TURNING THE HISTORICAL CORNER TOWARD A NEW TOMORROW

Understanding this global phenomenon, call it the “viral effect,” is not about some sort of self-evident factualities versus conspiracy theory, as if these are the only two possible perspectives of thought.  The former reifies “factuality” and becomes a mythic “factualism.”  The later reifies the source of action, control and intent and imagines some “big brother” in cyberspace or nefarious bad-guy Illuminati in smoke-filled back rooms planning to orchestrate world change.  Get real.  The ‘viral effect’ is a mass mediated idea that is historically catalyzing global trends of divergence away from the Universalism or globalism, empire building, civilizational homogenization, totalitarian one-dimensionality, etc., etc.  No medical facts will clarify what is happening at this historical turning point.  We must rethink the whole of contemporary life and the parts of that whole in particular.  We all can play a part in this or turn it over to the self-appointed emperors of existence.  It’s time to re-appropriate one’s self in the deepest and broadest existential and spiritual sense.  It’s the opportunity for every individual to become a player and not a pawn.  One can be at play passionately in the fields of the Lord; or a minion worker bee passively responding to the “expert authorities” when they tell you to “believe,” “feel,” “act” as they see fit.  The ‘viral effect’ is the opportunity to fully become a human being in thought, feeling and spirit and re-appropriate the living Self whose experience creates the real, constitutes the real and decides upon the reality to be created.

One aspect of this possibly emerging ‘new normal’ is the recognition of the institutional force or ideological force of official, ‘mass mediated’ authority/expertise/specialization.  The medical aspect of the ‘viral effect’ is what we see in a few official experts such as Fauci, Birx and Gates commandeering the reality of what is going on and attempting to force or suggest universal political solutions: masking, social isolation, socio-economic shutdown.  These actions are the result of a Liberal/Enlightenment psychology (become ideology) that imagines a universal solution to a health problem.  Bill Gates states this most ludicrously when he claims that nothing can return to normal until there is universal global vaccination.  This is the delusion of all delusions.  This is a rich boy playing with his money and consequent power trying to make his vacuous existence meaningful and undoubtedly also enrich his bank account beyond all dreams. 

But in keeping with the medical issue, what is at stake here in the face of the official authority/experts influencing health policy and socio-political action is the question of the locus of control of one’s health and the locus of control of one’s identity and self-understanding even and especially at the personal, subjective and spiritual level.  In short the authentic ownership of one’s own body, mind and soul is at stake. 

If for example, I make any comment on Facebook regarding the medical knowledge around the ‘viral effect’ someone will inevitably respond with a comment like “what medical school did you go to?”  The challenge here is to prove my “expertise” in terms of institutional norms, traditions and practices.  So I’m not allowed an informed opinion unless I am an “expert” whose authority comes from a recognized institution.  Even though I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, have taught for 30 plus years at a college level, read constantly, think and write about politics, spirituality, culture, etc., my opinion means literally nothing unless I have been sanctified by the powers that be. This attitude and article of faith would mean the end of public discourse, critical thinking and democratic association.  It means the end of any belief that public education prepares one and authorizes one to effectively and competently participate in public, political discourse.  This worship of the “expert authorities” de-subjectivizes the individual, expropriates one’s mind and displaces one’s capacity for self-determination to the one’s “supposed to know,” the one’s who are allowed to claim to “know,” the Fauci’s, Birx’s, Gate’s, or, God forbid the Kanye West’s or Kim Kardashians!  Knowledge and truth becomes specialized, institutionalized, compartmentalized.  The “expert authorities” will tell you what is believable, what you can or should think, want and do; even what you should feel and therefore whether you are healthy or not. 

But who is it that has achieved the “authority,” “expertise,” or “specialization” that legitimately allows one to think or re-think the “real,” the global situation politically and economically, the nature of goodness, health or well-being.  Are there any “expert authorities” of life?  Who is the “expert authority” who has the right or knowledge to tell you how you feel or what you should feel; how you should think or what you should think?   These questions are nothing new.  In fact these are the questions Socrates was asking some 2500 years ago, when he pondered the nature of the “Greatest Good.”  What does it mean to be a “good person.”  Not just morally good but spiritually good, healthy, happy, robustly passionately living life to the fullest.  That is, what now does it mean to be a human being, to be an individual, to be oneself, psychologically, socially, politically and spiritually.

Within the context of the “viral effect,” one has the opportunity to ask the big question, “Who am I?” in all of this.  Am I healthy?  How do I feel?  Am I really thinking about this global phenomenon or am I just mouthing opinions or preferences because I don’t know how to think about this?  Or am I too afraid to think about how I really feel regarding my health, my life, my purpose. 

Is my identity as a human being, personally, socially and existentially been expropriated by external forces of authority, power, influence, expertise, specializations?  Or am I in charge of determining my identity, coherently and convincingly within myself, personally communally, spiritually, globally.  Am I being controlled by fear or love, in the extreme?  Am I thinking or merely opining thoughtlessly.  Am I feeling or collapsing into the control of externally generated emotionality, subject to fears and hysterias that guarantee my de-centering, my loss of personal control and felt sense of self?

What exactly is it that’s going “viral?”  Is it a thing called a virus which in this case has never been empirically located as a singular entity with powers to cause a specific identifiably discrete disease?  Or is it the breakdown of the “idea” of “one world,” a one-dimensional world controlled from above, from without, from some predetermined standpoint of unknown origins?  Does the fear of the “invisible power” called the virus allow us to raise the existential question about fear itself, about control of my life, destiny, personal power, confidence and competence.  Is some invisible force going to determine the feeling and force of my life, energy and will to be.  Is the will to truth going to be expropriated by the imagined authorities, experts, specialists, professionals, gurus and priests who presume to know what only you can know?  Jesus says, “Physician heal thyself.”  The Buddha says, “Be a light unto one’s self.”

Should we myopically focus on the proposed or imagined “evil force” of the “virus,” which in fact may not exist as such according to all scientific evidence?  Should we focus on the the Fauci types espousing pseudo-scientific claims that are in fact now scientifically grounded or even provable such as the “virus” is going to be with us for 4-5 years or maybe “forever!”  Maybe “the virus” will be a way of life and vaccines the only solution.  Your officially determined and certified health will thereby and accordingly decide upon your right to education, to travel, to social participation, your right to your civil rights. 

Or shall we not take “science” back from the “official guardians” of knowledge, truth, experience and feeling?  “Science” means the ‘practice and experience of “knowing.”  “Science” as it has been expropriated, distorted and mis-used in the modern era at the hands of capital, business, advertising, manufacturing is now itself a deleterious virus which must be re-appropriated by the people, by individuals with the courage to think, feel, let go of beliefs generated out of fear, hysteria, laziness, addiction to pleasure, conformism, cynicism, indifference, regression to animal-existence, matrix-like movements in pre-determined paths of consumption and ritualized, compulsive and obsessive action or habituality. 

THINKING OUTSIDE INSTITUTIONAL BOXES

Extreme Conformism in the Media: An Interview with Norbert Bolz

By Telos Press  ·  Monday, July 20, 2020

The following interview was conducted by Alexander Wendt on July 5, 2020, and originally appeared in German on Tichys Einblick on July 13, 2020. Translated by Russell A. Berman.

Alexander Wendt: Professor Bolz, the costs of the coronavirus pandemic are still unknown, but they will surely leave deep scars for years to come. Will our society return from post-materialism to a society with hard materialist concerns with numbers and balance sheets?
Norbert Bolz: Even before the coronavirus crisis, I had doubts as to whether the notion of a post-material society made much sense. To my mind, the “post-material” term only makes real sense as a description of digitalization and the rise of information technology. But the superstructure that is usually meant by “post-material” seems to me to be mainly a substitute for religion, and it never had the real significance for society that many ascribe to it.
Q: So the crisis won’t change much?
Bolz: It will have a salutary impact to the extent that it will lead many people to focus on fundamental concerns: health, safety, and the basic functions of the state that guarantees these matters. We are returning to a Hobbesian understanding of the state. During the recent wonderful decades, we did not have to worry much about the need to protect our security. That has changed.
Q: What does it mean for public communication if we start talking more about Gross Domestic Product and less about gender identities?
Bolz: We may soon be facing materialist distribution struggles, with open conflict between utopianists and realists, as has been the case in the United States for several years. Up to now, public discourse in Germany has been dominated nearly exclusively by a milieu distorted by affluence. In the post-coronavirus era, we may find that that rhetoric will be ratcheted down. There are two different cultures in Germany: idealists from the ivory tower and others who have to earn money. Up to now, the idealists have been in charge of the public debate. A paradigmatic example of this kind of windbag is the acting chair of the Social Democrats, Kevin Kühnert. He studied nothing, completed nothing, and has no real knowledge of anything—but he speaks well and knows how to present himself. On the other side, there are engineers, natural scientists, and entrepreneurs who do not speak in public because they never learned how, and public speaking is not part of their self-understanding. Until now they have more or less accepted the fact that they barely play a role in the public debate. But I think it is quite likely that they will develop a greater interest, now that it has become a matter of the real economic consequences of the crisis, at least to participate in the social debate and not to leave the field to the big talkers.
Q: What do you see happening in the United States?
Bolz: It is remarkable that in the United States, political correctness is even crazier than here, but there is also a free opposition camp. Talk radio reaches a large public there and gives many a chance to participate in public discussion. Twitter plays a larger role as well.
Q: Canadian author Jordan B. Peterson has evoked the so-called “intellectual dark web.” That is his ironic designation for a platform where he can talk with the neurologist Sam Harris and entrepreneurs like Eric Weinstein without the limitations of political correctness. Is something like that possible in Germany too?
Bolz: A while ago I made reference in a tweet to the intellectual dark web, where interesting discussions really do take place. In Germany, too, there are plenty of interesting, nonconformist minds. So far what is missing is money, the economic support that is needed to establish a sustainable public platform.
Q: Actually the classical media ought to provide a platform like that for open debates, if only out of self-interest. Why doesn’t that happen?
Bolz: This ought to be their job. I can only explain the extreme conformism in the editorial offices of most media through the very similar socialization of all journalists. There is no longer much difference between the private and the state-financed media in the discussion of most political topics. This sort of conformism is fatal, especially in this period in which all the political parties pretty much say the same thing, with the exception of the AfD [Alternative for Germany].
Q: What do you read?
Bolz: I used to appreciate Die Welt a lot. It bothers me that there too one now finds the hymns of praise for Angela Merkel’s great political leadership. If I want to read about German domestic politics, then I feel best turning to the Neuen Zürcher Zeitung. It offers a perspective that is distinctly different.
Q: The private media are calling for state subventions—above and beyond the sixty million euros already committed to support newspapers. Are we facing a statist structural transformation of the public sphere?
Bolz: I can’t say much to that. I can only pray that it doesn’t happen. When it is a matter of the existence of one’s own place of work, some media companies are evidently willing to sell their souls. I can even understand that. But the results would be terrible.
Q: In the context of the pandemic, scientists have had a clearly stronger influence in politics and media. Some virologists suddenly appear to be more important than members of the cabinet or leading editors. What does this mean for public debate?
Bolz: I am not able to judge the competency of the virologists who now appear widely in the media. During the pandemic, in general I appreciate the scientists and politicians who honestly concede that they still do not know enough. But as for wide swaths of the humanities: many are sinning against Max Weber’s exhortation against using the lecture as an opportunity to sermonize.
Q: Who is doing that?
Bolz: For example, Ottmar Edenhofer from the Potsdam Institute for Research on Climate Change. He is very proud to be the actual author of the papal encyclical Laudato si’ on climate questions as well as the key advisor for the climate policies of the German government. There are plenty of representatives of sociology, political science, psychology, as well as law who would love to appear in media debates as leading advisors. A real casting takes place: your chances to appear are best if you provide exactly what the editorial boards want on a specific topic. The fact that these academic opportunists appear more and more has become a big problem for academia.
Q: Do you see a chance that a new generation of scholars might break through this conformism?
Bolz: I am not particularly optimistic that a future generation of humanists and social scientists can break through the strictures of paternalism and conformism. People worry about their careers, and state control is becoming ever stricter. The result is opportunism scholarship. That’s why I place my bet more on thinking outside of the institutions.
Q: You recently left this academic world through retirement. Was that a painful departure?
Bolz: I am enjoying my freedom, which includes, among other things, the fact that no one can threaten me with disciplinary action. I can send out my missives on Twitter and place them in other select media channels. Otherwise I am experiencing what Goethe once described as the privilege of age: the gradual withdrawal from public visibility.