“The public access to the web is twenty years old. Through it, digital society has developed throughout the entire world. But has this society become mündig, that is, mature, in the sense that Immanuel Kant used this term to define the age of Enlightenment as an exit from minority, from Unmündigkeit ? Certainly not: contemporary society seems on the contrary to have become profoundly regressive. Mental disorders as well as environmental, economic, political and military problems constantly proliferate and increase, while the spread of traceability seems to be used primarily to increase the heteronomy of individuals through behaviour-profiling rather than their autonomy.
If digitalisation clearly holds promise in many ways, and if (and I am convinced of this) socialising digitalisation in a reasoned and resolute way is the first condition for the world to escape from the impasse in which the obsolete consumerist industrial model finds itself, then, this socialisation requires the creation and negotiation of a new legal framework which itself presupposes the formation of new ‘Enlightenments’.
What Would a World Without You Look Like?
The ant is a starting point. A living point. Yet moved first and foremost by our mind as an object of thought.
An ant can be described as a point.
Immediately is supposes other ants.
The ant is an element in a set. It is a multiplicity, a singular plural.
We consider the ant as a generic, a universal. We do not expect the ant to be different from other ants.
This is because we are not specialists: we are not myrmecologists.
An ant for us is a point in a dynamic system. The point is moving in relation to other points on a surface or a sphere.
We see the ant in space, and it is partly a geometrical space. It is both abstract and concrete.
An ant is a symbol for an intelligent emergent system, in which the parts are close to non-existent, but the sum of parts is capable of structural constructions and organized behaviour.
The ant is the member of a group, yet it is seen and considered in isolation. The group is potential, virtual when we consider the ant as ant.
The ant is floating in an abstract place yet to be determined by a narrative and a logos. The ant has, for the moment, no agency.
It may represent the idea of a minimal living point. Or the minimal unit in a biosemiotic text.
The ant has almost no psychological density, yet it is not a pure dot in a set of data. It is more like the point of an exclamation mark. If you take out the point it is no longer an exclamation point, it is an observation without observer.
As an ant that is considered and spoken about, it becomes special, but this is because the other ants have not appeared yet in a non-virtual fashion. The other ants are a probable, possible, background.
For the moment, the ant is a bridge between an abstract point and the realm of life. As such, it is a missing link. The ant is an and. It is a double reality, or triple, since as a geometrical point it also contains the mathematical idea of infinite.
The ant is perhaps both a sign and the negation of an alphabet, because it signifies sameness. But it also suggests difference, the possibility of a difference.
The ant is neither anonymous, neither individuated.
Between the mental representation of an ant and a natural ant, there is a difference in movement and anticipation. But we are searching for another kind of difference, the difference that transforms a monotonous system into a crealectical system. Can we say that a monotonous system is a system of sameness, and a crealectical system a system of differences?
A crealectical system is more than a dialectical system, and more than an analytical system. How?
What would be an analytical system of ants? A system in which sameness is also difference, but a functional difference. Such is the system of science; it studies the ants as a species. Inside this species functional distinctions are operated. A soldier ant is distinguished from a worker ant, and other more sophisticated distinctions that constitute the science of myrmecology.
A dialectical system of ants is a system in which, at a given moment, an ant is not an ant: a dead ant, a larva, or the queen ant are both ants and not ants, for different reasons. The dialectical system is the same as the analytical one, but we look at it from the perspective of becoming, change, growth, and limit states within a given species.
What is then the difference between a crealectical description and a dialectical description? Crealectics looks at the ant in relation to the Creal, that is in relation to possibilities, virtualities, everything that is not the ant and yet that is not another real thing.
Crealectics does not look at the ant in relation to the coleopteran, this is the domain of analytics.
Crealectics does not look at the various aspects and moments of being an ant, including the moments were the ant appears to be like the negation of itself, as a larva or a queen. This is the domain of dialectics.
Crealectics looks for example at the ant in relation to a world in which the ant is but a possibility. The first exercise of a crealectics of the ant is to look at a reality in which ants do exist, and to ask: what would be a world without ants?
The first question of the crealectics of humanity asks: what would be a world without humans, a world in which humans are a virtuality, a potential? We are thinking about them both as what they are not and as a possibility, but not as a hard reality. Such kind of questioning generates hypotheses, narratives, realizations about the place of such and such reality in our network of realities.
What would a world without money look like? To think about it is to engage in the first steps of a crealectics of money.
What would a world without numbers be like? To begin to imagine it and attempt to answer is the beginning of the crealectics of numbers.
Crealectics starts with a form of thought experiment. It is a philosophical practice that considers entities in relationship with the totality of all there is. It encourages us to think holistically. It also encourages us to feel the deeper dimensions of a reality by imagining its absence.
Now a first question towards the crealectics of yourself: what would a world without you be like?
Author Luis de MirandaPosted on 3 Oct 2018 3 Oct 2018 Categories crealecticsLeave a comment on What Would a World Without You Look Like?