De historieløse politikeres håbløse ørkenkrig.

Det var en ikke blot en mindre fejltagelse at sende danske soldater ind i Afghanistan. Det var en historisk hovedløs forsvarspolitisk beslutning, som har kostet dusinvis af danske soldaters liv og milliarder af danske kroner. Penge, som eksempelvis kunne have været brugt på at lave hospitaler og skoler i andre tredjeverdenslande, som befinder sig i fredstid.

Samtidig må en udtalt historieløshed præge de krigspositive politikere, for er den fortsat igangværende krig virkelig en ædel kamp imod religiøse mørkemænd? Selv hvis vi - for argumentets skyld - tager den officielle krigsbegrundelse for gode varer, så kan krigen højst opfattes som et omfattende oprydningsarbejde efter Reagans udenrigspolitiske parløb med fundamentalisten og ekspræsidenten af Pakistan Muhammed Zia ul-Haq, idet man med saudiarabiske midler i 1980’erne byggede islamistiske koranskoler i stor stil langs den pakistansk-afghanske grænse og sendte mange tusinde hellige krigere ind i Afghanistan for at bekæmpe den sovjetiske tilstedeværelse i landet. Efterfølgende så man den anden vej, mens både etableringen af al-Qaeda fandt sted, og grundlaget for det Taliban-styrede Afghanistan blev lagt. Den islamistiske radikalisering af såvel Pakistan som Afghanistan kan således let vurderes at være en utilsigtet konsekvens af en særdeles aggressiv koldkrigspolitik, men denne betydningsfulde nøgle til forståelse af konfliktens historik undlader bannerførerne for den aktivistiske udenrigspolitik i reglen at komme ind på. Derfor foranlediges man let til at stille spørgsmålet: Har de danske krigspositive politikere virkelig en så snæver historisk horisont, at de ikke engang evner at analysere blot få årtier tilbage?

Ser vi nærmere på krigens begyndelse, bliver det endvidere hurtigt krystalklart, at de vestlige krigsmagter ikke har rent mel i posen. Krigen påbegyndtes allerede lidt over en måned efter angrebet på tvillingetårnene d. 11. september. Et angreb, der ifølge den officielle forklaring primært blev begået af folk med saudiarabiske pas, som havde forberedt angrebet i Tyskland, hvorfor det altså ikke blev udført af hverken folk med afghansk baggrund eller forberedt på afghansk jord. Washington forlangte efterfølgende udlevering af Osama bin Laden, hvilket man nægtede fra afghansk side, såfremt der ikke blev leveret konkrete beviser på bin Ladens medskyldighed. Et ganske legitimt krav, burde man mene. Sådanne beviser blev så vidt vides aldrig leveret, og krigen blev kort efter påbegyndt, uden at der forelå autorisation hertil fra FNs Sikkerhedsråd, hvilket teoretisk set betyder, at krigen blev påbegyndt i uoverensstemmelse med folkerettens forskrifter. Den var med andre ord, ligesom Irak-krigen, i strid med flere internationale konventioner, som Danmark har underskrevet og dermed lovet at holde i hævd. I det mindste til at begynde med. FN-sanktioneringen af krigen kom nemlig først senere og altså derfor retroaktivt, hvilket i sig selv er interessant.

Vi kæmpede den gode krig på de godes side, forsikrer politikerne os, men krigen har gennem størstedelen af dens tid været logistisk muliggjort af Usbekistan, et af verdens mest korrupte og brutale diktaturer, og økonomisk af Folkerepublikken Kina, et andet af verden mest repressive regimer, da den amerikanske del i krigen finansieres gennem gældsstiftelse til blandt andre Kina. Endvidere er det meget svært at sluge for folk, der har ulejliget sig med at læse op på den amerikanske udenrigspolitiks historie, at vores soldater skulle kæmpe blandt de noble og moralsk ophøjede. Det er der ganske enkelt ikke noget grundlag for at vurdere, såfremt man, ulig politikerne i det danske Folketing, besidder blot en smule historisk bevidsthed om den amerikanske udenrigspolitik siden anden verdenskrig og især siden krigen i Vietnam. Det bliver ikke lettere at sluge denne underliggende påstand, når man tager med i betragtningen, at vi, blot to år efter krigens påbegyndelse, blev løjet med ind i en anden ørkenkrig, der som bekendt baserede sig på til lejligheden fabrikerede “beviser”. Næppe ligefrem noget man ville forvente af de noble og moralsk ophøjede.

Tilbage står, at vi i tolv år har været i krig med afghanske stammekrigere, som aldrig har udgjort nogen trussel mod dansk territorium, hvorfor det vi nysprogligt kalder forsvarspolitik vanskeligt kan tolkes som andet end en udbredt vilje til at bakke fuldstændig ukritisk op om den amerikanske dominanspolitik. Selvom det er velkendt, at amerikanerne benytter sig af tortur, fortsat støtter repressive regimer verden over og har været i nærmest konstant krig de seneste 65 år, og selvom det nu også blevet kendt, at den amerikanske stat udspionerer os, støtter politikerne dem fortsat ubetinget, hvilket både er ganske sigende og foruroligende.

Den aktivistiske udenrigspolitik har været alt andet end en succes. Afghanistan er langt fra aftalebaniseret og er igen centrum for verdens opiumsproduktion. Irak er stadig nedsunket i kaos ovenpå angrebskrigen mod landet, og Libyen-interventionen skabte ikke et demokratisk paradis på jord men blev i stedet kilden til den nuværende konflikt i Mali. Alligevel er man mere end villig til at drage i krig igen, så snart Washingtons diktat lyder. Det burde vække større forundring, skepsis og kritik, for for blot få årtier siden var det modsatte tilfældet.

Cybersemiotics.

The following passage is taken from the abstract of a new paper by the Danish philosopher Søren Brier entitled "Cybersemiotics: A New Foundation for Transdisciplinary Theory of Information, Cognition, Meaningful Communication and the Interaction Between Nature and Culture"

"Cybersemiotics constructs a non-reductionist framework in order to integrate third person knowledge from the exact sciences and the life sciences with first person knowledge described as the qualities of feeling in humanities and second person intersubjective knowledge of the partly linguistic communicative interactions, on which the social and cultural aspects of reality are based. The modern view of the universe as made through evolution in irreversible time, forces us to view man as a product of evolution and therefore an observer from inside the universe. This changes the way we conceptualize the problem and the role of consciousness in nature and culture. The theory of evolution forces us to conceive the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities together in one theoretical framework of unrestricted or absolute naturalism, where consciousness as well as culture is part of nature. But the theories of the phenomenological life world and the hermeneutics of the meaning of communication seem to defy classical scientific explanations. The humanities therefore send another insight the opposite way down the evolutionary ladder, with questions like: What is the role of consciousness, signs and meaning in the development of our knowledge about evolution? Phenomenology and hermeneutics show the sciences that their prerequisites are embodied living conscious beings imbued with meaningful language and with a culture. One can see the world view that emerges from the work of the sciences as a reconstruction back into time of our present ecological and evolutionary self-understanding as semiotic intersubjective conscious cultural and historical creatures, but unable to handle the aspects of meaning and conscious awareness and therefore leaving it out of the story. Cybersemiotics proposes to solve the dualistic paradox by starting in the  middle with semiotic cognition and communication as a basic sort of reality in which all our knowledge is created and then suggests that knowledge develops into four aspects of human reality: Our surrounding nature described by the physical and chemical natural sciences, our corporality described by the life sciences such as biology and medicine, our inner world of subjective experience described by phenomenologically based investigations and our social world described by the social sciences. I call this alternative model to the positivistic hierarchy the cybersemiotic star. The article explains the new understanding of Wissenschaft that emerges from Peirce’s and Luhmann’s conceptions"

Green Capitalism: An oxymoron.

Green capitalism is an oxymoron. A life-supporting, sustainable and therefore ecologically viable system cannot be built upon rampant consumerism, constant spatial expansion and a never-ending quest for still higher rates of economic growth i.e. three central components of late capitalism. A non-expansive economic system that does not have profitability as its central axis and that seeks to regenerate and improve upon ecological conditions can't be called a capitalist system. It would be as different from the dominant economic paradigm as day is to night.

Green capitalism is an attempt to heal the wound with it's cause, in that it continues to rely upon viewing nature as a mere pool of resources. It does not in any way cure our cultural and individual dissociation from the natural world, which is simultaneously both the root cause of this dire ecological crisis of mass extinction and the hidden premise of capitalism. We need a green economic and political system to be sure. What we don't need is the old wine on new bottles referred to as green capitalism. We need to weave a new story of reciprocity and sustainability in which human beings and nature are interwoven threads. We don't want to prolong the existence of the old story and remain oblivious to the abyss. 

Embracing Liberation.

When the human being acquires language it is gradually but surely freed from the imprisonment of being locked inside its own mind, unable to communicate the contents of its consciousness to others. This freedom is usually accompanied by a freeing of movement in that bipedalism generally emerges in close temporal proximity to the emergence of language.  

Both of these freedoms – the freedom of movement and the freedom of language – are certainly both very rudimentary to begin with. They evolve only gradually and they lie at the root of all other forms of freedom. We might even say that, at least in the West, one of them soon becomes predominant. Great athletes are usually not very impressive thinkers and great thinkers are usually not known for their proficiency in athletic ability.

They are not complete forms of freedom to be sure, neither to begin with or when they have reached a certain degree of maturity, for we are never totally free to move as we please without aids from outside of us (flying and deep water diving requires technology for example), and it is anything but certain that the freeing of the mind due to the emergence of language, will continue its trajectory of liberation, for the child might have its mind ensnared by what is communicated to it by others through the medium of language.

Both of these freedoms are accompanied by an extension of our embrace. When language is acquired we may embrace the world in the sphere of our consciousness in that it allows us to embrace the thoughts of others and to make sense of the world in which we are embedded. When we acquire the skill of bipedalism this is done by embracing inanimate objects in our world and the legs of those who have already acquired that skill. Both forms of early personal liberation are therefore grounded in an embrace of the world around us.

It is only later in life that the embrace of the parent becomes antithetical to freedom for us. In early adolescence we thus become uncomfortable when our parents embrace us in front of our peers (“please stop hugging and kissing me mom, it's embarrassing”). This is likely to be because the embrace of the parent is experienced as a blockade against an even wider embrace of the world and it is thus felt as an inhibition – the antithesis of freedom.

The adolescent liberation from the parents can unfortunately become quite pathological if it is extended into the future and to others in general, in that we may become afraid of losing our liberty by embracing others and therefore cannot fully love and be intimate with others, for intimacy and love requires embrace. The inability to love others is rooted in fear, that is, rooted in the fear of losing oneself in the act of loving the other. So what may seem as a bulwark against lesser liberty (losing one's control in the act of loving) is actually rooted in the greatest of inhibitions – the inhibition of fear - and it is thus actually the exact opposite of liberty, for liberty should broadly be defined as a state in which the least possible degree of inhibition (inner as well as outer) is present.

The purpose of a good education is therefore simultaneously to give us greater liberty and to teach us how to embrace the world with ever-greater hugs, as it were. Seen in this way, acquiring language and attaining the ability of bipedalism are the most rudimentary forms of education, in which all others forms of later education are rooted. Here, I think, it is necessary to differentiate between schooling and education, for whereas the purpose of an education worth its salt, is to widen both our liberation and our embrace, the result (if not the purpose) of schooling the young mind, is often the exact opposite.