Heidegger (not) on Twitter
‘You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto’, by Jaron Lanier, is reviewed in the current edition of the Times Literary Supplement which reports that:
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‘Lanier’s book is a sustained and textured attack on current directions of dominant culture in the regime of the internet…. He is a disappointed man. Those who finally have their chance to shine are squandering it by Tweeting about their favourite reality shows, posting schlock on Youtube, or throwing away their authorship in anonymous contributions to Wikipedia.’
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Had I encountered this the day before re-establishing an online presence here and on Twitter rather than the day afterwards I would have gone ahead nonetheless, but in conjunction with an event hosted by Ireland’s Iona Institute last night, in which Dr Adam Sigman discussed the cognitive consequences of excessive social media use in children, it puts me back in mind of the question of what the change in modes of interaction is doing to our culture.
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The question has already been extensively addressed but more often from the perspectives of the human and social sciences than in terms of political philosophy. It was Nietzsche who noted the almost Copernican consequences for personal orientation in the switch across Europe from reading a Breviary at the beginning of the morning to reading a newspaper instead, reading of changelessness daily to reading of daily change. The anti-liberal theorist of dictatorship Donoso Cortes had made a similar critique earlier in describing liberals as a ‘clasa discuditoria’, who, if asked to choose between Christ and Barabas, would have called a committee of investigation. But it is Heidegger who comes most to mind, with the elaboration in Sein und Zeit of ‘Gerede’, or idle chatter. What the colossus of Freiburg im Breisgau would have made of Twitter one can only wonder but I think it’s safe to say he would have declined an account.
The purpose of this website
In recent years my commitments have widened and they now span the academic, policy reseach, a book project, and journalism. This has reached the point where priorities have had to be selected and decisions made accordingly.
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Although I’ve used personal websites as blogs or for public engagement in the past, this website is intended as a more stripped down repository of research, research notes, journalism, and more occassional pieces, as much for my own benefit as an online notebook as for the reader’s. I have opened a Twitter account as @richardwaghorne which provides a public space for feedback and interaction for the interested, which is welcome.
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Thematically, this website is primarily focused on political philosophy, the European future, American politics, conservatism, classical music, and bibliophilia.
Libya and Europe
French President Nicholas Sarkozy deserves credit for his proposal in recent days for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya until the current crisis in that country is over.
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Reporting from inside Libya is notoriously difficult, although I note that one of the correspondents who has managed to file a report from the famous road to Tobruk is the highly-regarded Richard Pendlebury of the Daily Mail, whom I came to know during my time working in that newspaper’s London newsroom. His arrival inside the country along with others who have successfully infiltrated should soon start to provide policy-makers with a wider frame of reference, as will the arrival of private security firms and European military personnel at Tripoli airport and the ports in the east of the country.
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Yet until a clear picture emerges the presumption has to be pessimistic about the humanitarian cost of the Gaddafi regime’s resistance to the uprising underway. Media blackouts are as a rule conductive to malfeasance of all varieties but Libya has a specific track record of committing large-scale massacres under cloak of secrecy. A 1996 massace of about 1200 inmates at the Abusleem prison only came to light in recent years. As in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and elsewhere, it is reasonable to presume in the absence of precise information that grave crimes are being committed by the regime against its own citizens that are not yet known outside the country. At a minimum, if the estimates provided by human rights monitors and defectors from inside the regime are taken at face value, the cost in lives lost is approaching the low four figures, or in other words is becoming comparable to the toll from the September 11th attacks. This is before the denouement of the crisis yet to come, which seems set to be an urban battle to displace regime loyalists from entrenched positions in Tripoli.
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Europe ought to take responsibility for what is unfolding on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. A NATO-enforced no-fly zone would serve several purposes. Most immediately, it would prevent a repetition of air assets being used against civilian targets, even if it is now uncertain whether the regime still possesses the capacity to repeat those alleged attacks. Within Libya, where Europe’s standing has been badly tarnished by the realpolitick that ensued following the 2003 rapprochment with the West in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, practical and prompt humanitarian assistance of this sort would be a show of support for the Libyan people at a time when the nature of the future government of the country is undecided amid a strong Islamist presence. Without taking sides between the warring parties, a tangible demonstration of concern - rather than a pro forma statement from Brussels - would make credible the recent European warnings to Libyan actors that those perpetrating grave crimes may be held to account afterwards.
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Europe’s recent record on policing its near abroad is exceptionally poor. Violence in the Balkans was only brought under control at the insistence and with the intervention of the United States. Europe’s contrirbution to the stabilisation of Afghanistan has been mired in pitiful national restrictions on rules of engagement and a palpable lack of will to see through a commitment undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations. During the Georgia crisis of 2008, which I covered from the ground, there was division amongst European nations but no will to put relations with Russia at risk to prevent the absorption of a fifth of Georgian territory becoming a fait accompli, as has now more or less happened.
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Apart from a moral responsibility, Libya presents a case test for European resolve and competence in security policy, one which is already set to rank with alongside the long list of avoidable recent failures.
