Canadian philosopher Justin E. H. Smith has a piece in Harper's entitled "Permanent Pandemic" and it elaborates things I've been thinking about in a way that I probably couldn't have myself.
Here in the US it's becoming more apparent that the utility of COVID was neither to keep lockdowns and mask mandates in place permanently nor―as a number of cynics thought―to simply clear Donald Trump out of the White House. Rather, it's been a way to introduce a new order wherein everyone is meant to defer to unelected experts their data. Their conclusions and recommendations aren't meant to be subject to the usual―or formerly usual―quasi-democratic political process.
Under the new regime, a significant portion of the decisions that, until recently, would have been considered subject to democratic procedure have instead been turned over to experts, or purported experts, who rely for the implementation of their decisions on private companies, particularly tech and pharmaceutical companies, which, in needing to turn profits for shareholders, have their own reasons for hoping that whatever crisis they have been given the task of managing does not end.
Once again, in an important sense, much of this is not new: it’s just capitalism doing its thing. What has seemed unprecedented is the eagerness with which self-styled progressives have rushed to the support of the new regime, and have sought to marginalize dissenting voices as belonging to fringe conspiracy theorists and unscrupulous reactionaries. Meanwhile, those pockets of resistance—places where we find at least some inchoate commitment to the principle of popular will as a counterbalance to elite expertise, and where unease about technological overreach may be honestly expressed—are often also, as progressives have rightly but superciliously noted, hot spots of bonkers conspiracism.
While you can raise philosophical objections or bring up practical problems from your own experience, the frustrating thing is that in both cases you're as likely as not to be talking to a wall.
2 comments:
We both enjoyed reading this article by Justin E. H. Smith, agreeing with most. But I'm tired of talking or thinking about covid these days, I think it was used as a ruse to see how much they could get us to obey their directives and, boy, were they successful. At the risk of oversimplifying complex issues here's my interpretation of how we got here:
With the loss of industry in the west, the US in particular, what we've seen come to prominence was the expansion of universities. No longer could young people expect to get a good job working at the factory as the jobs had been exported. But not just the blue collar ones. The white collar workers who had expected to go into middle and upper management no longer had access to those roles. What they did have access to was universities and many of them stayed on as adjutants and assistant professors. After a few years the universities had expanded with the understanding that they could train people to work as professionals in the 'service' economy.
It was around this point that managers started showing up in hospitals, legal practices, media organizations etc. The problem was that there were only so many jobs available at the middle management level which necessitated inventing new jobs. Computers and the internet helped enormously because they provided entry for young people who'd grown up using them. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. The whole process has become a self-licking ice cream cone. Thus when covid appeared, as it had to do (or something very like) the stage was set for current developments. The experts aren't simply expert in former fields of study, instead they invent their own.
Is malevolence involved? Probably. But more than anything else the idea is to make sure one always has a seat in the latest game of musical chairs and the music being played isn't by Johan Strauss. Perhaps what I've taken from Justin Smith's essay is largely irrelevant to the points he's made, but there is a history that's also important to recognize. That governments and major corporate structures want to control their populace goes without saying. That they'll succeed in the long run is questionable for the simple reason that there will always be people beyond their control.
"a future in which the emergency is over, but the technologies we developed to control it still control us" Who is this 'we' you refer to?
I would very much agree that it was a test of how much they could get away with. Rarely has "Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin' ass eyes?" been enacted so blatantly as public policy.
What has come into place over the years is a very professionalized economy. The most prestigious roles have gone to people who are meticulously trained. But what has that training consisted of and what has it been for? In many cases it's been an education in how to follow arbitrary rules, make sure everyone else follows them as well, and when you're ready, make up more.
I like the phrase "self-licking ice cream cone," which Matthew Crawford has also used. Computers have very definitely proven a great crop for the new generation of bureaucrat. One factor there is that computers became known as internet delivery vehicles. Then phones became internet capable. Now hundreds of millions of people walk around permanently tethered to the World Wide Web and all that is native to it.
Attempting to control people is a spiritually enervating actg. It eats away the soul. The fact that our government has spent so much time doing that is alarming. The extent to which our leaders--government and otherwise--try to do this is alarming. If amusing on those occasions when it blows up in their face.
Who indeed? Evidence has piled up that the "we" in that sentence is a very different group from the "us. Things have been arranged in favor of we.
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