This is a shameless plug, but several of my studies on the Bordeaux School of Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul can be found on my webpage roychristian.academia.edu, including my unpublished paper for the Media Ecology Conference in Toronto that I was coming straight from when Jonathan and I finally managed to have this interview near Quebec City, on "Bernard Charbonneau’s Critique of Mediatized Society", to be found at the bottom under “Drafts”, while an order form for The Green Light. A Self-Critique of the Ecological Movement (Bloomsbury 2018), the only book by Charbonneau available in English (with original introductory materials), can be found under "Books" and used to take advantage of a 35% conference rate valid for the rest of 2019.
We think of standardization as applying only to machines and things that people make. But in the Middle Ages every single Village had its own strains and varieties of turnips, cabbages, radishes, onions, Etc. And their cheeses were all distinctive, and their wines and their beers and their breads, because there were distinctively local strains of fermentation bacteria and yeast. No more. Everywhere you go the Kraft cheddar is the same. the Yuengling beer you buy New York tastes exactly like the one you buy in Texas. The seedling plants you buy in Wisconsin are exactly the varieties you buy in Florida and from the look alike Big Box store. Instead of any real variety, we have the slogan, diversity is our strength.
Christian Roy is outstanding in his knowledge of Ellul and Charbonneau. Moreover his ability to convey the essence of these thinkers is quite remarkable . I very much hope you have him on again. Roy needs a wider audience.
Just watching this video now after your most recent videos and after just finding out about jacques ellul today is crazy. Decided to look him up on youtube because I thought some of his ideas were very profound, and of course it led me back to Johnathan Pageu, AI, and technology lol. More relevant than ever. Crazy how reality comes together like that some days
Loved this talk. These are absolutely fascinating ideas and absolutely something I needed to find. It fits perfectly in line with other things that had been in my mind for so long. Thank you so much for the work you are doing. In my view, the perspective you are offering on some of these issues is literally groundbreaking work. I think your brother's book is a landmark. It certainly is for me. Encountering these pieces of the puzzle has absolutely been revolutionary for me, and this discussion of Ellul adds another essential element to the picture. Keep up the good work.
Concerned Netizen You and Jonathan should have a conversation about mythic/symbolic thinking and media! McLuhan insisted that electric media retrieved the medieval world view and sensibility.... which is Jonathan’s expertise!
Me too. I think this has legs. As a matter of fact, I have a very precise outline in mind of a series of follow-ups, each focusing on specific readings, which could be announced in advance, kind of like a book club.
Thos has got me thinling about shelter and housing. We have a housing crisis in Australia and the island of Tasmania. There is, supposedly, not enough houses. But, if it awere not for holiday rentals, vacant investments, hyper-individuality, and broken families whoch double and triple their housing needs, we surely would have enough rooms and roofs for our population and many more immigrants. How is this problem related to the discussion of this video? Well, Christian mentioned housing as a kind of skin. Also, the discussion touched on notions of media saturation and chaotic systematization. Ideas about technique and its instruments supplanting particularities of local folklore and history, were discussed. In such discussions, I myself seem to be looking for hiding places. Perhaps these visions of possible disconnected outside hiding places, are akin to skin, to clothing, to shelter, room, and housing. Might then, our population be suffering a deep, misunderstood, and unseen desire for shelter; a room to call our own, a roof to cover us from the cybernetic weather, a door to lock out the all seeing eye? Set against this overwhelmingly intrusive everywhere-and-nowhere behemoth, are even our housed (those warmly heated on their couches, staring in isolation at pixel curtains but feet away from their similarly fated family) out in the weather, in need of shelter. Is that why they travel to short stay family homes: because their own house is not satisfying their desire foe shelter from the wild world whoch is no longer outside, but neither yet fully inside; it is everywhere and nowhere. So it goes, that the homeless are flat out on the couch. And the other homeless, the old fashioned type, in their sleeping bags on the steps of the telecom, look for shelter in their phones. Yes, surely they do find it amidst those cold wet nights. But this shelter is a short stay. One cannot get comfy in the wild world of cybernetics.
Not a single mention of Ted Kaczynski's writings? He reffined and distilled Ellul's thought and is arguably the best way to approach it, given that Ellul's magnum opus is needlessly long and rambling.
@Jarl Nicholl I do agree Ellul is rambly and that Kaczynski distilled some ideas of him, but it was far from refining the Technological Society. I wouldnt recommend the manifesto because unlike Ellul, Kaczynski did not differentiate between criticisms of industrial society and criticisms of capitalism, which was a major theoretical shortcoming. More often than not, many of the ill effects of technology on society and the environment he cites are more appropriately blamed on the profit motive of capitalists than industry in and of itself. This is why "Technique and Economy" is one of the most important chapters in Ellul's Technological Society. Kazcynski's infamous strawman of leftists is also a major shortcoming of his work, among others. The guy clearly has never read any Marx or Engels, and has no idea what dialectical materialism is. I get Neo-Luddites and anti-civ folks are edgy and offer an interesting critique of our world, but hardline reactionaries like Kaczynski should definitely be avoided if you want a more nuanced understanding of primitivism in particular and green anarchism in general. Thoreau's works are highly recommended.
Ellul wasn't against technology. He thought it was the modern form of the world, which we needed to respond to - and pass through the sieve of god's judgement (as Christians have always need to do with the society they are in).
E J K 93, I'm sorry but much of your comment really needs adressing because it expresses some well-worn misconceptions. I apologize in advance if my tone is harsh at times, but talking in such a dismissive tone as you do about someone you display so little understanding of is harder to interpret as an honest mistake than as a moral failure. 1) You are correct (at least roughly if not completely) that Kaczynski doesn't distinguish between critiques of technology and of capitalism in Industrial Society and Its Future, but 1.1) that is not some magnum opus of a complete philosophical system but is literally just a manifesto-i.e., a sketched outline of a practical project intended to stir people to action, 1.2) he even says repeatedly in the text that much of the theoretical and empirical work is left out or glossed over for the sake of brevity, and 1.3) he has made the distinction elsewhere and explained at length why he thinks revolt against capitalism is a wasted effort for anti-tech revolutionaries (and even if he hadn't spelled it out, his reasons emerge pretty clearly between the lines of his other writings). He doesn't always agree with Ellul, so the fact that he doesn't always do things the Ellul way doesn't really constitute a critique. So maybe you disagree with him, but to say that Kaczynski hasn't made the distinction or complain that the manifesto isn't theoretically refined enough or that he doesn't follow Ellul closely enough seems to be shallow critique based on an uncharitable reading. 2) I could go on a rant about how I grew up leftist and have considered myself a leftist for most of my life (and never a conservative/right winger), and how I still think Kaczynski hit the nail on the head about leftists as much as it pained me the first time I read him. But that's really besides the point, because even if you have read the manifesto you seem to have misunderstood it on this point. 2.1) There is absolutely nothing in the manifesto that depends on some particular reading of Marx and Engels or that even relates in any immediate way to leftist political philosophy. What he's talking about, which is also stated explicitly in the text, is a "psychological type" that tends (just as a matter of empirical fact) to be attracted to the social issues mostly associated with the contemporary left. He is concerned to keep that type away from the anti-tech movement because he is convinced that they will take over and declaw it by turning it into an harmless discussion group or steer it towards social justice issues at the expence of its original goal. As is clear from his other writing, this has virtually nothing to do with political philosophy or even with the "leftist issues" themselves. For what it's worth, Kaczynski seems to lean more towards the leftist side on particular issues and tend to favor the Democrats in elections because he thinks their policies are better for the environment (though he has of course lost his right to vote, which I, as someone who lives in a place where it's literally impossible to lose your right to vote, think is absurd-but that's another matter...). So his ambition in the manifesto was in large part to repel such "typical (contemporary) leftists" from the anti-tech movement, which I think he's perfectly right in doing for precisely the reasons he has spelled out. The fact that this is needed is becoming increasingly clear even to people like Zerzan and the whole reality of post-left anarchy, and the fact that only the most useless morons like Kevin Tucker & Co are left behind is a good indication that Kaczynski was correct. 2.2) Kaczynski actually had at least one book on Marxism in his cabin when he was arrested and he has extensively quoted and talked about Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Mao, Lenin etc so it's silly to suggest that he hasn't read this stuff. But his focus is certainly more on history, social science, psychology, and revolutionary strategy than on political philosophy as such. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, given his aim. Philosophy is where I've spent the majority of my adult life and I don't think any amount of further reading on dialectical materialism could have made a positive contribution to the manifesto, and it certainly wouldn't have increased its impact on the American public in 1995. For what it's worth, Kaczynski is firmly on the Marxist side in the sense that he considers physical/"objective" factors to be what determines the development of societies. This is argued at length in several places, most exhaustively in the first chapter of his book "Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How". 3) It's ridiculous to call Kaczynski a reactionary. If by that you just mean that he is in some vague sense "opposed to progress", then sure-just like every primitivist ever. If instead you mean that he's some "reactionary conservative" as ordinarliy construed, then you clearly haven't even tried to understand him. Every time issues like racism, sexism, homophobia etc come up in his writing (with the possible exception of the manifesto, for the reason given above) he's quick to point out that he's not endorcing that stuff. He also doesn't take the bait when others suggest it, which is already pretty progressive for someone born in the 40s, and he has explicitly argued that it would be good if we could eliminate racism etc. It's true that he thinks these issues are subordinate to the problem of technology and early on he at least toyed with the idea that their existence might be of strategic use to an anti-tech movement, but he also states plainly that "I want to make clear that I'm not suggesting that [...] abuse of women should be tolerated, nor would I want to see anybody scorned or rejected because they are intersexed or because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc" and that "after the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it." So calling him a reactionary is either trivially true or plainly false, depending on interpretation. 4) It again looks clueless when you say other writers will give "a more nuanced understanding of primitivism." Of course they will, as Kaczynski has very little to say about it. In fact, off the top of my head I can think of only two places where he even talks about primitivism directly and one of them is his lengthy critique of anarcho-primitivist narratives of the nobel savage. The other is one of his letters to David Skrbina in which he talks about using primitivism mostly as a lure for people to get excited about revolting against the technoindustrial system. In the same letter he actually says plainly (and soberly, in my view) that he thinks worldwide hunting-and-gathering is a very unlikely outcome of the collapse of the technoindustrial system. In his latest book (Anti-Tech Revolution) he also says that a revolutionary movement not only cannot control, but shouldn't even waste efforts on trying to control, the aftermath of the revolution. One of the fundamental points of the book (as stated in point 2.2 above) is that the development of societies is so much more a function of physical/objective factors than of the individual wills of human beings that it's pointless for a bunch of revolutionaries to make plans for the post-revolutionary world. This means that the only meaningful goal for revolutionaries is to destroy the current system, because what happens after that will be out of everyone's hands. In other words, he has little interest in primitivist ideals, philosophies, or utopias, because they will be of very limited use to his project (except maybe as a motivating factor for some people) and probably won't be realised even in case of a successful revolution. So while I'm sure he has some anarcho-primitivist inclinations himself and should be of interest to many who share those inclinations, there are obviously better sources for "a nuanced understanding of primitivism" as that isn't really what he's trying to provide. I definitely agree with your recommendation of Thoreau, but given how vastly different he is from Kaczynski in both form and content, he is certainly more of a complement than a substitute.
@@Blodhosta late reply, but thank you for this great response, it's such a rarity to find long, reasonable and cogent discussions on RUclips, you've re-established some hope in me for decent interactions on this platform.
Well, this is certainly at odds with what I thought I knew of Mcluhan. I always imagined him as very much in line with the character from Videodrome who was based in him/was a parody of him - as a rabid technophile celebrating the coming transformation of man into something other.
While that film gave a good sense of his prophetic side, it gave an incorrect impression about his supporting the things he was talking about-the exact opposite was the case. He says as much in his own words in this interview: ruclips.net/video/ijeMM-NXvus/видео.htmlm35s
This seems to be more of an exercise of the interviewer using the entire interview as an opportunity to try to clarify his own ideas rather than a genuine interview in the typical sense.
I always thought it was weird that that the New Jerusalem as a city is an icon of paradise, but also that the there is no sun because God Himself is its light. On the one hand, there is a mediation, on the other hand the icon completely disappears.
That's because in the eschaton, you've stepped into the icon, which the saturated golden background makes palpable: divine energy as luminous atmosphere, with no place for shadows.
@@christianroy7459 I think I can understand that. I am quite interested in Ellul's thought because I was raised in an anabaptist mileiu. In that stream, apart from his calvinistic leanings, Ellul is highly regarded for his non-violence, bohemian love of nature, anti-urbanism, and almost anarchical, Tolstoy-esque egalitarianism. The more I have investigated, the more it seems to me that this stems from a certain reading of Edenic protology which identified the original creation as summum bonum. Human dominion in the form of government--man ruling man--is then identified with fallen nature, and the city is seen as the creation of Cain, who represents the "natural man." To return to paradise, we must be stripped of these "garments" so as to see them for what they truly are: manifestations of sin and death. That, it seems to me, is the reason Ellul might balk at viewing the return to paradise as the entry into a city. I see it as less problematic because the city of God is, as you say, an icon of the cosmos itself, transfigured, restored, and ordered for human flourishing in the light of God. The vision then--the beatific vision, perhaps--is that the New Jerusalem is Eden, wherein the grace of God saturates the whole of creation as it once did ("The glory of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea."). So St. Paul has written that the faces of our souls have become "unveiled" in Christ, as our original nature is rectified and allowed to mystically commune with God Himself once again. Hence we are already a "new creation" and death is defeated. Am I on the right track here?
@@shotinthedark90 You nailed it when it comes to Ellul and his assumption of "the original creation as summum bonum" to return to, only postlapsarian warts and all -hence the city in heaven. But that's just what I'm uncomfortable with, and would like to get to discuss with Jonathan some day, from an Eastern perspective that reads Creation from Christ back and therefore the Heavenly Jerusalem as its originally intended destination, even in Eden as a kind of "staging area" where the Incarnation was meant to happen anyway without the Fall, as a result of which the divine image in man instead got garbled in its expression but still confusedly pointed to this unrealized original program -thus not static perfection within a round garden, but a square city where all distinctions are simultaneously expressed and held in unity as they enclose nature in a garden within the divine-human complex. This is how I tried to put the matter in response to a post by Jacob Russell on The Symbolic World Within the Zombie Invasion a few months back: '"God redeems what evil began. Which is why we see in Revelation, the City of God coming down from heaven." This is precisely Jacques Ellul's position (e.g. in The Meaning of the City). But I am inclined to quibble with that view as incomplete. The City, kingship, the arts and other techniques could not be redeemed if they were merely bad things made good out of character and simply by economic divine intervention in human history; that is, if they were not also in some way iconic, i.e. echoes of the divine image in man, distorted as idols by the Fall but also dimly prefiguring full resemblance in the eschaton. After all, the snake was correct to say that man was to be like God, only not by the way of dualistic knowledge and mimetic rivalry that he suggested, but the opposite way as revealed by Christ and always intended: universal kingship through loving kenosis (self-emptying) and the attendant glory, which is again the opposite of that of the world -not gathering layers of protective/aggressive stuff (garments, walls, weapons, institutions) and manipulative techniques, but on the contrary, a letting-go of one's own and letting-be of all other being in love, not unlike the letting-be (fiat) of Creation, whose true and ultimate character was revealed in Christ, to be fulfilled in the Heavenly City, already present in the Church as a form of gathered unity-in-diversity, intimated in the twofold image of God as man-and-woman in Eden, itself the imprint of the personal mode of being of the Creator as Trinity.'
@@christianroy7459 I think I follow. There's a tendency in some spheres to say that Adam is the point at which the cosmos holds together, until he falls from grace and the creation is subjected to futility. He is a proto-Christ in that sense. Humanity is then, "in Adam," subjected to the law that brings death and decay. But this decay is also "birth pangs" as the creation groans for the "bearing forth of the sons of God." Christ, as redeemer, is then construed as the completion of creation only after the cataclysm of heaven and earth by the introduction of sin. Had Adam not sinned, it would still be proper to say that it is God's intention to scale Eden from a cellular family unit into a city populated by multiple such units (hence the commission to be fruitful and cultivate the earth). The heavenly Jerusalem would then be Eden in expansion, circumscribed not by walls of human creation, but spiritual walls which keep out luciferian degeneracy. I am attracted to that view, but it does pose some problems concerning God's foreknowledge, which gets into the "-lapsarian" debate. I do agree that God's original vision for humanity encompasses a move toward city-like community. I would be very interested to hear your comments on this, if you have any. Thanks for humoring me!
@@shotinthedark90 Ellul underlines the difference between "tending the garden" of Eden/sampling its fruits and "cultivating the earth", which would introduce agriculture (Biblically suspect since Cain) and the attendant technology before the Fall, something he strenuously denies as the commonplace theological justification for technological hegemony and reckless development. As for the commission to be fruitful and multiply, Eastern Fathers tend to interpret it figuratively, i.e. qualitatively rather than quantitatively, not as population growth but as inner spiritual growth, towards whatever conditions would have enabled Incarnation to take place in the fullness of time without the Fall, in some form that we cannot and need not imagine. The case has even been made that without the post-lapsarian biological fact of death, there would have been no need to supplement or add to the original couple: "deepening" their relationship in/with God to the point of conscious intertwining with the Trinity through the Incarnation would have been enough. This means that their human "city" of two would have become one with the divine "city" of Three without the need for a multiplication of hypostases in an Edenic version of urban development. The New Jerusalem as Bride would then be another way to realize the same plan of divine-human nuptial union, only with the fullness of the multiplicity of hypostases generated out of e.g. biological necessity within actually existing post-lapsarian conditions.
It’s surreal watching content that talks about propaganda that was created just before Covid19. Oh Jonathan and Christian … y’all ain’t seen nuthin yet 🤦🏻♀️
This is a shameless plug, but several of my studies on the Bordeaux School of Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul can be found on my webpage roychristian.academia.edu, including my unpublished paper for the Media Ecology Conference in Toronto that I was coming straight from when Jonathan and I finally managed to have this interview near Quebec City,
on "Bernard Charbonneau’s Critique of Mediatized Society", to be found at the bottom under “Drafts”, while an order form for The Green Light. A Self-Critique of the Ecological Movement (Bloomsbury 2018), the only book by Charbonneau available in English (with original introductory materials), can be found under "Books" and used to take advantage of a 35% conference rate valid for the rest of 2019.
Christian Roy Thank you for your insights.
one more shameless plug, ruclips.net/video/1yhw1OByILU/видео.html it's all related
Thank you sir, doing a research project on Marshall Mcluhan will cite you
Good Conversation, Christian Roy. God bless you.
Every time Jonathan pronounces a french word with an accent I gain an IQ point
Especes de connery.
Ive always said that I fear less an AI machine that can think like man, but men that are conditioned to think like machines.
Do you live after or before the Butlerian jihad?
@@David_Brinkerhoff93 😂
We think of standardization as applying only to machines and things that people make. But in the Middle Ages every single Village had its own strains and varieties of turnips, cabbages, radishes, onions, Etc. And their cheeses were all distinctive, and their wines and their beers and their breads, because there were distinctively local strains of fermentation bacteria and yeast. No more. Everywhere you go the Kraft cheddar is the same. the Yuengling beer you buy New York tastes exactly like the one you buy in Texas. The seedling plants you buy in Wisconsin are exactly the varieties you buy in Florida and from the look alike Big Box store. Instead of any real variety, we have the slogan, diversity is our strength.
Bernard Charbonneau wrote several books on this topic of the regional politics of food.
Christian Roy is outstanding in his knowledge of Ellul and Charbonneau. Moreover his ability to convey the essence of these thinkers is quite remarkable . I very much hope you have him on again. Roy needs a wider audience.
Conversations like this could go on for hours, and I would not mind if they did. Have Christian on again sometime, please.
Agreed. Mr. Pageau, I'd also be very pleased if you and M. Roy continued your discussion on the City.
Ellul... Finally!!! And McLuhan. You are on the right track.
This channel always made me think of a quote from McLuhan's 'Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man'......... 'we actually live mythically'
Just watching this video now after your most recent videos and after just finding out about jacques ellul today is crazy. Decided to look him up on youtube because I thought some of his ideas were very profound, and of course it led me back to Johnathan Pageu, AI, and technology lol. More relevant than ever. Crazy how reality comes together like that some days
My meme-damaged mind totally read the title as "with my christian boi"
"CHR1ST AT H0M3"
Christian Roy _is_ a great name for a Christian guy
No ur just a pervert its just no one has told u before
Loved this talk. These are absolutely fascinating ideas and absolutely something I needed to find. It fits perfectly in line with other things that had been in my mind for so long. Thank you so much for the work you are doing. In my view, the perspective you are offering on some of these issues is literally groundbreaking work. I think your brother's book is a landmark. It certainly is for me. Encountering these pieces of the puzzle has absolutely been revolutionary for me, and this discussion of Ellul adds another essential element to the picture. Keep up the good work.
The relationship between freedom and ecology is interesting. One of those things I've not heard before but make sense as soon as I hear it.
Love Ellul his book Christian anarchy (the 2nd half) is a fun and interesting read
Merci Christian et Jonathan.
19:19 - "Green guilt home schooling", "recycling atonement ritual"
Hey, I remember that guy from the conference! Excellent gnab, Jonathan. Looking forward to releasing video of my presentation soon.
Concerned Netizen You and Jonathan should have a conversation about mythic/symbolic thinking and media! McLuhan insisted that electric media retrieved the medieval world view and sensibility.... which is Jonathan’s expertise!
Great discussion! The changes that have taken place since you posted this video confirm many of the elements you describe.
great stuff. looking forward to Part 2, 3, 4, etc ;)
Me too. I think this has legs. As a matter of fact, I have a very precise outline in mind of a series of follow-ups, each focusing on specific readings, which could be announced in advance, kind of like a book club.
Top Notch content right here Jonathan. Much appreciated.
Great video, would definitely like to hear more on Ellul and McLuhan.
Thos has got me thinling about shelter and housing.
We have a housing crisis in Australia and the island of Tasmania. There is, supposedly, not enough houses. But, if it awere not for holiday rentals, vacant investments, hyper-individuality, and broken families whoch double and triple their housing needs, we surely would have enough rooms and roofs for our population and many more immigrants.
How is this problem related to the discussion of this video? Well, Christian mentioned housing as a kind of skin. Also, the discussion touched on notions of media saturation and chaotic systematization. Ideas about technique and its instruments supplanting particularities of local folklore and history, were discussed.
In such discussions, I myself seem to be looking for hiding places. Perhaps these visions of possible disconnected outside hiding places, are akin to skin, to clothing, to shelter, room, and housing.
Might then, our population be suffering a deep, misunderstood, and unseen desire for shelter; a room to call our own, a roof to cover us from the cybernetic weather, a door to lock out the all seeing eye? Set against this overwhelmingly intrusive everywhere-and-nowhere behemoth, are even our housed (those warmly heated on their couches, staring in isolation at pixel curtains but feet away from their similarly fated family) out in the weather, in need of shelter. Is that why they travel to short stay family homes: because their own house is not satisfying their desire foe shelter from the wild world whoch is no longer outside, but neither yet fully inside; it is everywhere and nowhere.
So it goes, that the homeless are flat out on the couch. And the other homeless, the old fashioned type, in their sleeping bags on the steps of the telecom, look for shelter in their phones. Yes, surely they do find it amidst those cold wet nights. But this shelter is a short stay. One cannot get comfy in the wild world of cybernetics.
Not a single mention of Ted Kaczynski's writings? He reffined and distilled Ellul's thought and is arguably the best way to approach it, given that Ellul's magnum opus is needlessly long and rambling.
@Jarl Nicholl I do agree Ellul is rambly and that Kaczynski distilled some ideas of him, but it was far from refining the Technological Society.
I wouldnt recommend the manifesto because unlike Ellul, Kaczynski did not differentiate between criticisms of industrial society and criticisms of capitalism, which was a major theoretical shortcoming. More often than not, many of the ill effects of technology on society and the environment he cites are more appropriately blamed on the profit motive of capitalists than industry in and of itself. This is why "Technique and Economy" is one of the most important chapters in Ellul's Technological Society. Kazcynski's infamous strawman of leftists is also a major shortcoming of his work, among others. The guy clearly has never read any Marx or Engels, and has no idea what dialectical materialism is.
I get Neo-Luddites and anti-civ folks are edgy and offer an interesting critique of our world, but hardline reactionaries like Kaczynski should definitely be avoided if you want a more nuanced understanding of primitivism in particular and green anarchism in general. Thoreau's works are highly recommended.
Ellul wasn't against technology. He thought it was the modern form of the world, which we needed to respond to - and pass through the sieve of god's judgement (as Christians have always need to do with the society they are in).
@@VrilWaffen >
_Comments on the society of the spectacle,_ Guy Debord, 1988.
E J K 93, I'm sorry but much of your comment really needs adressing because it expresses some well-worn misconceptions. I apologize in advance if my tone is harsh at times, but talking in such a dismissive tone as you do about someone you display so little understanding of is harder to interpret as an honest mistake than as a moral failure.
1) You are correct (at least roughly if not completely) that Kaczynski doesn't distinguish between critiques of technology and of capitalism in Industrial Society and Its Future, but 1.1) that is not some magnum opus of a complete philosophical system but is literally just a manifesto-i.e., a sketched outline of a practical project intended to stir people to action, 1.2) he even says repeatedly in the text that much of the theoretical and empirical work is left out or glossed over for the sake of brevity, and 1.3) he has made the distinction elsewhere and explained at length why he thinks revolt against capitalism is a wasted effort for anti-tech revolutionaries (and even if he hadn't spelled it out, his reasons emerge pretty clearly between the lines of his other writings). He doesn't always agree with Ellul, so the fact that he doesn't always do things the Ellul way doesn't really constitute a critique. So maybe you disagree with him, but to say that Kaczynski hasn't made the distinction or complain that the manifesto isn't theoretically refined enough or that he doesn't follow Ellul closely enough seems to be shallow critique based on an uncharitable reading.
2) I could go on a rant about how I grew up leftist and have considered myself a leftist for most of my life (and never a conservative/right winger), and how I still think Kaczynski hit the nail on the head about leftists as much as it pained me the first time I read him. But that's really besides the point, because even if you have read the manifesto you seem to have misunderstood it on this point.
2.1) There is absolutely nothing in the manifesto that depends on some particular reading of Marx and Engels or that even relates in any immediate way to leftist political philosophy. What he's talking about, which is also stated explicitly in the text, is a "psychological type" that tends (just as a matter of empirical fact) to be attracted to the social issues mostly associated with the contemporary left. He is concerned to keep that type away from the anti-tech movement because he is convinced that they will take over and declaw it by turning it into an harmless discussion group or steer it towards social justice issues at the expence of its original goal. As is clear from his other writing, this has virtually nothing to do with political philosophy or even with the "leftist issues" themselves. For what it's worth, Kaczynski seems to lean more towards the leftist side on particular issues and tend to favor the Democrats in elections because he thinks their policies are better for the environment (though he has of course lost his right to vote, which I, as someone who lives in a place where it's literally impossible to lose your right to vote, think is absurd-but that's another matter...). So his ambition in the manifesto was in large part to repel such "typical (contemporary) leftists" from the anti-tech movement, which I think he's perfectly right in doing for precisely the reasons he has spelled out. The fact that this is needed is becoming increasingly clear even to people like Zerzan and the whole reality of post-left anarchy, and the fact that only the most useless morons like Kevin Tucker & Co are left behind is a good indication that Kaczynski was correct.
2.2) Kaczynski actually had at least one book on Marxism in his cabin when he was arrested and he has extensively quoted and talked about Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Mao, Lenin etc so it's silly to suggest that he hasn't read this stuff. But his focus is certainly more on history, social science, psychology, and revolutionary strategy than on political philosophy as such. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, given his aim. Philosophy is where I've spent the majority of my adult life and I don't think any amount of further reading on dialectical materialism could have made a positive contribution to the manifesto, and it certainly wouldn't have increased its impact on the American public in 1995. For what it's worth, Kaczynski is firmly on the Marxist side in the sense that he considers physical/"objective" factors to be what determines the development of societies. This is argued at length in several places, most exhaustively in the first chapter of his book "Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How".
3) It's ridiculous to call Kaczynski a reactionary. If by that you just mean that he is in some vague sense "opposed to progress", then sure-just like every primitivist ever. If instead you mean that he's some "reactionary conservative" as ordinarliy construed, then you clearly haven't even tried to understand him. Every time issues like racism, sexism, homophobia etc come up in his writing (with the possible exception of the manifesto, for the reason given above) he's quick to point out that he's not endorcing that stuff. He also doesn't take the bait when others suggest it, which is already pretty progressive for someone born in the 40s, and he has explicitly argued that it would be good if we could eliminate racism etc. It's true that he thinks these issues are subordinate to the problem of technology and early on he at least toyed with the idea that their existence might be of strategic use to an anti-tech movement, but he also states plainly that "I want to make clear that I'm not suggesting that [...] abuse of women should be tolerated, nor would I want to see anybody scorned or rejected because they are intersexed or because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc" and that "after the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it." So calling him a reactionary is either trivially true or plainly false, depending on interpretation.
4) It again looks clueless when you say other writers will give "a more nuanced understanding of primitivism." Of course they will, as Kaczynski has very little to say about it. In fact, off the top of my head I can think of only two places where he even talks about primitivism directly and one of them is his lengthy critique of anarcho-primitivist narratives of the nobel savage. The other is one of his letters to David Skrbina in which he talks about using primitivism mostly as a lure for people to get excited about revolting against the technoindustrial system. In the same letter he actually says plainly (and soberly, in my view) that he thinks worldwide hunting-and-gathering is a very unlikely outcome of the collapse of the technoindustrial system. In his latest book (Anti-Tech Revolution) he also says that a revolutionary movement not only cannot control, but shouldn't even waste efforts on trying to control, the aftermath of the revolution. One of the fundamental points of the book (as stated in point 2.2 above) is that the development of societies is so much more a function of physical/objective factors than of the individual wills of human beings that it's pointless for a bunch of revolutionaries to make plans for the post-revolutionary world. This means that the only meaningful goal for revolutionaries is to destroy the current system, because what happens after that will be out of everyone's hands. In other words, he has little interest in primitivist ideals, philosophies, or utopias, because they will be of very limited use to his project (except maybe as a motivating factor for some people) and probably won't be realised even in case of a successful revolution. So while I'm sure he has some anarcho-primitivist inclinations himself and should be of interest to many who share those inclinations, there are obviously better sources for "a nuanced understanding of primitivism" as that isn't really what he's trying to provide.
I definitely agree with your recommendation of Thoreau, but given how vastly different he is from Kaczynski in both form and content, he is certainly more of a complement than a substitute.
@@Blodhosta late reply, but thank you for this great response, it's such a rarity to find long, reasonable and cogent discussions on RUclips, you've re-established some hope in me for decent interactions on this platform.
In the past there was another conversation with Christian, was it removed?
Read "Bright Green Lies"!
Well, this is certainly at odds with what I thought I knew of Mcluhan. I always imagined him as very much in line with the character from Videodrome who was based in him/was a parody of him - as a rabid technophile celebrating the coming transformation of man into something other.
While that film gave a good sense of his prophetic side, it gave an incorrect impression about his supporting the things he was talking about-the exact opposite was the case. He says as much in his own words in this interview:
ruclips.net/video/ijeMM-NXvus/видео.htmlm35s
So I've tried to reread the famous collection of essays of his and I'm sorry, I still see this as enthusiastic religious exultation.
Sigh.
I much prefer Virilio. And Virilio had the same impression about McLuhan as I do, I fear.
Is it too early to look into starting a Discord group?
Already started.
discord.gg/kfvs3Hn
Sunday School was never this cool...
Might have been better to hold the discussion in French and ad subtitles.
Besides, I'm not a better speaker in French...
@@christianroy7459 whatever is best for you guys. thanks for the great discussion! I enjoyed it and it's given me a lot to think about.
A well-done rarity on videotape, nice work, John!
really cool!
Well all I know is I always knew my soul is valuable enough to end the world to Jesus
This seems to be more of an exercise of the interviewer using the entire interview as an opportunity to try to clarify his own ideas rather than a genuine interview in the typical sense.
When you mess with someones brain they Die. Where do you go when you die?
Frank James are you here yet?
"an expert on them" is that the medium or a message? 😆
I always thought it was weird that that the New Jerusalem as a city is an icon of paradise, but also that the there is no sun because God Himself is its light. On the one hand, there is a mediation, on the other hand the icon completely disappears.
That's because in the eschaton, you've stepped into the icon, which the saturated golden background makes palpable: divine energy as luminous atmosphere, with no place for shadows.
@@christianroy7459 I think I can understand that. I am quite interested in Ellul's thought because I was raised in an anabaptist mileiu. In that stream, apart from his calvinistic leanings, Ellul is highly regarded for his non-violence, bohemian love of nature, anti-urbanism, and almost anarchical, Tolstoy-esque egalitarianism. The more I have investigated, the more it seems to me that this stems from a certain reading of Edenic protology which identified the original creation as summum bonum. Human dominion in the form of government--man ruling man--is then identified with fallen nature, and the city is seen as the creation of Cain, who represents the "natural man." To return to paradise, we must be stripped of these "garments" so as to see them for what they truly are: manifestations of sin and death. That, it seems to me, is the reason Ellul might balk at viewing the return to paradise as the entry into a city. I see it as less problematic because the city of God is, as you say, an icon of the cosmos itself, transfigured, restored, and ordered for human flourishing in the light of God. The vision then--the beatific vision, perhaps--is that the New Jerusalem is Eden, wherein the grace of God saturates the whole of creation as it once did ("The glory of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea."). So St. Paul has written that the faces of our souls have become "unveiled" in Christ, as our original nature is rectified and allowed to mystically commune with God Himself once again. Hence we are already a "new creation" and death is defeated. Am I on the right track here?
@@shotinthedark90 You nailed it when it comes to Ellul and his assumption of "the original creation as summum bonum" to return to, only postlapsarian warts and all -hence the city in heaven. But that's just what I'm uncomfortable with, and would like to get to discuss with Jonathan some day, from an Eastern perspective that reads Creation from Christ back and therefore the Heavenly Jerusalem as its originally intended destination, even in Eden as a kind of "staging area" where the Incarnation was meant to happen anyway without the Fall, as a result of which the divine image in man instead got garbled in its expression but still confusedly pointed to this unrealized original program -thus not static perfection within a round garden, but a square city where all distinctions are simultaneously expressed and held in unity as they enclose nature in a garden within the divine-human complex. This is how I tried to put the matter in response to a post by Jacob Russell on The Symbolic World Within the Zombie Invasion a few months back: '"God redeems what evil began. Which is why we see in Revelation, the City of God coming down from heaven." This is precisely Jacques Ellul's position (e.g. in The Meaning of the City). But I am inclined to quibble with that view as incomplete. The City, kingship, the arts and other techniques could not be redeemed if they were merely bad things made good out of character and simply by economic divine intervention in human history; that is, if they were not also in some way iconic, i.e. echoes of the divine image in man, distorted as idols by the Fall but also dimly prefiguring full resemblance in the eschaton. After all, the snake was correct to say that man was to be like God, only not by the way of dualistic knowledge and mimetic rivalry that he suggested, but the opposite way as revealed by Christ and always intended: universal kingship through loving kenosis (self-emptying) and the attendant glory, which is again the opposite of that of the world -not gathering layers of protective/aggressive stuff (garments, walls, weapons, institutions) and manipulative techniques, but on the contrary, a letting-go of one's own and letting-be of all other being in love, not unlike the letting-be (fiat) of Creation, whose true and ultimate character was revealed in Christ, to be fulfilled in the Heavenly City, already present in the Church as a form of gathered unity-in-diversity, intimated in the twofold image of God as man-and-woman in Eden, itself the imprint of the personal mode of being of the Creator as Trinity.'
@@christianroy7459 I think I follow. There's a tendency in some spheres to say that Adam is the point at which the cosmos holds together, until he falls from grace and the creation is subjected to futility. He is a proto-Christ in that sense. Humanity is then, "in Adam," subjected to the law that brings death and decay. But this decay is also "birth pangs" as the creation groans for the "bearing forth of the sons of God." Christ, as redeemer, is then construed as the completion of creation only after the cataclysm of heaven and earth by the introduction of sin. Had Adam not sinned, it would still be proper to say that it is God's intention to scale Eden from a cellular family unit into a city populated by multiple such units (hence the commission to be fruitful and cultivate the earth). The heavenly Jerusalem would then be Eden in expansion, circumscribed not by walls of human creation, but spiritual walls which keep out luciferian degeneracy.
I am attracted to that view, but it does pose some problems concerning God's foreknowledge, which gets into the "-lapsarian" debate. I do agree that God's original vision for humanity encompasses a move toward city-like community. I would be very interested to hear your comments on this, if you have any. Thanks for humoring me!
@@shotinthedark90 Ellul underlines the difference between "tending the garden" of Eden/sampling its fruits and "cultivating the earth", which would introduce agriculture (Biblically suspect since Cain) and the attendant technology before the Fall, something he strenuously denies as the commonplace theological justification for technological hegemony and reckless development. As for the commission to be fruitful and multiply, Eastern Fathers tend to interpret it figuratively, i.e. qualitatively rather than quantitatively, not as population growth but as inner spiritual growth, towards whatever conditions would have enabled Incarnation to take place in the fullness of time without the Fall, in some form that we cannot and need not imagine. The case has even been made that without the post-lapsarian biological fact of death, there would have been no need to supplement or add to the original couple: "deepening" their relationship in/with God to the point of conscious intertwining with the Trinity through the Incarnation would have been enough. This means that their human "city" of two would have become one with the divine "city" of Three without the need for a multiplication of hypostases in an Edenic version of urban development. The New Jerusalem as Bride would then be another way to realize the same plan of divine-human nuptial union, only with the fullness of the multiplicity of hypostases generated out of e.g. biological necessity within actually existing post-lapsarian conditions.
Mindlessly mechanical.
It’s surreal watching content that talks about propaganda that was created just before Covid19. Oh Jonathan and Christian … y’all ain’t seen nuthin yet 🤦🏻♀️
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My phone carries me while I think I'm carrying it. 🤳🃏🎭🔃🎬🥏🪃🎡🎪🎠🥨🐍🤸