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blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Pataphysics As A Guide to Morals
Baudrillard is a consummate aphorist. Aphorism is tough to summarise much less to comment upon, but here goes:
Religion (faith) promised redemption but delivered divisive hate. Science (representation) promised reality but delivered fragmented illusion. Technology promised prosperity (progress) but delivered seductive hyperreality. In hyperreality truth and reality disappear and are replaced by simulacra - copies for which there are no originals. The only commitment remaining is that to language itself, signs without referents, words without meaning, causes without purpose. Language-fundamentalists now rule the world. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world but a digital screen that constitutes the world.
This is not a Gnostic myth but a philosophical analysis which leads to a similar conclusion: We are doomed as a species. Our greatest strength, language, is also our instrument of mass suicide. Language does not merely speak us, as Heidegger said; it controls us totally for its own ends. The more we struggle against it, the more it tightens its hold around our collective neck. Yet we resist the recognition. We remain committed to the fanaticism of language despite its obvious trajectory. This is the intelligence of evil. The perfect crime. “[T]he simulacrum is not that which hides the truth, but that which hides the absence of truth.”
Baudrillard’s is a carefully empirical study, the prophetic accuracy of which is difficult to deny. QAnon, Trump rallies, evangelical Christians, suicidal Buddhists, Islamic terrorists, and any of several dozen conspiracy theories are what he predicted. There is not just disagreement on the facts but of what constitutes a fact. There is no rational argument because rationality itself is undefined. Patterns appear in data and can mean anything we want them to mean. Identity, from gender to career, is a matter of individual choice and is therefore as fluid as it is inalienable. Shibboleths about democracy, values, ideals, humanity, spiritual well-being have shown themselves to be what they are: rationalisations for someone’s quest for power. All conceivable modes of expression are absorbed into advertising.
God and the Real were once the ever-receding horizon of human knowledge, limits to be striven toward but never reached. They acted as standards by which advance could be measured. In the virtual reality of the simulacra, there are no such limits and therefore no standards against which to assess knowledge. What can be imagined is immediately incorporated into the world as we experience it. “We are never done with making good the void of truth. Hence the flight forward into ever more simulacra.” At best, the world-as-it-is is a sort of “strange attractor” which acts solely to promote yet more imagination. And that imagination leads to an hypothesis:
Our species-wide infatuation with artificial intelligence is a symptom of our “being incapable of accepting thought (the idea that the world thinks us, the intelligence of evil), we invent the easiest solution, the technical solution: Artificial Intelligence.” This is typical. It is what our species has always done, that is chosen the easy solution:
This is obviously not a book for everyone. And those who might benefit most from it are those least likely to read it, namely, those boosters and promoters of AI in all its forms. They prefer algorithms to aphorisms. Nevertheless, just the suspicion that they are not doing what they think they are doing might generate a bubble of humility in their sea of hubris. Spread the non-algorithmic word.
Postscript 10Apr21: this from the WP. It ain’t going to happen: https://apple.news/AKOtmBh3YQOKqMxdSOPcrGA
Baudrillard is a consummate aphorist. Aphorism is tough to summarise much less to comment upon, but here goes:
Religion (faith) promised redemption but delivered divisive hate. Science (representation) promised reality but delivered fragmented illusion. Technology promised prosperity (progress) but delivered seductive hyperreality. In hyperreality truth and reality disappear and are replaced by simulacra - copies for which there are no originals. The only commitment remaining is that to language itself, signs without referents, words without meaning, causes without purpose. Language-fundamentalists now rule the world. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world but a digital screen that constitutes the world.
This is not a Gnostic myth but a philosophical analysis which leads to a similar conclusion: We are doomed as a species. Our greatest strength, language, is also our instrument of mass suicide. Language does not merely speak us, as Heidegger said; it controls us totally for its own ends. The more we struggle against it, the more it tightens its hold around our collective neck. Yet we resist the recognition. We remain committed to the fanaticism of language despite its obvious trajectory. This is the intelligence of evil. The perfect crime. “[T]he simulacrum is not that which hides the truth, but that which hides the absence of truth.”
Baudrillard’s is a carefully empirical study, the prophetic accuracy of which is difficult to deny. QAnon, Trump rallies, evangelical Christians, suicidal Buddhists, Islamic terrorists, and any of several dozen conspiracy theories are what he predicted. There is not just disagreement on the facts but of what constitutes a fact. There is no rational argument because rationality itself is undefined. Patterns appear in data and can mean anything we want them to mean. Identity, from gender to career, is a matter of individual choice and is therefore as fluid as it is inalienable. Shibboleths about democracy, values, ideals, humanity, spiritual well-being have shown themselves to be what they are: rationalisations for someone’s quest for power. All conceivable modes of expression are absorbed into advertising.
God and the Real were once the ever-receding horizon of human knowledge, limits to be striven toward but never reached. They acted as standards by which advance could be measured. In the virtual reality of the simulacra, there are no such limits and therefore no standards against which to assess knowledge. What can be imagined is immediately incorporated into the world as we experience it. “We are never done with making good the void of truth. Hence the flight forward into ever more simulacra.” At best, the world-as-it-is is a sort of “strange attractor” which acts solely to promote yet more imagination. And that imagination leads to an hypothesis:
“... the world does not exist in order for us to know it or, more exactly, knowledge itself is part of the illusion of the world. This is the very principle of the world that thinks us. The question of whether there is an objective reality does not even arise: the intelligence of the world is the intelligence of the world that thinks us.”
Our species-wide infatuation with artificial intelligence is a symptom of our “being incapable of accepting thought (the idea that the world thinks us, the intelligence of evil), we invent the easiest solution, the technical solution: Artificial Intelligence.” This is typical. It is what our species has always done, that is chosen the easy solution:
“Against the hypothesis of uncertainty: the illusion of truth and reality. Against the hypothesis of destiny: the illusion of freedom. Against the hypothesis of evil [Mal]: the illusion of mis-fortune [malheur]. Against the hypothesis of thought, the illusion of Artificial Intelligence. Against the hypothesis of the event: the illusion of information. Against the hypothesis of becoming: the illusion of change.”
This is obviously not a book for everyone. And those who might benefit most from it are those least likely to read it, namely, those boosters and promoters of AI in all its forms. They prefer algorithms to aphorisms. Nevertheless, just the suspicion that they are not doing what they think they are doing might generate a bubble of humility in their sea of hubris. Spread the non-algorithmic word.
Postscript 10Apr21: this from the WP. It ain’t going to happen: https://apple.news/AKOtmBh3YQOKqMxdSOPcrGA
neoludification's review against another edition
slow-paced
4.5
Are events still possible when what we used to know as 'reality' is being replaced by its virtual double? How can neoliberal globalization be resisted when it is able to absorb all negativity? What if liberation doesn't counteract this system, but is fundamentally complicit with it? These are some of the questions that animate Baudrillard's late work, and they all come together beautifully in The Intelligence of Evil. He is at his strongest when he is writing theory-fiction, in which he hypothesizes a symbolic universe of duality and reversibility that the capitalist hegemony seeks to eliminate but could never abolish completely. There are many possible objections to this hypothesis and its theoretical underpinnings and consequences, many of which I share, but there is also something so seductive about Baudrillard's thought that I cannot bring myself to dismiss it entirely. Beyond his reactionary tendencies, his obvious blind spots and his unwillingness to offer any perspective for the renewal of left-wing politics, Baudrillard strikes a chord with me in a very visceral way. It is not just concepts and thinkers that get ensnared in his theoretical trap and sent spinning out of control; the same happens to his readers.
The book is prefaced by a quick and rather efficient introduction by Chris Turner, to both the book and Baudrillard's oeuvre at large. This makes The Intelligence of Evil a good starting point for newcomers, alongside Forget Foucault (Semiotexte, 1987/2008) and The Spirit of Terrorism (Verso, 2002).
The book is prefaced by a quick and rather efficient introduction by Chris Turner, to both the book and Baudrillard's oeuvre at large. This makes The Intelligence of Evil a good starting point for newcomers, alongside Forget Foucault (Semiotexte, 1987/2008) and The Spirit of Terrorism (Verso, 2002).
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Pataphysics As A Guide to Morals
Baudrillard is a consummate aphorist. Aphorism is tough to summarise much less to comment upon, but here goes:
Religion (faith) promised redemption but delivered divisive hate. Science (representation) promised reality but delivered fragmented illusion. Technology promised prosperity (progress) but delivered seductive hyperreality. In hyperreality truth and reality disappear and are replaced by simulacra - copies for which there are no originals. The only commitment remaining is that to language itself, signs without referents, words without meaning, causes without purpose. Language-fundamentalists now rule the world. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world but a digital screen that constitutes the world.
This is not a Gnostic myth but a philosophical analysis which leads to a similar conclusion: We are doomed as a species. Our greatest strength, language, is also our instrument of mass suicide. Language does not merely speak us, as Heidegger said; it controls us totally for its own ends. The more we struggle against it, the more it tightens its hold around our collective neck. Yet we resist the recognition. We remain committed to the fanaticism of language despite its obvious trajectory. This is the intelligence of evil. The perfect crime. “[T]he simulacrum is not that which hides the truth, but that which hides the absence of truth.”
Baudrillard’s is a carefully empirical study, the prophetic accuracy of which is difficult to deny. QAnon, Trump rallies, evangelical Christians, suicidal Buddhists, Islamic terrorists, and any of several dozen conspiracy theories are what he predicted. There is not just disagreement on the facts but of what constitutes a fact. There is no rational argument because rationality itself is undefined. Patterns appear in data and can mean anything we want them to mean. Identity, from gender to career, is a matter of individual choice and is therefore as fluid as it is inalienable. Shibboleths about democracy, values, ideals, humanity, spiritual well-being have shown themselves to be what they are: rationalisations for someone’s quest for power. All conceivable modes of expression are absorbed into advertising.
God and the Real were once the ever-receding horizon of human knowledge, limits to be striven toward but never reached. They acted as standards by which advance could be measured. In the virtual reality of the simulacra, there are no such limits and therefore no standards against which to assess knowledge. What can be imagined is immediately incorporated into the world as we experience it. “We are never done with making good the void of truth. Hence the flight forward into ever more simulacra.” At best, the world-as-it-is is a sort of “strange attractor” which acts solely to promote yet more imagination. And that imagination leads to an hypothesis:
Our species-wide infatuation with artificial intelligence is a symptom of our “being incapable of accepting thought (the idea that the world thinks us, the intelligence of evil), we invent the easiest solution, the technical solution: Artificial Intelligence.” This is typical. It is what our species has always done, that is chosen the easy solution:
This is obviously not a book for everyone. And those who might benefit most from it are those least likely to read it, namely, those boosters and promoters of AI in all its forms. They prefer algorithms to aphorisms. Nevertheless, just the suspicion that they are not doing what they think they are doing might generate a bubble of humility in their sea of hubris. Spread the non-algorithmic word.
Postscript 10Apr21: this from the WP. It ain’t going to happen: https://apple.news/AKOtmBh3YQOKqMxdSOPcrGA
Baudrillard is a consummate aphorist. Aphorism is tough to summarise much less to comment upon, but here goes:
Religion (faith) promised redemption but delivered divisive hate. Science (representation) promised reality but delivered fragmented illusion. Technology promised prosperity (progress) but delivered seductive hyperreality. In hyperreality truth and reality disappear and are replaced by simulacra - copies for which there are no originals. The only commitment remaining is that to language itself, signs without referents, words without meaning, causes without purpose. Language-fundamentalists now rule the world. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world but a digital screen that constitutes the world.
This is not a Gnostic myth but a philosophical analysis which leads to a similar conclusion: We are doomed as a species. Our greatest strength, language, is also our instrument of mass suicide. Language does not merely speak us, as Heidegger said; it controls us totally for its own ends. The more we struggle against it, the more it tightens its hold around our collective neck. Yet we resist the recognition. We remain committed to the fanaticism of language despite its obvious trajectory. This is the intelligence of evil. The perfect crime. “[T]he simulacrum is not that which hides the truth, but that which hides the absence of truth.”
Baudrillard’s is a carefully empirical study, the prophetic accuracy of which is difficult to deny. QAnon, Trump rallies, evangelical Christians, suicidal Buddhists, Islamic terrorists, and any of several dozen conspiracy theories are what he predicted. There is not just disagreement on the facts but of what constitutes a fact. There is no rational argument because rationality itself is undefined. Patterns appear in data and can mean anything we want them to mean. Identity, from gender to career, is a matter of individual choice and is therefore as fluid as it is inalienable. Shibboleths about democracy, values, ideals, humanity, spiritual well-being have shown themselves to be what they are: rationalisations for someone’s quest for power. All conceivable modes of expression are absorbed into advertising.
God and the Real were once the ever-receding horizon of human knowledge, limits to be striven toward but never reached. They acted as standards by which advance could be measured. In the virtual reality of the simulacra, there are no such limits and therefore no standards against which to assess knowledge. What can be imagined is immediately incorporated into the world as we experience it. “We are never done with making good the void of truth. Hence the flight forward into ever more simulacra.” At best, the world-as-it-is is a sort of “strange attractor” which acts solely to promote yet more imagination. And that imagination leads to an hypothesis:
“... the world does not exist in order for us to know it or, more exactly, knowledge itself is part of the illusion of the world. This is the very principle of the world that thinks us. The question of whether there is an objective reality does not even arise: the intelligence of the world is the intelligence of the world that thinks us.”
Our species-wide infatuation with artificial intelligence is a symptom of our “being incapable of accepting thought (the idea that the world thinks us, the intelligence of evil), we invent the easiest solution, the technical solution: Artificial Intelligence.” This is typical. It is what our species has always done, that is chosen the easy solution:
“Against the hypothesis of uncertainty: the illusion of truth and reality. Against the hypothesis of destiny: the illusion of freedom. Against the hypothesis of evil [Mal]: the illusion of mis-fortune [malheur]. Against the hypothesis of thought, the illusion of Artificial Intelligence. Against the hypothesis of the event: the illusion of information. Against the hypothesis of becoming: the illusion of change.”
This is obviously not a book for everyone. And those who might benefit most from it are those least likely to read it, namely, those boosters and promoters of AI in all its forms. They prefer algorithms to aphorisms. Nevertheless, just the suspicion that they are not doing what they think they are doing might generate a bubble of humility in their sea of hubris. Spread the non-algorithmic word.
Postscript 10Apr21: this from the WP. It ain’t going to happen: https://apple.news/AKOtmBh3YQOKqMxdSOPcrGA
va87's review
4.0
This, the "closing text" in the "cycle of 'theory-fictions'" beginning with Fatal Strategies, is likely the most significant of Baudrillard's books in his last decade of writing. The Intelligence of Evil finds him fiercely independent, yet indebted to writers who came before him; dauntingly subtle, yet unabashedly straightforward; and unmatched in both his timeliness and untimeliness. While Baudrillard's penultimate reflections on Evil, God, disappearance and becoming are beautiful and touching, he was proudly unrepentant to the end: expect no deathbed conversion nor recompense.
Chris Turner's illuminating introduction also deserves special notice.
Chris Turner's illuminating introduction also deserves special notice.
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