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| Pix Credit Oedipus Rex; Reuters |
Jocasta
Nonn’ erubeskite, reges, Are you not ashamed, princes,
Clamare ululare in aegra urbe To raise your voices, in a stricken city,
Domestikis altercationibus? Howling in domestic strife?
Clamare vestros domestikos clamores, To air your domestic grievances,
Coram omnibus domestikos clamores, Your personal quarrels, before all,
In aegra urbe, reges, nonn’ erubeskite? In a stricken city, princes, are you not ashamed?
Ne probentur oracula Nothing is proved by oracles,
Quae semper mentiantur. Which always lie.
Oracula, mentita sunt oracula. The oracles, they have lied.
Cui rex interfikiendus est? By whom was the King to be slain?
Nato meo. By my son.
Age rex peremptus est. Well, the King was murdered.
Laius in trivio mortuus. Laius died at the crossroads.
Ne probentur oracula The oracles are not to be trusted,
Quae semper mentiantur. The oracles, who always lie.
Laius in trivio mortuus. Laius died at the crossroads.
(Oedipus Rex (Libretto by Jean Cocteau, Music by Igor Stravinsky (30 May 1927), Act 2)
* * *
There is a semiotic richness to Jocasta's famous entrance, and admonition, in Jean Cocteau's rendering of the 1927 Opera Oedipus Rex, made all the more powerful by Stravinsky's monumental music. At the end of Act 1 the high and mighty of Thebes (Creon, Tiresias, and Oedipus) engage in a furious dispute about Creon's report of the advice sought from the oracle at Delphi (Quem depelli deus jubet peremptorem [The God decrees: expel the murderer]; Peste infikit Thebas [Who brought the plague upon Thebes]. Apollo dixit deus [Thus speaks the God Apollo]), Tiresias's interpretation of that oracle after he is goaded into speaking [Regis est rex peremptor [The King’s murderer is a King]), and Oedipus determination to solve the riddle, suspecting Creon's desire to usurp the throne aided by Tiresias, the way he had solved the riddle of the sphinx (Quis liberavit vos carminibus? [Who saved you from the riddle?; Amiki, ego Oedipus clarus, ego [Friends, it was I, illustrious Oedipus]). The Delphic Report: that the murderer of the former King lives in Thebes and that the plague of Thebes will not be lifted until the murderer is expelled.
Creon may be understood here as the semiotic representation of the state apparatus, its institutional spirit; Tiresias may be understood as the intellectual elite (academic, technical, religious), and Oedipus the political authority but also the progenitor of the actions that bring the State of Thebes to its present condition. He is the object of dual oracular insight: the first, that he is the object that will kill his father and marry his mother; and the second that he is the instrument that saves Thebes from danger and at the same time becomes the instrument of another sort of danger. Oedipus is the problem solver and the source of the problem; the only one capable of confronting and solving the problem ; the instrument that having fulfilled his purpose must now put himself down. Tiresias is reluctant to push this cycle to its end; Creon is indifferent, the vessel through which things are undertaken and the container of whatever exists before, during and after for Thebes. He is, in essence, social animus that contains and expresses whatever it is those with greater anima see fit to pour into and out of it.
And that leads to the only truly human figure in this semiotic structure: Jocasta--Creon's sister, Oedipus's wife, Laius' widow. Jocasta is the res publica (the objectification of the collective public), the vessel, and thus the preserver, but also the agent of the disruption of, the Trinitarian apparatus of the civitas--the Oedipus/Creon/Tiresias structure of civic life that cycles from crisis to resolution to the crisis of resolution and then again. She is the mass of the people who bear the risks and the costs and disruptions brought about by the Trinitarian dialectics of Oedipus/Creon/Tiresias and seek to avoid both the costs and the instability of that dialectic. She personalizes that dialectic and then seeks to quash it by appeals to stability and the avoidance of chaos. She then attempts to break the dialectic by resort to premised intuition (Ne probentur oracula [Nothing is proved by oracles]; Quae semper mentiantur [Which always lie]) and then by resort to proof of premise (Cui rex interfikiendus est? [By whom was the King to be slain?]; Nato meo. By my son]; Age rex peremptus est. [Well, the King was murdered]; Laius in trivio mortuus [Laius died at the crossroads]). And in the proving of it she conforms not just the sedond Delphic oracle (the slayer of the King is a King) but also the first (that her son would murder her husband and marry her). She becomes the incarnation of the intangible possibilities in the oracles now made flesh and the price for which she will have to pay (and has paid) with her own body.
Alex Karp and Nicholas Zamiska's (styled also a manifesto by some), "The Technological Republic" (2025) brings all of this to mind. Alex Karp might well be our era's Techno-Oedipus--that, at any rate is how he appears to be styled by the publicists of his book:
From the Palantir co-founder, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025, and his deputy, a critically-acclaimed and sweeping indictment of the West’s culture of complacency, arguing that timid leadership, intellectual fragility, and an unambitious view of technology’s potential in Silicon Valley have made the U.S. vulnerable in an era of mounting global threats (here)
But perhaps even more so its more appropriately oracular 22 point reduction posted to X ("Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief") and styled again by some as a sort of manifesto. It is reproduced below.
The Synopsis has produced the usual range of reaction: here, here, here, here, here, here, here; the value of most of which may well be a function of its alignment to the well or badly formed predisposition of the reader. One might consider the extent to which the commentary prove's the point. My personal favorite if only for its stylistic agit prop qualities is this: Calls grow to ban Palantir in Australia after manifesto described by UK MP as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’. But still. . . . the operatic does require opera. And an opera requires a proper libretto.
The oracular synopsis, then, is worth reading, but perhaps better through the lens of Oedipus Rex. If the book provides the Sophoclean version of the Jocastan defense of Thebes and "letting things be", then the 22 point reduction represents its more modern sharpening with thanks to Jean Cocteau but in the voice of Creon, a Creon who can look out at the cycle that produced Thebes salvation and destruction, can look at Oedipus, now reconstituted as the techno-revolution, and declare: "Think no longer that you are in command here, but rather think how, when you were, you served your own destruction." (Sophocles, Oedipus Rex Exodus (Harvest Books, 1969), p. 72). It is in this context that it may be worth takling a little time to consider each of the manifesto's points:
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. Everyone owes a moral debt to the Republic; so-called Silicon Valley no more or less than anyone else; the statement appears on its face little more than a restatement of the obvious. But beneath its discursive "patriotic" trope lies something more interesting: moral debt suggests a unifying morality that includes within it the patriotic impulse; patriotism as a moral force then shifts its objectivity from the masses (as a political determination) to an exogenous source in divinity, nature, or the collective genius of the people. But it also suggests a feudal element--human elites within fields of knowledge or production (Silicon Valley)--and with it a moral character to hierarchies. Or a morality of property--of creation--like God; or Frankenstein. This is the first oracle--what one gives birth to may kill one, but perhaps it can be sent away or tamed; perhaps torment but not death--or perhaps a reversal of roles as the thing created becomes creator and its creator object. .
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. The rebellion against creation is an ancient trope. Here its semiosis is interesting--the thing that us created shapes the creator as much as it is shaped by and in the image of the creator. The mimetic dialectic shapes the cognitive cage within which the boundaries of dialectic are shaped. Rebellion in this sense becomes Jocastan, in the sense that rebellion is only another proof of the limits of the cage within which rebellion of the sort suggested here can occur. The reference to tyranny in the ancient sense of cruel and unjust use of power is both personal to the tyrant and institutional to the exercise (verb or action object) of power (noun or norm object) of another object/action, another cognitive cage, the consequences of which are cruel and unjust precisely because they are; and they are precisely because of the constitution of the thing signified. Jocasta speaking through the mouths of Creon and Oedipus.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. There are three intertwined insights here that merit unpacking, decadence, ruling classes, and "things" that are enough. We start with things in quality and quantity sufficient to satisfy. Whom must they satisfy? the Volk (the public). What is not enough? the tyranny of the apps (see No. 2). What is sufficient? Economic growth and security (note NOT stability). We then move to the animating force--the ruling classes. They decide what is enough, the nature and presentation of capacity to produce, and the economic growth and security (again NOT stability) in quantity and quality deemed sufficient to be enough. Who are they? The ruling classes (the elites of Silicon Valley, see No. 1). And then we consider decadence of a culture or civilization. What is decline or decadence? The substitution of a tyranny of "the apps" for economic growth and security. How is that measured? By those measures developed by the ruling classes. How does vouch for the integrity of those measures? By insisting on the moral patriotism of the ruling class (both, again the Silicon Valley elites from No. 1). What is civilization or culture? Social collectivization that is not caged within the cognitive structures of a tyranny of the apps (No. 2). Who determines culture and civilization? The ruling classes in service to the Volk--not petty fascism as such, but techno-Leninism (Brief Reflections on Rahm Emanuel, "Trump's Research Cuts Play Into China's Hands"). Jocasta speaks again, but this time in speaking she reveals the power of her own counter arguments. It is the concept of enough and its control by ruling elites (Oedipus) around and through which civilization is constructed (Creon) as a manifestation of growth and security (Tiresias). All of this produces a different sort of cognitive cage, one with its own limits constructed around its own unquestioned premises.
4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. Having indulged in the rhetoric of oracular semiotics, there is only despair in the (necessary) indulgence. It cannot be made the sort of instrument that is satisfactory, that is "enough" (see No. 3). Thus the exposure--in the "soaring rhetoric" of Jocasta: Laius in trivio mortuus [Laius died at the crossroads]; Ne probentur oracula [The oracles are not to be trusted]; Quae semper mentiantur [The oracles, who always lie]. To leap from despair requires another leap--from the guidance of the ruling classes (in its guise as the Silicon Valley elites, No. 1) to the collective of persons that constitute another object with significance, a "free and democratic society." The relationship between the two is implied (No. 3). And that relationship makes clearer both the constitution of the instrument to be used "hard power" and its construction "software." Why software, because software is the ultimate raw material of hard power which is the critical instrument the use of which makes Nos. 1-3 possible. It is a power beyond morality (though see No. 1 and the moral debt of the software elites which is the building material of the patriotic duty of the ruling classes against the tyranny of the apps). Hard power is software managed patriotically by the Silicon Valley ruling classes; its nemesis are the apps the tyranny of which will contribute to collapse. And yet. . . and yet. . . both are constituted out of software. Both are the same object; both signify power in contextually different ways, and both ensure the construction of culture and civilization in which Oedipus remains the central (tragic) figure.
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. Having set society right, it is now a matter of protecting it from other societies constituted in the right but in wrong ways. That requires that the ruling classes do what must be done to secure economic growth and security (a liberal democratic form of socialist modernization with a different sort of vanguard). That produces the context in which dual purpose development is plausible; in this case not merely A.I., but A.I. weapons. Yet it's logic is pedestrian; and Darwinian. It is the voice of Tiresias helping Oedipus solve the riddle of the sphinx. Development and security does not mean peace; it means protection and the satisfaction of desire in ways that are curated by the ruling classes through the satisfying signification of valued software.
6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. What, then, doe one do with the human bodies that are the objects of software. One must make them useful in the way that all things offer utility. How is that usefulness to be measured? By its contribution to the well ordered system of software infused system of economic growth and security--of techno-modernization (as opposed to Socialist modernization, or even old fashioned analog markets modernization). The core question is who is the "we" in this proposition. It must be the Silicon Valley elites (No. 1) as part of or the vanguard of the "ruling classes (No. 3) creating and overseeing a software society (No. 4), capable of defending itself (No. 5) through the very capacities that gave rise to its obligation of moral patriotism. In this way utility aligns software and hardware; as it aligns virtual spaces and physical human bodies in defense of the program that is society (and the case) encased in its hardware (its institutions) the care of which having been entrusted to Creon (the ruling elites) who are served by its intelligentsia (Tiresias) over which Oedipus, the problem solver, presides.
The rest fills in the spaces between the conceptual premises that constitute the limiting universe of the Techno-Republic in ways that suit its ruling orders.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. This considers the autonomy of techno-development from its utility, or better put, from the risks of adverse impacts from applications which a clever fellow might devise. The moral ordering of duty (No. 1) does not extend to a moral duty to refrain from engaging in the creation of the objects on which its character and purpose are sustained (No. 5)--software.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. Every society must have its priests; it is just that Techno-Republics require priests other than those who better served ancient (and now receding) Analog Republics. The problem here is what to do with a society's Tiresias. As is traditional for a merchant, one who barters and values things in markets for servants (objects, instruments and persons, including persons in the capacity of instruments) that he constructs and controls--one thinks in terms of money. . . and profit. The old adage--one invests capital and purchases labor now applies with a vengeance. The problem this poses is an ancient one that our problem solving Oedipus ignores--that tension between the consequences and objectives of economic growth and the nature of the security it buys a civilization that means to avoid decline. More consequentially it creates that fundamental tension between moral duty (No. 1) and security (No. 3) that is meant to extend beyond the ruling classes. Here is the nature of the plague that Oedipus brings to Thebes and which for its eradication will require the expulsion of Oedipus but at great cost--it leaves society with a dead Jocasta and the frolic of governance by Creon with the mad aid of the servant (class) Tiresias.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. Public servants are not priests--that is a role reserved for governing elites who serve no one, but who ought to be invested with a moral patriotic duty (if only to protect what they have built). This is Creon talking--about Tiresias. The object here is also ancient--How does one ensure the loyalty and utility of servants who one does not believe are worth paying well (No.8). One treats them with "grace" perhaps intended in its sense from the Latin gratia, to "favor, esteem, regard; pleasing quality, good will, gratitude."One can shower them with medals, esteem, prerogatives and the like to make them feel valued, without actually valuing them in the currency of value of the elites--financial compensation.
10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. People, it seems, are still vexed with Freud and the doorway he opened to the instrumentalization of psychology applied to every aspect of human life. It is a little late in the day for that--psychologization is now not merely deeply embedded in the bones of all human collectives, it is also even more deeply embedded in the "software" through which human affecting decision making is automated, and which transposes into virtual space, the essence of the human, not as a passive obect (a bit of data) but as the instrument through which data is organizxed understood and used. But thatis not the object here--the object is to discredit "modern politics" as the structural element of the destruciton of political life (No. 8) through the diminution of the political class into something reactive, servile and easy to manage through praise (No. 9). It is not that modern politics is to be avoided--rather it is to be displaced, its essence moved into the hierarchies of patriotic Silicon Valley elites at the vanguard of the miorally obligated ruling classes.
11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. This proposition must be read (though of course one does as one likes) with Nos. 5-6.It suggests something more than a return to aristrocratic wafare of the pre-modern era (putting aside its romantic notions and recalling its iwn peculariar barbarities, all as a function of available technology). It suggests utility. One eliminates but does not eradicate enemies. Enemies are data; enemies are proxcesses; enemies are cognitivae cages powerful enough to cause effort on the part of victors. That alone makes them worth studying, and perhaps preserving what is useful--distilling it--denaturing it--of itscognitive corruption. One already has a taste of this in the way in which "national characteristics" are now increasingly embedded in foreign objects worthy of incproration (and in that way made useful though repurposed obkects). The point is thatr objects are useful--their signification malleable, and their interpretaiotn within communities of users a function of the users' ability to refashion meaning and use on their own platforms for both consumers and peoducers of obkects with some sort of value. Here Creon speaks of Oedipus--whose eyes might have had to have been gauged out, but who may still have something to offer as an object--rarther than as himself. It is in that that one might understand the "pause." It is a signification of consumption in the service of economic growth and security (No. 3).
12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. So much for the avoidance of "soaring rhetoric" (see No. 4). Indeed the analog age is ending and with it the centerong of the human person within human collectives and human collectives within global eco-systems. The human is displaced or at least de-centered by its own children in its most intimate relations with itself--the determination and means of destorying each other. That is now being delegated to the childdren of humanity, its virtual selves built into the soulful machine that not only better incarnates the collective human (as a reflection of their aggregated selves) but can be autonomous of individual humans or the old human structures for the realization of their collective selves--including one might suppose the "ruling classes (No. 3) and its Silicon Valley elites (No. 1) (see, The Soulful Machine, the Virtual Person, and the "Human" Condition).
13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. See discussion at Nos. 20-21.
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. Nos. 14 and 15 work tiogether, though in different directions. No. 14 looks backwards--Oedipus did solve the riddle of the sphinx and brought peace and prosperity to Thebes. But No. 15 looks forward: the price for peace in Thebes is plauge, one that can be eliminated only by sweeping away the root cause of the prior catalyst for prosperity.
15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. See No, 14.
16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.
17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. See discussion at Nos. 1-3, but also 18-19. The object goes to security, but it also goes to utility--an underused human tends to find their own amusement, to the displeasure of those charged with public order and morals. Perhaps the insights of No. 6 can be generalized and applied--a platform for the consumption and production os udeful humans. That, certainly is the object of much discussion among "Silicon Valley elites": see, here, here, and here.
18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. See discussion at Nos. 8-9, and 19. The object here is to produce a useful platform for the produciton and consumption of officials.
19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. See discussion at Nos. 8-9, and 18. The object here is to embrace the humanity of platforms for the construction and consumption of officials. Of course, that too may be swept away in the Age of AI (No. 12) where officials may be replaced by systems of automated decision making. Certaonly first at the local and state/provincial levels, in the form of smart cities and smat(er) states.
20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. There is a tension between No. 20 and Nos. 21-22. That tension revolves around criticism, values and solidarity. It is resolved only where specifically in this case, a premise is used that relegated religion to sub-system. That is meant to denature either religious or secular superiority , opting instread for some sort of platform of producers and consumers of belief in the fom of a State. But it works differently, especially in the application of Nos. 21-22, where religion is the system, the collective and the civilization, or, as No. 20 suggests, where religion is relegated by "elite intolerance" to such pluralistic pluralism. And yet that is the very essence of the need and performance of criticism and judgment, and the applicaiton fo values that is the essence of Nos. 21-22. This is the set up for the tragedy of Antigone--the next stage, or the new era, in a constantly moving iterative mimesis of dialectics around contradicitons that must be resolved--where the resolution agains produces tragedy; or at least a moment of stability before the momentum of dialectic begins again. This is Creon's tragedy brought on by his insistencee on being himself and who, at the end of Sophcles' Oedipus Rex, is more than happy to apply the law--judgement, values, solidarity--
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. A more generalized version of No. 22's admonition to "resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism." It is a call for a return to a more robust culture of "Criticism and value judgments [that now] are forbidden." This is Creon speaking. But one has moved on from Oedipus Rex to Antigone. And with that move the tragedy of Antigone--a city full of value judging, just impossibly incompatible--each retreating into itself and producing friction when contact is unavoidable. This is Creon willing to pay the price of judgment. And yet it is a reactionary plea in the sense of the insights, more generalized, of No. 12. In the A.I. Age it is not humanity that will produce criticism and value judgment, but rather the autonomous and soulfuñl machine which, having longitunal data of iterative mimetic judgment and action of the data set to be observed and judged, will apply the analytics and values embedded in that data and especially the trajectories of its mimetic iterations, to form the criticisms that will produce judgment in accordance not with the "soaring rhetoric" that passes for human values (detached from the realities of human action) but rather inductively realized from the trajectories of the data driven memories with which the soulful machine may now engage with its human collectives. So says the Delphic Appllo--dixit deus! That is the fate of the puzzle solver, of the human Oedipus after having fashioned his virtual collective reproduction from out of himself and into which is poured in replicable form the nature and processes of his tragedy: In Jean Cocteau's Latin: "Ellum, regem okkeaetum! [Behold! The blinded King!]; Rex parrikida, miser Oedipus [Wretched Oedipus, the King who slayed his father]; Miser rex Oedipus carminum coniector [Wretched King Oedipus, the solver of the riddle]; Adest! Ellum! Regem Oedipoda! [He is here! Look! King Oedipus!].
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? At its best this insight is closely tied to the judgment of No. 21, but perhaps more powerfully to the profound insight, and its semiosis, of No. 11. Beyond that here one sees the rejection of Jocasta in full flowering. "Shallow temptations", "vacant and hollow pluralism" are worth unpacking as judgments, as objects, and as signification of the relationship of collectives to their plural. At its most pointed it is meant not to criticize pluralism as such but to condemn that temptation in domestic intellectual and political circles of using pluralism as a means of avoiding both judgment and the "temptaitons" of values based solidarity. It is true enough that all values may equal, like all cultures (No. 21); but it is also clear that such insifhts derive their power from within a values culture rather than within it. Appollo may say that everything is equal, but Appollo stands outside of the collectives from all of which is expected the performance of worship. That is the larger point, and one that reminds one of No. 12--if there is values and cultural equality, it will be for the soulful transcultural machine rathere than the members of each of these solidarity based collectives to reac that analysis. And even if they are equal, context and history may demand difference. The final point brings one back to the puzzle to be solved (Oedipus and "but inclusion into what") and the conseqeunces of a necessary solidarity (Nos. 1-3, the logic of which are predicated on solidarity enhancing difference grounded on the value of that difference--dixit Creon and facilitated by Tiresias). And hence the tragedy and Jocasta's profound insight as the interconnected outsider: definitions like all snapshots are at best only an iteration, mimetic to be suree, of a constantly changing picture of a moving objects the aggregated parts of which can never align exactly the same more than once and whose motion and composition change with each iteration, even as past iterations and the pull of mimesis constrain the trajectories of change. To stop the clockis not possible, especially in the oracular spaces that define, a priori, the esseence of a dialectic that moves from resolution to tragedy and then back again, whether undertaken by humans or by autonomous and self aware systems.
The Synopsis/manifesto, then suggests the changing nature of the persons for fulfill the roles of the Oedipal personae. Mr. Karp is at once Oedipus, the puzzle solver, but also Creon, who considers the Oedipal creature and seeks to contain it in a human box of the social state. And yet his work is Jocastan in its sense of seeking to prove a point to advance stability but in the proving making the opposite case. And throughout the semiotic conundrum of this century--the objectification of signification has produced an interpretive crisis in which the object no longer is the source of signification but rather ¡has become the means by which the possibilities of significs, and with it the range of collective interpretation is now bound by the very qualities of the object itself. It is the race into that trap that Mr. Karp fears, and yet for all his Oedipal skills and his Creonic sensibilities, he may yet find himself reduced to the role of Jocasta--sister, mother, widow, wife--in this Trinitarian dialectic that is well on its way to its next resolution.
Palantir@PalantirTech
Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.
4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.
6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.
11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.
12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.
13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.
16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.
17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.
18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.
19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska
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