Re: <nettime> IOCOSE (2012) - A Crowded Apocalypse

Newmedia on Mon, 2 Jul 2012 15:44:55 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> IOCOSE (2012) - A Crowded Apocalypse


IOCOSE:
 
> we don't necessarily believe there are no 'real' conspiracies any more
 
Conspiracies, of course, are normal human behavior and are everywhere in 
our lives. 
 
They become "theories" when a few take their obsessions about social power 
(which they typically don't either have or understand) and weave 
"explanations" that seem to fit the "facts." 
 
They become a "crowdsourced" art-project when the need for recognizing 
*patterns* is so widespread that it can't be restrained.
 
Technology has much to do with these developments.
 
Since "social power" is at the heart of the matter, what underlies all this 
 are two related topics -- history of the power elites and actual elite 
history. 
 
History of the power elites is what sociologists do. C Wright Mills 1956 
"The Power Elite" is where many begin. UCLA's Michael Mann's 1986/1993 
"The Sources of Social Power is the most complete account to date but it ends 
its narrative in 1914. William Domhoff's "Who Rules America?", in its 6th 
edition in 2009, with another coming in 2013, is an application of Mann's 
IEMP "model" to the American situation.
 
The *actual* elite history (i.e. what things look like to an insider to the 
 key events) is rarely written. What is written is often one-sided and 
deliberately misleading. Carroll Quigley's (Bill Clinton's mentor at 
Georgetown, as highlighted in his first inaugural speech) 1981 "The Anglo-American 
Establishment" remained unpublished during his life and, even then, ends 
with WW II -- when the biggest "rotation" of elites in modern history 
occurred, replacing Quigley's WASPs with the "evangelical" Baptist Rockefellers. 
 
Some of the best "elite history" is written as biographies. Kai Bird's 
1992 "The Chairman: John J. McCloy The Making of the American Establishment" 
is one of the best accounts of the post WW II elites but it ends with the 
Vietnam War. Today's expanding research into the "Cultural Cold War" is 
uncovering important details about the 1950s/60s but it *fails* to comprehend 
what happened when the CIA *purged* itself and turned to a "world peace" 
agenda following the 1975 Church Committee.
 
What has actually happened over the past 35+ years has been largely 
undisclosed, partly because the Anglo-American power elites have been decline 
(i.e. no one "replaced" McCloy and the Trilateral Commission was the last 
"hurrah" for the Rockefellers), so few want to "brag" about their failures.
 
The unraveling of the Euro-zone is just the latest example of how 
"conspiracies" hatched in the 1950s are finally meeting their long-deserved destiny 
(i.e. the scheme for a United States of Europe, as a stepping-stone to 
"world government"), although most who are involved don't yet know what is 
happening or why.
 
The real *action* for power elites has shifted far away from the "Atlantic 
Alliance" and moved to the BRICS and beyond. China is the best example of 
a place where an actual elite -- although not the individuals who appear 
on the podium at public events -- is "conspiring" every day, with little 
recognition even at the "highest" levels of Western governments, since the 
cultural gap (which was still fairly narrow with Russia) is beyond the ability 
of most outside China to comprehend.
 
> we have failed to acknowledge that crowdsourcing is now 
> something quite different from what we hoped and imagined
 
This is a crucial point. What these technological environments have done 
*TO US* is a significant challenge for many to understand. As a result, 
"Black Swans" has become a big business, particularly for those who still 
embrace the "English Ideology."
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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