Deep Structure - What Makes the Present
Also catalogued elsewhere
The author, Carne Ross, explores how deep structures, particularly ontologies, shape political outcomes and societal norms. He argues that the dominant materialist and positivist worldview limits our understanding of humanity and contributes to issues like neo-fascism and climate change. Ross believes that changing our ontological perspective can lead to meaningful political change and offers hope for a more holistic understanding of existence.
I reject any simplistic linearity of input A leading to output B; connections are altogether messier, more complex and sometimes indeterminate).
contemplation of current events leads me to interrogate the evident patterns, the subterranean deeper forces which sometimes surface like breaching whales but which most often lie beneath, mobile and powerful but concealed.
the profound and destructive limits of the ontologies that dominate society, thought and politics today.
One fundamental assumption that underpins and shapes the ideas that dominate our society is that of positivism, that only what is empirically detectable or measurable matters, or can usefully be talked about.
known and measurable facts are not the only things that matter and that should comprise our philosophy: many other things without measure, without terms themselves, arguably (and I would claim undoubtedly) matter more. Things like meaning, reason or love (or fear, anxiety or hate). Things that can only be expressed, and even then inadequately, by practices such as music or poetry (or even silence)…or found within the inexpressible intensity of human connection.
Neo-classical economics is a discourse of things: money, goods, services, even the units of labour or consumers otherwise known as people. The usefulness of things is determined by their contribution to our ‘utility’, a grotesquely impoverished yet ubiquitous index for what we seek in life. Notably, this particular meaning of utility (not the word itself) was invented for the sake of the theory, demonstrating the theory’s utter circularity, depending on its own manufactured terms to make any sense.
It is about power. Those who perpetuate this view of existence are those who benefit most from it.
In any system where the few govern the many, it is money that will buy you access and influence one way or another, overtly or covertly
This corruption is not only about favours or helpful policy in return for cash. It is also about ontological reinforcement
Those who comprise the dominant media ‘discourse’ help enforce its perpetuation too.
This is a class which has deep interests in maintenance of the status quo, for within it lies the security of their social and economic status which would otherwise be highly fragile
the political problem we face is not just about ‘capitalism’ for this is only a politico-economic system that lies within the ontology. It is also the ontology itself - the broader environment or eco-system within which all other elements of the system exist, down to the microcosmic behaviour of the individual within that system - or the emission of a molecule of carbon.
Tags: econ/capitalism, quotes
this ontological deficiency is one factor behind the rise of fascism: the failure to recognise and allow expression of fundamental aspects of what it is to be human, fostering a political system for instance that denies our basic need for autonomy and agency, which in turn provokes the intense anger which the Far Right is now busy exploiting.
Tags: power/anti-fascism
anarchism, and only anarchism, can express and allow for this broader, more holistic ontology, that embraces the irrational as much as the rational (though for Anglophones, ‘irrational’ has unhelpfully negative overtones - perhaps ‘non-rational’ would be a better term).