The Concert:
Karl Jenkins:
The Armed Man (‘
Mass for Peace’) The anti-war piece was performed by the
North Coast Performing Arts Orchestra and Choir for the UN International Day of
Peace. The
event took place in the Bellingen
Soldiers' Memorial hall.
Thoughts on War:
Intense warfare is the evolutionary driver of large complex populations.
Primate and ant societies pursue war to defend their turf or invade others for resources.
Settler culture and rapid reproduction leads to an overflow of the '
petri dish'. The early enthusiasm for endless growth and
expansion brought about a way of life of '
Go forth, multiply, fill the Earth, subdue and vandalise the Garden'. The logic of expansionism led man to the "The brutal destruction of 'creation'."
H. Blumenberg
The
uncanny hubris
of '
creation's crowning glory' promising to achieve paradise on Earth now might have as an outcome the creation of hell on a once habitable planet. (
Anthropocene, CO2)
'The
pride of creation' usurped the place of the many Earth gods, which they
later rationalised into monotheism before upstaging 'the only one'.
Heads of hierarchical societies grounded their existence with
recourse to God - the sovereign's
ownership of the land.
Techné
Controlled fire use by early humans and tool manufacturing enabled a civilisation of ever-refined means of destruction. Warfare conducted throughout human history has refined the means of killing and formed society.
The
perpetual peace of “
citizens of the Earth” (
Erdbürger) had no chance against the
perpetual war of defending the home soil from
the other, or the land grab 'over there'. The state of
war of all against all' in a 'free market' and the
invisible fist of the market place became the new state of nature.
Sovereignty declares a '
state of exception' (
G.Agamben) with a tendency to generalize of
the exceptional state. This is a powerful strategy for legalised lawlessness, suspension of the juridical order.
Undeclared wars rage and no one can any longer say "
we didn't know".
Framing of War
War is "framed" in the media so as to prevent us from recognising the people who are to be killed as living fully "grievable" lives, like ours. "Collateral damage" is not part of the
war game.
Spectacles of Blood
"Roman gladiatorial shows were not put on for the purposes of indulging
violence, bloodlust and cruelty, even if they may seem that way today.
Instead, they were put on for several important purposes including
social control and education". Today's media frames the
robot wars 'over there'.
Decisions are outsourced to machines. The masses consume the spectacle at a safe distance on screens. The spectacle, a social relation between people that is mediated by images is a self-fulfilling control mechanism for society.
A society modelled on war.
The '
war model' of the
modern city and of human
catastrophic society is elaborated in
Virilio's '
dromology'. "
The expansive project of modernity has reached its limit in the light speed colonization of terrestrial time and space by technology and media"
A
permanent war economy merged with
Disaster Capitalism (
Naomi Klein) further accelerates and exacerbates the catastrophic nature of modernity. Disasters (economic, political, military or
natural) are good for profits - they reboot the system. "
Creative destruction,
interventions and
economic reconstruction mobilise resources for some. Margins are the largest outside the system of civil society. All is frontier with the loot going to the 'highest bidder'. There is
no longer a safe place - anywhere!
Discipline techniques
Disciplinary or managerial techniques are initiated and developed into a technology for the control of individuals. (
Michel Foucault) "'
Discipline' may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a 'physics' or an 'anatomy' of power, a technology." Psycho-orthopedics and pharmaceuticals also aid in the pathology of normality.
Ordinary people engage in "
the banality of evil."
(Hannah Arendt). Genocides continue and we are
running amok causing "
the
earth’s sixth mass extinction event, through such anthropogenic impacts
as habitat loss and modification, the spread of invasive species and
climate change" Is
omnicide the goal? Modernity as a system of efficiency, beyond ethics, mobilises all in the war against nature.
The driverless and shipwrecked
ship of fools cruises
(kyvernó̱: steers, navigates) into the
anthropocene, with no goal other than cruising the ocean of 'business as usual': more growth on an infinite planet, holding tight to the rudder of pathological denial.
Armed man is a tautology inhabiting the machinery of war.
Texts:
Agamben, Giorgio,
State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005,
excerpt,
Video, European Graduate School. 2003, starts at 2.29 min.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus:, 1980/ Nomadology: The War Machine (New York: Semiotext(e), 19
Subtopia, A field guide to military urbanism
Aeschylus,
The Persians
Images:
1.
Blake, William Blake,
The Ghost of a Flea, 1819–1820
2.
Arcimboldo, Giuseppe, Fire 1566
3.
Goya, Francisco,
The Disasters of War (Désastres de la Guerra), 1815–1820
4.
Bosch, Hieronymus, detail of
Haywain Triptych, 1516
