The Crisis of Global Politics - Perspectives from Continental Philosophy
The Crisis of Global Politics
https://lseideas.atavist.com/philosophy
How does this relate to technology and the ‘we’? Heidegger argues that this classical 'Cartesian' subjectivity of Descartes is actually just how technology also operates. The essence of technology is how it reveals the world to human comprehension in a very specific way: as a representation of objects in being, in an ongoing process Heidegger terms enframing. The danger is, the deeper down this path one goes, and the more enframed objects become, the greater the difficulty is in reconciling the certainty of the subject with the increasingly complex (and mathematical) object. If science reaches the point where the object is lost to the senses, then the subject as ‘I’ is lost as well. It can no longer be certain of itself. Heidegger terms this state an ‘objectlessness’.
For instance, this enframing can be observed in General Circulation Models (GCM), which form the basis of climate science. GCMs work by examining the changes within and between a system of smaller and smaller grids of air, placed upon the planet. Earth Systems science, which is responsible for bringing the Anthropocene into being, uses a similar form of ‘Integrated Assessment Model.’ And, although it is only through these models that we are aware of the Anthropocene, they are so incredibly complex that no human mind can actually comprehend their processes and calculations. Hence, in something as large and complex as the Anthropocene, there is no ‘object’ to represent back to subjectivity. There is no certainty for this ‘I’ in this objectlessness of endless calculations. Hence, with no ‘I’, the subiectum becomes the ‘We’ of all of humanity.
The danger is that both sides of the debate over the Anthropocene are falling into the same trap of positing a planetary humanity as ‘we’, arguing that ‘we’ can only see ourselves as a species now, and that humankind is a unified entity (the anthopos), the central actor in a new kind of ‘Anthropocene earth’. This implies risk and disaster for any distinct cultural, religious, linguistic, geographical etc. pluralities or groups, that do not wish to become part of this homogenous ‘we’. It endangers any form of difference, outside of the collective ‘we’ of the group.
This global crisis is not merely ecological, therefore, but also conceptual. A loss of certainty in where ‘I’ am in the world, means people seek self-certainty more from group and identity politics, where the ‘we’ is more easily established across greater scales of time and space.