NOTAS VÁRIAS

No CTHEORY, agora com novo grafismo, podemos ler um texto de Jean Baudrillard, The Violence of the Global, antes editado como «La Violence du Mondial»

« ...The establishment of a global system is the result of an intense jealousy. It is the jealousy of an indifferent and low-definition culture against cultures with higher definition, of a disenchanted and de-intensified system against high intensity cultural environments, and of a de-sacralized society against sacrificial forms. According to this dominant system, any reactionary form is virtually terrorist. (...) Look at Afghanistan. The fact that, inside this country alone, all recognized forms of "democratic" freedoms and expressions -- from music and television to the ability to see a woman's face -- were forbidden, and the possibility that such a country could take the totally opposite path of what we call civilization (no matter what religious principles it invoked), were not acceptable for the "free" world. The universal dimension of modernity cannot be refused. From the perspective of the West, of its consensual model, and of its unique way of thinking, it is a crime not to perceive modernity as the obvious source of the Good or as the natural ideal of humankind. It is also a crime when the universality of our values and our practices are found suspect by some individuals who, when they reveal their doubts, are immediately pegged as fanatics. (...)».

Ainda no CTHEORY, uma entrevista com o mexicano Manuel De Landa, filósofo vadio, sobre o seu último trabalho, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy.

«Theories of self-organization are in fact being used to explain what Adam Smith left unexplained: how the invisible hand is supposed to work. From a mere assumption of optimality at equilibrium we now have a better description of what markets do: they take advantage of decentralized dynamics to make use of local information (the information possessed by buyers and sellers). These markets are not optimizing since self-organizing dynamics may go through cycles of boom and bust. Only under the assumption of optimality and equilibrium can we say "the State should not interfere with the Market." The other assumption (of contingent self-organization) has plenty of room for governments to intervene. And more importantly, the local information version (due to Hayek and Simon) does not apply to large corporations, where strategic thinking (as modeled by game theory) is the key. So, far from justifying liberal assumptions the new view problematizes markets. (Let's also remember that enemies of markets, such as Marx, bought the equilibrium assumption completely: in his book Capital he can figure out the "socially necessary labor time," and hence calculate the rate of exploitation, only if profits are at equilibrium). Now, the new view of markets stresses their decentralization (hence corporations do not belong there), and this can hardly justify globalization which is mostly a result of corporations. And similarly for warfare, the danger begins when the people who do not go to war (the central planners) get to make the decisions. The soldiers who do the actual killing and dying are never as careless as that.»