In the information age, it is difficult to make sense of events. Endless amounts of information do not necessarily coalesce into a coherent narrative with explanatory meaning. The breakdown of the international order is precipitating the emergence of different narratives that engender competing truths.
The German writer Goethe said: “When eras are on the decline, all tendencies are subjective; but, on the other hand, when matters are ripening for a new epoch, all tendencies are objective. Each worthy effort turns its force from the inward to the outward world.”
If we look at our present time through the lens of this statement, we could say that we are in the midst of a changing epoch. The previous era saw the rise of absolute individual subjectivity, in which there was no truth other than each one’s own. This was a worldview that led to the emergence of a power structure predicated on it.
By the same token, the primacy of absolute individual subjectivity led to the disintegration of social coherence, which is built on a shared narrative that gives meaning to events. Facts and information, according to the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, are met with a pervasive suspicion that things might be another way. Bits of information do not congeal into a narrative and might have the opposite effect: they might darken the world instead of making it clearer.
“Truth, unlike information, has a centripetal force that holds society together,” writes Han, who also says that narratives provide truth. “Pieces of information do not coalesce into knowledge or truth, which are forms of narration.” Pure information, thus, becomes conducive to increased individual subjectivity, whereas narratives are conducive to a shared objectivity. Han says that the era of democracy has become the era of infocracy.
During the epoch of the internationalization of Western liberal values, roughly until the beginning of the 21st century, there was a clear hegemonic narrative. There were other narratives, but none with comparable power. They were judged acceptable or unacceptable in relation to the hegemonic one. The hegemonic narrative created truths out of information.
A government was a pariah, or an organization a terrorist, if it acted against the liberal hegemony, regardless of whether the attack was moral, economic or political. A change in the power structure of a country was deemed a “freedom revolution” or a “tyrannical dictatorship” according to the same measure. There was a shared reality created by a narrative which offered, to those who bought into it, a common objective truth.
This narrative included statements such as: democracy is the fairest political system, capitalism the best economic organization, science the arbiter of truth, morality an individual choice, and human rights an international truth. Reigning above and looking after them was the State, with a capital S. These were non-negotiable truths.
Now they are not. The hegemonic state that enforced them – every right requires a sovereign – has lost its power and is itself undergoing a narrative change. Other sociopolitical narratives, ones that were competing for space before, no longer feel the need to mutate, even if just linguistically, to appear acceptable to an international consensus.
The discourse now is of multipolarity, of civilizational states with different values. It could be said that nations are becoming subjective, that each nation is forming its own narrative and its own truth. This, according to Goethe, would indicate an epochal change.
We have multiple examples of this. Ukraine is one, Palestine another, Venezuela and Taiwan others. In all these cases there are competing narratives wanting to shape information into truth. Not only are conflicts being shaped by different narratives, but so too are social values and political organizations.
To be clear, I am not passing a value judgement on either tendency, only trying to point out a dynamic of change. The U.S. power structure is morphing on the back of national conservative movements that are impacting the social fabric and rewriting social values. The Western world is following.
The collective West is where this inertia is more prevalent because it was the leading order and therefore the most affected by the disorder. But other nations are also ditching Western values and institutions, favouring indigenous ones. China, Russia, India and Türkiye are clear examples.
Media, both mainstream and alternative, has become a field of battle. What before was a conspiracy now is mainstream. Tucker Carlson releasing a series of videos questioning the narrative of 9/11 shows how far this has come. The monopolization of media companies in the hands of David Ellison, son of the oligarch Larry Ellison, or Trump’s threat to sue the BBC and calling it “fake news” is another indication.
Alternative media outlets and commentators offer different versions of the same event. Was the 12-year war against Bashar al-Assad a regime-change operation or a war of liberation? Are the monarchies of the Gulf legitimate actors or absolutist tyrannies? Is Taiwan an indivisible part of China or a nation with the right to self-determination?
As the Japanese director Kurosawa brilliantly put it in Rashomon, circumstantial truth is elusive. In the movie, four eyewitnesses give contradictory accounts of the same event: the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife. Each of the characters tells what happened according to a personal need to justify their actions and show themselves in a good light.
However, under all this apparent narrative change, one thing seems to remain unquestioned: the monetary system. Not the economic distribution – this too is open to modification – but the very basis of our financial organization: fiat currencies and the banking system. This appears to be the only thing upon which almost everyone agrees.
Out of this narrative collapse, another world will emerge. The question is whether, as Tancredi put it, everything is changing in order to stay the same.
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My congratulations to the author for the pellucid and well ordered prose.
Being something of a writer myself, I recognize the coherent effort required to
produce a piece with such clarity. The gist of it is a very nice summation of
the current foxhole attitude of the nations of the world. Obviously a goodly chunk
of this situation is caused by the rapid rise in the hegemony of Technology (plus
overweening greed, of course). But, to use a baseball analogy, for culture as a whole
in this century, the current state of things is only ‘a man on first’. Within a decade
we may see the rise of both quantum computing and fusion. Think of it- AI plus
ultracomputers plus unlimited energy. It does give one pause…..
A narrative is a useful explanatory framework in a social setting. David McRaney describes how argumentative firemonkeys construct truth:
>> By producing arguments in a biased and lazy fashion, individuals can quickly off-load their unique perspectives and save their mental energy for the evaluation process… Deliberation through argumentation reveals all the varied points of view in a group. Generating increasingly better reasons for one decision or another, the group can, together, zero in on the most reasonable justification.
>> … individual reasoning is a psychological mechanism that evolved under selective pressures to facilitate communication between peers in an environment where misinformation is unavoidable. In an environment like that, confirmation bias turns out to be very useful.
>> “If you think of it as something that serves individual purposes, it looks like a really flawed mechanism. If you think of it as something built for argumentation, it all makes sense,”
We can go back to Biden’s leaked hot mic assurance to his room full of rich folks for the answer:
Nothing will fundamentally change …
This is the mantra of neoliberalism and the Uniparty.
As best as I can tell “truth” as used here means either “myth” or “functional mythology”.
Maybe this is part of some scholarly or philosophical tradition I’m not familiar with.
The monetary system, however, is a contested mythology as well. China will show us how costs can be allocated with public money, rather than our public private “partnership” money. It promises to be interesting to watch what is possible without concern for the bankers.
The global south is struggling with this polarization of the money concept, which through the history of colonialism is, I believe, the main thing preventing them from rejecting the psychotic west outright.
It’s my belief the essential human adaptation was a symbolic module in the evolution of our brains. From which came, for Khaneman’s fast thinkers language, and for the slow thinkers mathematics.
I can’t remember who quipped “economics is the science of confusing stock for flows” but it captures the spirit of our time with regard to money. Those who really understand money as a symbolic system rather than a desideratum will be the ones who can underwrite a new “objectivity” in the sense of this essay, though it feels slippery next to Rand’s “Objectivism”.
“economics is the science of confusing stock for flows”
Sounds like Steve Keen?
Former NSA whistleblower – Thomas Drake, who makes for some thoughtful interesting reading, interviewed for his thoughts on this subject.
https://youtu.be/h_LE77o1RFE
It already has and the West pretends it hasn’t, but it might well have the same ending as Animal Farm. As one of nature’s pessimists, in a world well versed in turning Civil Rights into a new platform for Civil Wrongs, I tend to see the likely outcome as a world wracked by climate change and immigration and water wars – which I will not be around long enough to observe as civilisation craters out, with or without the aid of nuclear weapons, thank God!
Or, with luck and the crushing of West and its evil colonial offspring in Palestine, the future multipolar world may bring about the more positive expectations of Keynes hoped for in his Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren, when he wrote:
“Let me remind you of the Professor in Sylvie and Bruno:—
“Only the tailor, sir, with your little bill,” said a meek voice outside the door.
“Ah, well, I can soon settle his business,” the Professor said to the children, “if you’ll just wait a minute. How much is it, this year, my man?” The tailor had come in while he was speaking.
“Well, it’s been a-doubling so many years, you see,” the tailor replied, a little gruffly, “and I think I’d like the money now. It’s two thousand pound, it is!”
“Oh, that’s nothing!” the Professor carelessly remarked, feeling in his pocket, as if he always carried at least that amount about with him. “But wouldn’t you like to wait just another year and make it four thousand? Just think how rich you’d be! Why, you might be a king, if you liked!”
“I don’t know as I’d care about being a king,” the man said thoughtfully. “But it dew sound a powerful sight o’ money! Well, I think I’ll wait——”
“Of course you will!” said the Professor. “There’s good sense in you, I see. Good-day to you, my man!”
“Will you ever have to pay him that four thousand pounds?” Sylvie asked as the door closed on the departing creditor.
“Never, my child!” the Professor replied emphatically. “He’ll go on doubling it till he dies. You see, it’s always worth while waiting another year to get twice as much money!”
And Keynes goes on to say:
There is definitely a reconfiguration of international relations right now. For example, when was the last time you heard of a western leader talking about the ‘international rules-based order.’ Maybe last year? Trump challenged China to an economic war – and had his head handed to him. The western nations launched a proxy war against Russia in order to send the country into chaos so that it could be broken up and looted. It failed and not only has Russia de-militarized those western nations but those very same nations are bankrupting themselves with debt and they are the ones that are in chaos right now. The US is furiously trying to retain American primacy for the rest of the 21st century but is continuously undercut by the fact they they gutted their own industries the past few decades so is now chasing unicorns such as AI to remain top dawg. Interesting times ahead – unfortunately.
Humpty Dumpty … the current NZ prime minister … talked about it recently. He’s not a very bright person.
So true, the current situation. Hoisted by their own petard?!
Useful summary of gattopardismo to aid in appreciating the argument in the article.
“Everything must change so it can stay the same.”
Based on my discussions with people looking to adopt AI and other new technologies, this is exactly where people are. I think it is everyone’s hope that if they make enough superficial changes then things can stay the same. I’m not sure that is true. Or even possible. I look at how complacent so many western citizens appear to be and I wonder what it will take for any kind of uprising to foster real change. But then I see the extent our elites are going to control the masses and I figure they must be this frightened for a good reason. I guess we’ll see.
The miracle of civilization is that humans can adapt to many ways of life,
from the billionaire to life in prison. But what really gets people upset
is when they see their children starving.
For one thing, narrative is a human construct and we are bouncing up against the edge of human control. The “go forth and multiply” is hitting the edges of the global petri dish.
As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so it is our experience of time that it is the present flowing, narratively, from past to future. The evident reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause become effect.
No time traveling around the fabric of spacetime, as it is more a tapestry being woven of strands being pulled from what was woven.
Energy is “conserved,” because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color, sound, as frequencies and amplitudes, aka, rates and degrees.
The present goes past to future, as the patterns generated go future to past, because energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, as the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Suggesting consciousness manifests as energy.
As it is the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns, signals from the noise, there does tend to be this cognitive focus on the patterns, then assuming consciousness can be reverse engineered from duplicating them.
One of the problems is that human information processing is a survival mechanism, like some species evolved to run fast, or hide, or generate toxins. So there is this tendency to solve problems in the most efficient way possible, than dig too far into the causes. The effect is patches over the tears in the previous patches, “all the way down.” Turning this over to computers is running up against the fact that most of it is noise and running infinite information feedback loops requires infinite energy.
While the saying might be that when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, the opposite is true. Generally we just dig faster, rather than question the hole into which we have sunk much value and meaning.
The primary concept on which Western Civilization is built, is monotheism. Yet it is totally ignored that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures.
To the Ancients, gods were metaphors. Memes might also be a useful concept, as mind worms.
In this stage of intellectual evolution, monotheism meant monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Basically a metaphor for the tribal societies in which humanity originated.
What set the Jewish tribal totem apart was that the social code, the Commandments, the Ark of the Covenant, became the metaphor, rather than some figurative symbol, like a golden calf. Yet we still use such devices today, be it eagles, lions, bears, dragons, or some bearded guy in a goofy suit called Uncle Sam.
Ancient Israel was also a monarchy. The Big Guy Rules. Like the religion. Though Spirit and Authority are not synonymous.
The problem with making laws god is that while they are necessary for a functional society, they do tend to grow like vines around everything and unless pruned regularly, everyone is wearing black and dancing is a sin.
The significance of Jesus within Judaism was that he was poking holes in the hypocrisies that tend to develop. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” As well as questioning Authority, from the Sadducees to the moneychangers.
Life is that tension and feedback between the anarchies of desire and the tyrannies of judgment. Youth and age, liberal and conservative, heart and head.
Though the story of his crucifixion and resurrection was received outside of Judaism as a metaphor for rebirth. The origins of the Trinity go to fertility rites. The young god born in the spring to the old sky god and earth mother. Oestre was the Anglo Saxon fertility goddess.
Though when Constantine co-opted Christianity as the state religion of Rome, it was for the monotheism, as he was bringing the sides of the Empire together and burying any reminders of the Republic. The Big Guy Rules.
The Catholic Church then served as the eschatological basis for European monarchy. Divine right of kings, as opposed to consent of the governed. While the origins and implications of the Trinity were buried in garble about the three faces of god and the Holy Ghost, as the Church was the eternal institution. At least until Martin Luther tried to do what Jesus tried, push the reset button and clear out some of the crap and corruption.
When the West went back to popular forms of government, it required separation of church and state, culture and civics, morality and law.
So having outsourced social evolution to some absent father figure, as fear of it faded, it left a void, filled by the will to power, rampant greed, or just a reversion to ethnocentric tribalism.
If we want to change the narrative, maybe we should have some clue how it developed in the first place!
Good points of historical narrative, yet the refined source is still out there, hidden perhaps but the seed is there. Perhaps they are the Fremen or the Jedi knights still to be discovered? If truth is Truth, meaning not opinion but really existing, what Nomos contains it? Spartacus was nearer Rome but didn’t sack or destroy it as he didn’t have a law to replace it. Is this Nomos now seed out there to be rediscovered and replanted still? There are examples.
What if what we in the West call ‘the information age’ is simply the peak ‘electricity age’?
Someone yesterday mentioned Adam Curtis’s series ‘Pandora’s Box’. Watching the first episode, available on utube, made me laugh in a… I don’t know what to call it. Recognition, irony, been-there-done-that, everything old is new again ? Man’s abdication of his own reasoning to his machine’s (idolized) workings? I could go on but it would lead to, you know, difficult questions. / ;)
Will it be different? I’m guessing no, at least here in the US. Look at the Democrats. Their “roll over and play dead,” or “you’re on your own unless you vote us back into power” narrative looks to be slowly changing to “national security moms are leading us to victory,” if Klippenstein has it right:
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/national-security-moms-are-here
Gore Vidal said the narrative changed when our victory in WW2 changed the country from a republic into an empire.
And yes I know many say we were always an empire including Ken Burns this week. But the last century arguably really was Henry Luce’s “American Century” and now it isn’t. Some of us are living through both eras.
FWIW and probably not much I think Trump and his unlikely crew are just a blip–the second re-enactment as farce of a Reagan revolution that was also farce but sent things spiraling downwards. No republic without virtue and that’s in short supply among all our rulers. H’wood liberals feeling guilty about their swank lifestyles do not equal virtue either IMHO.
The Civil War was 80 years prior to WW2 and much of the country were living in ethnic enclaves. WW2 was the largest public works project in US history and as such, became a defining element, cementing the MIC as the Golden Child.
Think how we dumped more tonnage of bombs on Korea than Germany and Japan combined. The machine had been turned on and there was no turning it off.
The credit party got going under Reagan and Trump is last call for drinks. The hangover awaits.
Good points, I’m with you on that. The elephant in the room however, (with the aid of ‘electronica’) is the ballon rise of usury, always practised, but now exponential.
My coming out party coincided with JFK being inaugurated President into what was peak-empire and there had been almost a decade since the Korean War armistice with just a little saber rattling elsewhere.
We were at peace at a very scary time in the Cold War, it was more of a war of words and deeds.
A decade ago we were in Seattle and went to the Boeing museum, and they had on demand videos, and one of them was JFK crowing in regards to how the USA was open in regards to all aspects of our space flights (this was in the run up the 4th Mercury mission) while the USSR was secretive and only told you anything after a cosmonaut or 2 or 3 returned to the orb intact.
The Olympics were oh such an important counterpart to the space race, about the only time American and Soviet citizens met on neutral proving grounds.
There’s no such thing as 60’s virtue in this here world, is there?
TOFU’s flapper party and assorted goings on that closely resemble what might be expected from said H’wood liberal lifestyles of the rich and famous, while playing the anti-christ by taking away loaves of bread from 42 million.
…it practically screams this will not end well
But if “financialization” is part of the problem, and cause of decline, and affects very much the economic distribution, profound reform would be needed. IMO the monetary system is very much at the root of many problems.
Not that reform is going in any direction of change but consolidation. See for instance the reform of the payment system with ISO 20022 (starting soon). Digitalization of currencies and integration on cryptos. It is sold as better control of payment systems to eliminate fraud, whitewashing etc.
In a world riddled with sanctions and, in many cases, rejection of digital currencies this has potential for major conflict. The integration of cryptos looks to me like consolidation of casino-financials. And it is probably there, in crypto world where fraud will concentrate. So, why integrating it in the payment system?
As linear, goal oriented creatures in this cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, people see money as signal to save and store, while markets need it to circulate. Consequently Econ 101 calls it both medium of exchange and store of value.
In your body, blood is the medium and fat is the store.
What happens when you mix them up?
Big fan of the fourth turning, and we are in the 92nd year of a worldwide public fiat monetary system and 54th stanza of a worldwide governmental fiat monetary system.
This version of money has never played out before, because it couldn’t co-exist with the previous model in what now largely comprises of those countries in the Golden Billion and their colonial tendrils.
Everybody seemingly in the world had some version of manna, some of them metallic, others opted for a shell game-with the constant being that the mutual trading go-between had to be scarce or rare, your money couldn’t be grains of sand or pine cones.
There is no good reason to have all these current different currencies either, all it does is allow each of them to go to the money tree whenever the mood arises-there being no real accountability in such matters under a purely fiat system.
Imagine if most every country had their own measuring system, the USA utilized inches and pounds, the middle east was all about cubits & libras, while Europe fancied fingerbreadths & furlongs, and Asia measured up in shaku & cuns. Spanish speaking countries clung to the vara and cordel.
None of this would make sense in our modern would, but that’s how our money runs.
How would accountability fare in a future 1-world–currency?
…that’s the elephant in the room
It is a contract, not a commodity.
As such, it means that whole social networking dynamic has to be taken into account.
We are not just some Golem obsessed with the power of our ring.
Unlimited food growing potential (Bosch-Haber) and unlimited money growing potential (fiat) and unlimited oil production happen within a generation of one another allowing us to increase the population 4 fold in a century.
I’m thinking the world doesn’t need 32 billion of us in 2125 if things progress along those lines, and am looking for an alternative to the only money system we’ve known all our lives and am all ears, as far as alternatives to the status quo with the social contract in mind,
Our models guide our actions and we can change our models, but that means getting sufficient numbers of people disillusioned with the prior models. Otherwise we are heretics and are lucky to just get ostracized.
I’m just texting this at work and don’t have a link, but if you want some of my extended thoughts on the subject, Google John Brodix Merryman Medium The Last Train to Memphis.
I’ve been blocked from posting or commenting on Substack, since pointing out the fallacy of monotheism is that ideals are not absolutes. While it was a useful political device to confuse spirit with authority, the problem is that when people are taught their ideals are absolutes, it licenses all sorts of psychotic behavior. As the various versions of Zionism seem determined to show.
There seems to be limits on what I can post on NC, so the systems have to break down a good deal more, before we can get too deep.
Sort of like the Ukraine war. Too much invested to stop digging the hole.
When the old order dries up and peels away, then the next will take form.
Agree. So back to what is the thing that all can agree on that everyone intrinsically would want. (And clear of its manipulation.) I would say it’s the yellow stuff hoarded in the cave and guarded by the dragon.
I believe Byung-Chul Han is an emigrant to Germany from South Korea. In his quite famous “The Burn-Out Society,” (2015) he argues that power now organizes itself internally, in psychic space–with all of us being conditioned to see ourselves as achievers.
Since then, he seems to be calling for a politics of inactivity, for creating a space for contemplation. He also seems to repeat some of the same arguments as Frankfurt School critics Adorno and Benjamin, defending manners, narratives, rituals, and traditions often claimed by the political right as well as endorsing arguments that pain is necessary for growth.
He also argues that narrative story-telling has now become narrative story-selling.