declines, symbolic speech becomes more potent; ironicallysymbolic speech has increasingly been used to overwrite  text in increasingly interesting ways.  It is no longer possible to read words without a sense fo the symbolic overtones of the imagery that may be invoked--or extracted--from text or image.  

Ruminations 18: Ideology and Science in the Education of Children

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

For years there has been a large battle over the issue of the value of exposure to television programs for children and minors. So what is the fuss about? It is a battle for control of what children see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, because they serve as proxies for control over what children think, learn and believe.

Ruminations 17: The Separation of Ownership and Control in the Public and Private Sectors

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

It has long been a standard criticism of large economic enterprises organized as separate and autonomous legal persons, usually corporations, that their autonomy is at the root of their dysfunction. But this problem of separation and control applies in equal measure to the state. The crisis of the corporation, then, is also the crisis of the state.

Ruminations 16: Fundamentalisms and Authentic Expressions of Faith

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

It has become commonplace for the combatants to point to authentic and inauthentic forms of the religions of their adversaries. Christians and Muslims suggest which variants of Judaism are legitimate expressions of Jewish aspirations in Israel; Christians and other Muslims suggest which variant of Muslim practice and belief represent an "authentic expression of "pure" Islam. But all of these judgments are fundamentally illegitimate.  It is only the faith community itself with the authority and authenticity to express itself as it pleases. It is for the rest to accept.  And that is sometimes hard when the faith community expresses a belief in the violent suppression of its neighbors and adversaries. Yet acceptance is the first step in determining the legitimacy of response to the authentic expression of religious sentiment and the actions undertaken thereunder.

Ruminations 15: Exposure Draft Chinese Overseas Investments Rules

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

Every great power is eventually confronted with the issues of the bureaucratization of its interventions into the affairs of other states. This cannot be helped. The Chinese state clearly intends to encourage investment overseas but also means to control that character and scope of that investment--giving itself broad powers to intervene in the development of those investment relationships when it determines that intervention in the best interests of the state. While this approach is not possible under Western constructions of the division of public and private power under Western constitutions, it accords with the fundamental conception of the role of the state under the present Chinese constitution.This is particuñarly apparanet in the exposure draft of rules treating its administration of overseas investment recently circulated by the Chinese state and the object my observations here.

Ruminations 14- Democracy Part 14: On the Gesture and Substance of the Legislative Function in Advanced Democracies

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer))

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of quasi-aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

Legislative power has ceased to be the fearful object it was once, especially at the start of the American Republic.  The formal element remains, but the functional power has shifted increasingly from the legislative to the executive authority, and from the executive to the administrative bureau's that increasingly both mimic and pervert the elective and formally constituted governmental apparatus. What is left is a great gesture--a formal show of governmental organization belied by the functional drift of power elsewhere.

Ruminations 13: Beating Education into Teachers

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

Education is usually far more complex, and education policy is far more ironic, than is popularly understood. Students have been known to beat teachers (Students beat teachers – a signal of morals degrading? (Viet-Nam). But the state apparatus is apparently sometimes willing to use beatings as a disciplinary tactic itself.

Ruminations 12: Mother's Milk

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

There is nothing like mother's milk to produce a collision between necessity, law and culture. When one adds a little spice in the form of gender and class battles, and tops it off with a bit of the cultural narcissism of the West, then one concocts a very tasty brew. And it was that brew that appears to have been served up by Salma Hayek to the world through her breast and into the mouth of an infant not her own. Ada Calhoun, Selma Hayak, Breast Feeding and One Very Public Service, Time, Health & Science, Feb. 12, 2009.

Ruminations 11: The Criminalizaton of Politics and the Judicial forms of Warfare

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of quasi-aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

One of the great innovations of the end of the 20th century was the creation of a mechanism to implement the rule-culture of violence management between states and, within states, between political rivals. Thge object ostensibly was to create an architecture within which the transaction costs of violence would always exceed it value.  But its real value was regressive--to move back to sensibilities in which people are understood to have a value worth preserving to the leaders of the various state apparatus, while at the same time cultivating the idea of mass democracy as engaging all citizens in the occupation of violence.

Ruminations 10: On a Fundamental Rule of International Relations

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

International relations within vertically ordered states the community among which is ordered on a premise of horizontal equality produce a certain perverseness in their relationships. Sovereign lending and sovereign debt tends to functionally undo in global markets what lofty language and organizational frameworks seek to built within formally ordered structures. 

Ruminations 9: Liebestod Hugs

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

Love-death has a particular appeal in a sort of trans-cultural way.  And fire seems to be the lubricant most useful for effective consummation of love and life.  This pattern applies to states as well as couples.  All families seem to share certain characteristics. But far too grim. Many times an insight acquires profundity only when understood as irony. Out of perversity comes a greater understanding of the human condition.

Ruminations 8: Surveillance, Praetorianism and the End of the public-Private Divide

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of quasi-aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

A new age is always presaged by the recombining of previously disparate elements of the preceding age, and all to the good.

Ruminations 7: On Aggregations of Public/Private Power

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

A century ago the guardians of public power in the United States articulated a widely held fear of private aggregations of power. A generation ago the guardians of public power on a global stage continue to articulate the same widely held fear--but now threatening all states.  Still, the subversion of the classical notion of the public order, when that subversion can be effected to the advantage of the primi inter pares of the global state community, might still be a tempting alternative. And so a century's worth of worry has brought the community of nations closer to a solution they can both understand and control. The consequence: notions of public and private power are now necessarily re-conceptualized. Accordingly, just as the central problem of the last century was to conceptualize distinctions between public and private law based on the fundamental division of law grounded in the status of the actor, so the central problem of law in this century will be to conceptualize distinctions between regulatory and participatory law regimes.

Ruminations 6: On Flags

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions. Though each can be read independently of the others, they are intended to be read together and against each other.

Gesture can be the most condensed aphoristic expression. In human communities in which substance has grown too complex, or too contentious, it serves as a substitute for thought. Indeed, it serves as a negation of rationality. Gesture, especially in the religious and political sphere, can sometimes itself serve as a meta-gesture--one that beyond the complex of direct substance suggested also evokes a greater norm. Increasingly that meta-gesture is anti-rational. Gesture reaffirms the rejection of rational thought and substitutes for it something simpler--sensibility.

Ruminations 5: False Inferences in Shoes

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of quasi-aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions.

Nietzsche once noted

The art of drawing inferences. The greatest progress men have made lies in their learning how to draw correct inferences. That is by no means something natural, as Schopenhauer assumes when he says: 'Of inference, all are capable; of judgment, only a few.' It has been learned only late, and it still has not gained dominance. False inferences are the rule in earlier times; and the mythology of all peoples, their magic and their superstition, their religious cults, their laws, are inexhaustible mines of proof for this proposition.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, in The Portable Nietzsche (Walter Kaufmann, trans., New York: Viking Press, 1968) (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 1878).) at Para. 271.  But inference, even false inference, is usually not effected in isolation. Nor is it necessarily a passive event. 

Ruminations 4: On Gesture as Substance in Law & Policy

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions.

A sign of the power of mass democracy, as it has come to be understood in the West at leat, and the maturity stage of this form, is the privileging of gesture as a basis of policy. The greater the number of direct participants in the deployment of participatory political power, the simpler the expression of policy and the greater the need to hide its reality in complex documents, regulations, policies and processes that remain opaque to the electorate and that insulate elected officials from responsibility. In this sense, the politics of mass democracy is anti-democratic. Gesture as politics not merely substitutes for substance, it veils substance as well. Expression and sign of intention misdirects attention the way an illusionist draws attention away from the substance of activity. It is the illusion that both audience and performer crave, and both work hard for its attainment. The important goal is the sign of intention or attitude. Its substance is irrelevant to the audience as long as the gesture is elegantly effected and satisfies the cravings of the audience.

Ruminations 3: On the Reality of Mechanized Truth

(Pix (C) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions.

The Divine is said to be able to see everything be everywhere, understand everything, judge, punish, forgive and direct. The Divine, now incarnated through man, has become an aggregation of recording devices which together produce an image of memory. The spark of the divine is now measured in access to this recorded memory, and its control and use the mark of the strength of the connection to Truth. The interpretation of text--of Truth in the Word--has acquired a rather anachronistic flavor, and the priests of the new God(s) splice and concoct Reality from the Truth of the recorded image--sound, action, backdrop and the like.

Ruminations 2: Fecund Corruption Exposed

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is another in what I hope to be a month long series of quasi-aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions.

BY the time institutions build great edifices to their values and operations, the power of those values and institutions have passed. The grander the outward expression the more decayed and empty the inward vitality of that effort. Beware monument builders--they are institutional historians of form without content.

Ruminations I: The All Seeing Eyes

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer)

This is the first of what I hope to be a month long series of quasi-aphoristic (ἀφορισμός) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope is that, built up on each other, the series will provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions.

All conduct is now moral, in the sense that it is measured and judged. The new moral conduct is the outward expression of an inner fear--of exposure, of being recorded, observed, of the fear of the consequences of being caught failing to confess, to report to expose oneself. Technology is the divine apparatus of this new morality--the camera; the journalist; the record preserved of transactions, DNA and other interactions; the recording device; the Internet. It is the eye that never blinks, the memory that never fails, the image that never fades. Technology is the outward manifestation of the inner fear that is the new morality. It is Logos made manifest in the image of its makers. Technology reduces memory to a collection of recordings made manifest in machine. Life infinitely reproduction (and self-replication) at the touch of a button and the evocation of a mechanical device.