Jacques ellul thread?

That quote describes me. The man was ahead of his time.

peter?

Do you own the physical book? On Amazon I heard it's a terrible printjob. Anyone have any info?

I have this edition:
amazon.com/Technological-Society-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394703901/ref=sr_1_1

I'm not a huge fan of the binding desu-- the book feels semi-cheap, but there's nothing wrong with the printing IMO. Still a better read than an E-Book, but E-Books made my eyes bleed so take my advice with a grain of salt.

go on kill libgen dot io (u are a faggot)

thepiratebay.org/torrent/9260087/Jacques_Ellul_-_sociologist__Christian_anarchist_(15_books)

if you are living in a country that is a bit stricter with the piracy laws, I could try uploading this to madiafire or some other site for you to download

A lot of credit goes to Ellul indeed, because many thinkers are only today starting to grasp this phenomenon. He saw it way ahead of time when the class of unemployable people were still barely even born yet, and he was more specific (probably due to being closer to us in time) than Heidegger, Marx and the rest. Sadly, people with such vision are seldom responsible for policies and the kind of decisions that would have dampened this dreadful trend.

I have no idea what could be done now about our borderline full technocratic society, other than complete resignation or violent uprising.

youtube.com/watch?v=BqCKjzs4_4I

this seems like an interesting channel, this grandma seems like she is fucking based, tons of content on her profile

he really was. we live in those Interesting Times you hear about, i think.

no, but usually the yarr matey has pretty good quality stuff.

nope

back on topic, here's a nice quote from TCS. it's interesting how far ahead of the game ellul was - he's basically anticipating land here by half a century, how technical innovation really requires the plasticity of a society to work. which is what innovation in turn does, plasticizes further...

i'm usually the first guy to champion land as a prophet but JE knew the deal too. going to read siegfried giedion after this too i reckon.

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although that should be TTS, not TCS, sorry.

duh.

My paperback for The Technological Society has a shitty print quality, but my copy of Propaganda is fine.

>I fucking hate technology
>He typed in his Veeky Forums post

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>Jacques Ellul-much less solemn in mood than usual-here cracks open political and sociological commonplaces, destructively and wittily demonstrating how our unthinking acceptance of them encourages hypocrisy, smugness, and mental inertia. Among the stereotypes of thought and speech thus exploded are such phrases as "You can't act without getting your hands dirty" "Work is freedom" "We must follow the current of history" and "Women find their freedom (dignity) in work" A certain number of these old saws preside over our daily life. They permit us to understand one another and to swim in the ordinary current of society. They are accepted as so certain that we almost never question them. They serve at once as sufficient explanations for everything and as "clinchers" in too many arguments. Ellul explores the ways in which such clichés mislead us and prevent us from having independent thoughts-and in fact keep us from facing the problems to which they are theoretically addressed. They are the "new commonplaces"

Ellul doesn’t hate technology.

>system is everywhere and only way to contact worthies is through its tendrils
>use tendrils to destroy it slowly, possibly only planting seeds for later annihilation to blossom
>demon shows up
>why are you using us to destroy us? you know you’ll die too?
begone

Check out ellul.org for a lot of interesting stuff.

>he thinks he is destroying the system

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Well, well, well. Fuckers. I know who does have a copy, if you're up for some paranoid shit. But I'm getting too old for this. Can't wait till I forget what I just remembered.

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The trinity of must-read Ellul books are The Technological Society, Propaganda and The Political Illusion.

This is good stuff.

For those of you who have read both Jacques Ellul and Julius Evola, do you think Ellul's "Anarchist Christian" can live up to Evola's "Differentiated Man?"

at first glance both of them can be reconciled into some kind of revolutionary anti-modern aristocrat

Not really, Ellul's views are very different, he wouldn't condone Evola's acceptance of violence or control.

A few quotes:

>"There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anarchists who choose violence as a means of action."

> "No society can last in conditions of anarchy. This is self-evident and I am in full agreement. But my aim is not the establishment of an anarchist society or the total destruction of the state. Here I differ from anarchists. I do not believe that it is possible to destroy the modern state. It is pure imagination to think that some day this power will be overthrown. From a pragmatic standpoint there is no chance of success. Furthermore, I do not believe that anarchist doctrine is the solution to the problem of organization in society and government. I do not think that if anarchism were to succeed we should have a better or more livable society. Hence I am not fighting for the triumph of this doctrine.
On the other hand, it seems to me that an anarchist attitude is the only one that is sufficiently radical in the face of a general statist system."

>"It seems to me that the free man, i.e., the man freed in Christ, ought to take parts in all movements that aim at human freedom. He obviously ought to oppose all dictatorship and oppression and all the fatalities which crush man. The Christian cannot bear it that others should be slaves. His great passion in the world ought to be a passion for the liberation of men."

If we take the esoteric approach, Evola's differentiated man would be synonymous with the Left-hand path and Ellul as a Christian would be more in line with the Right-hand path.

in an alternate timeline, jacques ellul, ernst junger and julius evola somehow converge in a secluded mountain lodge in switzerland during world war 2. the lodge becomes snowed in and they spend two days together before going their separate ways.

the french resistance fighter, the tiger-riding italian zen aristocrat, and the german war hero have 48 hours to discuss the meaning of life.

what happens?

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That's such a better explanation on why atomization is bad rather than "hurr we must defend the traditional family". It's kind of ironic that technique/capital has to break down subsets of individuals, previously aggregated as tight-knit groups, in order to take hold 'by itself' as the one and only emergent property introducing feedback loops into each individual. I wonder if this process is "natural" insofar as it would have happened in some other way even without the machine, or if we are quite literally bound to our smartphones and production modes.

Another interesting thought is how the college SJWs vainly try to meet both ends if you think about it. What is the feminist movement if not the attempt to conciliate atomization and individuation with putting all people of a kind (women in this case) under the banner of a tightly-knit group? It is a vain attempt, I believe, because they still hold their own movement servant to atomization (the group does not promote itself but rather the individual freedoms of its participants). Not to mention how the movement naturally fragments once again into black feminism, transgender rights, etc. Is it perhaps that we want to be part of these smaller subgroups, as a kind of instinctive defense of our political and economical freedoms (rather than individual) but are held back by technique?

>That's such a better explanation on why atomization is bad rather than "hurr we must defend the traditional family". It's kind of ironic that technique/capital has to break down subsets of individuals, previously aggregated as tight-knit groups, in order to take hold 'by itself' as the one and only emergent property introducing feedback loops into each individual. I wonder if this process is "natural" insofar as it would have happened in some other way even without the machine, or if we are quite literally bound to our smartphones and production modes.

exactly. 104%. here's another thing that passage provoked in me: this idea that back when there was this weird need to 'protect the modern family' but transposed today it becomes in a sense the same puritanical drive to 'protect the modern individual.' and a deluge of idpol madness immediately proceeds: people have this profoundly uncomfortable double desire to be, at one and the same time, discreet and autonomous individuals, and yet also quasi-mimetic beings, beings violently and perpetually triggered by anything that infringes on their sense of individuality *as it is defined by affiliation* - that is to say, by race or gender or whatever else. this desire to have a sense of ourselves by having it both ways leads to total paranoia and constant outrage: i am me but only because i am a collection of my own signs, and that is the whole thing about signs, that we do not possess them autonomously. consumption and media have turned us inside out but preserve this irreducible core of self-identification that is constantly under threat by others in a negative sense, but is also *constantly being seduced* by media.

>Another interesting thought is how the college SJWs vainly try to meet both ends if you think about it. What is the feminist movement if not the attempt to conciliate atomization and individuation with putting all people of a kind (women in this case) under the banner of a tightly-knit group?

i fucking love Veeky Forums. yes. i think it is so.

>Not to mention how the movement naturally fragments once again into black feminism, transgender rights, etc. Is it perhaps that we want to be part of these smaller subgroups, as a kind of instinctive defense of our political and economical freedoms (rather than individual) but are held back by technique?

this also. this is i would say what belongs to capital as technique, when it metastasizes into consumer culture that we might even call a *consumptive culture.* it is semiologically self-cannibalizing. because we all need more of us to go on being desperately happy about - well, you know what i'm saying.

it's why shit is so uncomfortable. we are talking about the *birth pangs of a eudaimonic society.* a society *predicated on happiness* and yet not wholly conscious of the paradox: that is there is no consciousness of self without consciousness of the other. with *all* that that entails.

pic rel for mysterious reasons.

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just to follow up on this, i think it also speaks to zizek's criticism of judith butler: that the transgressive has been confused with the mainstream.

pic rel was apparently hot shit upon publication in 1990: the way to avoid the fear of cthulhu is essentially to identify with cthulhu. be the chaos you wish you see in the world, but it is to my mind ultimately inseparable from *performativity as ethos.*

and the only thing about this is that in the end you will be in some difficulty when you actually want to find something like the Real. the best cinematic treatment of this was given imho by christopher nolan in the dark night: the terrorist is the one who is ultimately having the greatest existential crisis at all. it's one of the things about the bulk of continental philosophy that bugged me, but baudrillard seemed to have a good sense of: we ultimately lose the ability to define or understand terrorism, precisely because a terroristic act can *also* be understood as a pure gesture.

but it's a bad scene. it's not a good idea. and that is where ironic rubber meets the road: 'why so serious?' right?

we suffer from no small measure of reality deprivation today, and all of this belongs to the predominance of technique and everything that can be included within it.

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and in vidya the other equally valid depiction of this thought comes in pic rel. i don't want to become a meme and just repeat myself, but it's what i think about and i'm sometimes curious to know if it makes sense to others as well.

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I got it from my college library and it's an old copy

It's a critique of common beliefs that are popular despite being flawed. They are usually in short chapters and really succinct. Although it was written in the 60s the commonplaces are still prevalent consiidering the boomers still believe and promite many of them, so the book is very relevant.

You can see a phenomena with most political organizations. As atomization occurs, people grow increasingly passionate about their particular movement. It's a replacement for broken social bonds, but it's usually unhealthy and unnatural, since overlapping political beliefs are very fickle building material for real social bond. Like Jesus said, the Christian religion is or ought to be a rock, that's an organic and natural social bond, and it's strength is much sturdier compared to politics.

>§ 13. Quasi-finally, the evaluation of teleoplexy is a research program which teleoplexy itself undertakes. The comprehensive value of capital is an emergent estimate, generated automatically by its inherent analytical intelligence, from prices corrected for commercial relativity (in the direction of 'fundamental values') and discounted for historical virtuality (in the direction of reliable risk modelling). The intricacy of these calculations is explosively fractionated by logical problems of self-reference-both familiar and as-yet-unanticipated-as it compounds through dynamics of competitive cognition in artificial time. If modernity has a spontaneous teleoplexic self-awareness, it corresponds to the problem of techonomic naturalism, immanently approached: How much is the world worth? From the perspective of teleoplexic reflexion, there is no final difference between this commercially-formulated question and its technological complement: What can the earth do? There is only self-quantification of teleoplexy or cybernetic intensity, which is what computerized financial markets (in the end) are for. As accelerationism closes upon this circuit of teleoplexic self-evaluation, its theoretical 'position'-or situation relative to its object-becomes increasingly tangled, until it assumes the basic characteristics of a terminal identity crisis.

this is land and not ellul, and this is an ellul thread but still. technique is having an identity crisis about whether or not it needs humankind to continue its self-evolution, and humankind is fatally bound up with its dependence on something that seems to want to shrug itself free of us. after all, no alien force thrust this upon us (well...1992 land would disagree, but w/ev). we do this to ourselves.

but on the subject of eudaimonia, or a technical eudaimonia, this is kind of the paradox of capital: that money is the labyrinth that leads to all of the things that make you materially happy without offering you any escape from material happiness itself. the thing about modern consumption is that it punishes you as much for not desiring as for desiring too much, which is part of what zizek/lacan's thought about 'Enjoy!' means.

we're already getting as much soft communism in the world now, but it's debatable also whether the accelerating hard capitalism land advocates that is the alternative isn't just hyper-protestant miserabilism cranked up to eleven. but it seems like a vain project to try and make nick land happy.

there's got to be a better way. and a better object for philosophy too.

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and, in fact, there is at least one interesting guy, who is trying to take the thinking of technics into some interesting new places. i'll leave this here in case it germinates any more interesting discussion about these themes. he follows mostly from gilbert simondon, but also from heidegger. it's really all of a piece, i think.

academia.edu/33199405/On_a_Possible_Passing_from_the_Digital_to_the_Symbolic

anyways. i don't want to add a thousand moving parts to the conversation but it's all pretty dope stuff.

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Ellul talks about this a lot in Propaganda.

>we're already getting as much soft communism in the world now, but it's debatable also whether the accelerating hard capitalism land advocates that is the alternative isn't just hyper-protestant miserabilism cranked up to eleven. but it seems like a vain project to try and make nick land happy.

>there's got to be a better way. and a better object for philosophy too.

there is, and it comes along in response to noticeable change. the soft capitalism incrementally changes things so that all are placated and don't have to engage. The conflict that is required can only be self-induced. just as we don't see the deterioration of the environment by its actual generation to generation changes and therefore don't worry that what we live in is a wasteland, we will not figure our way out of the crib while it's being built into a prison.

No one wants to be Land though.

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>Posts meandering nuanced philosophical opinions with images that are vaguely related to the post
Girardfag has returned!

>No one wants to be Land though.
i agree. i'm glad he did what he did but fanged noumena is a fucking nightmare. and his second act has been interesting af but it's hard to tell the difference in his twitter posts now between that which is constructively avant garde and that which is just unironic misery. yuk hui, who i mentioned above, actually met him not so long ago and they had a good conversation, but he has also noted that he thinks land's flirtation with far-right politics is actually beneath him as a thinker. i found that interesting, if only because it was an opinion on land that was a little more nuanced than what you usually get. and also because yuk hui has considered opinions on things that are actually fruitful in their own regard and not just mimetics.

>the soft capitalism incrementally changes things so that all are placated and don't have to engage. The conflict that is required can only be self-induced. just as we don't see the deterioration of the environment by its actual generation to generation changes and therefore don't worry that what we live in is a wasteland, we will not figure our way out of the crib while it's being built into a prison

this entirely.

>tfw metal gear solid exclamation point sound

what can i say, my life is not complete without shitposting.

you spotted me, have a meme.

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>Yuk Hui

>Languages:

>English, French, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Chewchau

>JAVA, C++, PHP, Processing, Python

Master? :>* feet

---

incognito is useless. one must act against want one sub-vocalises once and a while to remain unencumbered by dervishes. Insanity goes well with a complete breakfast of champions. you must indeed be looking at descriptions for such states at the same time in order to declare Their misguided, though pragmatic approach. I live to suggest, giving only an X, but do so in appreciation.

good listeners are never thwarted by their agency spoken back to them from others. in fact, you may understand the death of the subject holy in these pieces much more than you would otherwise. but what you esteem will rise to the surface before the ship and be subject to those points eventually.

Uber-kindness

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>but on the subject of eudaimonia, or a technical eudaimonia, this is kind of the paradox of capital: that money is the labyrinth that leads to all of the things that make you materially happy without offering you any escape from material happiness itself. the thing about modern consumption is that it punishes you as much for not desiring as for desiring too much, which is part of what zizek/lacan's thought about 'Enjoy!' means.
You bring up the idea of Capital and give it an indetity with a driving impetus of its own, this way already alienating yourself, if it is historically supported value, by diminish the distinctive features of what we call our "self" with what we call working concepts. And where as yourself you place objectivity to consider it is how Capital decides happiness to be considered, rather than how you yourself consider, or whether it is human social extentions through quasi natural environment.

>we're already getting as much soft communism in the world now, but it's debatable also whether the accelerating hard capitalism land advocates that is the alternative isn't just hyper-protestant miserabilism cranked up to eleven. but it seems like a vain project to try and make nick land happy.
Again, depends how do you see yourself as a objectified representation "that is close" to you. We shouldn't make the mistake of ontologically incoporating the immediat to being as one and same. Is it good or bad or an evolving quality of humanity to which humans come to terms based on what they themselves do.

Conflicting notions of prison systems occur. Everyone is placated depended on their wishes to the extent everyone wants, to the extent an individual sees of what is that everyone wants. The power above his current sight become as one of predestination, but from the position of the unknown that he doesn't see, his power becomes curiosity. Even then, he might not want to disrupt any harm if his whims are placated though he has foreknowledge.

I am not that guy, but I kinda always assume Capital gets it's capital-C to distinguish it purposely as an emergent effect of a particular organization of society and its economy. It does have its own properties that are not reproduced at the level of the individual, not unlike when we say "The ant nest does X in order to achieve Y" because even the queen is just playing the role of pheromone dispersing for the "thing" that "is" the nest.

Naturally neither Capital nor any ant nest has impetus in the same sense we do (I would actually argue that but it would take too long, so I'll concede that I can't quite compare the human emergence to social emergence). Nevertheless, it does follow specific paths in its configuration space, so to speak, achieving more or less potential for future action by moving across different configurations. How much "happiness" this brings to its individuated components (i.e people) is irrelevant to the totality of Capital itself. Note that it does not need to hold the status of individual, it's not something that can (for now!) exist without us, but at the same time neither of us, individually, can fully grasp or deviate its "wants and needs" for lack of a better word (I actually have a better word but I think it's too restrictive, which would be "its path of minimizing energy transfer"). Rather than giving it an identity, this is merely saying it is a property that none of us have by ourselves. What is it a property of then? We can say it's a property of the product of all of us or say it's a property of itself. I don't see how this choice changes the outcome.

>yuk hui's CV
this makes me genuinely happy. enjoy the discovery user. he's really quite an interesting guy.

>good listeners are never thwarted by their agency spoken back to them from others.
holy shitballs. wow

>uber-kindness
this, most definitely.

beautiful stuff, user.

>You bring up the idea of Capital and give it an indetity with a driving impetus of its own, this way already alienating yourself, if it is historically supported value, by diminish the distinctive features of what we call our "self" with what we call working concepts. And where as yourself you place objectivity to consider it is how Capital decides happiness to be considered, rather than how you yourself consider, or whether it is human social extentions through quasi natural environment.
i'd say that's mainly true. i still do this under the auspices of 'criticism' but the more i read the more i realize the need for periodic paradigm shifts and adjustments also. i keep a sort of perpetually running journal-log as i read stuff and now and again hit a critical mass that requires sharing/ventilation/shitposting/conversation. 'tis what i do.

ostensibly it is done for the purposes of attaining if not a *higher* view of capital at least a *consistent* view and hopefully one that lights lanterns rather than extinguishes them.
>more like, causes them to randomly explode
>is this progress?

>We shouldn't make the mistake of ontologically incoporating the immediat to being as one and same. Is it good or bad or an evolving quality of humanity to which humans come to terms based on what they themselves do.
cannot disagree

>Conflicting notions of prison systems occur. Everyone is placated depended on their wishes to the extent everyone wants, to the extent an individual sees of what is that everyone wants. The power above his current sight become as one of predestination, but from the position of the unknown that he doesn't see, his power becomes curiosity. Even then, he might not want to disrupt any harm if his whims are placated though he has foreknowledge.
i know you're responding to another guy, but i've been reflecting on planescape and some other stuff these days, the idea of prisons and cities. in planescape you have this interesting literary idea of a person who *first* discovers that they are in prison, and in a sense only later discovers what it is that they have been imprisoned for, as well as working out the answer to their one riddle: what can change the nature of a man?

and with the lady of pain, of course, the sovereign is also the polis, in a sense, bound by the mysterious laws of the cosmos. but this is not her story. and the protagonist, in the end, goes back to the war, hopefully wiser, but now no longer an immortal.

chris avellone was on to some fascinating stuff there. as were zeb cook and the others.

this is a fucking fascinating post also. mind sharing that excessively restrictive word you were referring to? i like words.

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I see it as a concept, like any other, acquiring an increased sophistication to be considered to have driving force deity-like similarities to which human level characterization is accredited to and is the reason why I said it acts as alienation of the self as it is commonly socio historically perceived. We can see this in questioning the distinctions of ai from softwares, narrow ai for, lets say, chess, and software that uses various methods to achieve virus removal. Concepts themselves become living entities alongside humans. It is a characterization to the extent of accepting your own role and specific properties, which only you might have despite other humans, and theirs(the concepts') as to be on familiar plane.

This thought might me a little less sophisticated than the things you guys are writing, but I think that I haven't met a single person in my life that actively uses technology and thinks that it affects them in any negative way, in other words, they are aware of the probability of the negative influence of it but they are smart enough to be immune to it. It's always someone else, probably that kid who sits in the cafe and stares in his smartphone all day.

This is not only observable in the case of technology, but any other perspective with which we are trying to paint the world as a dystopia. It's always someone else.

Well, as Ellul says:
>The individual who is the servant of technique must be completely unconscious of himself.

The machine of propaganda is working to to persuade man to submit with good grace. The most vulnerable are the "elites", the people who think they are above such things. As long as they deny the inevitability, as long as the avoid facing up to it, the will go astray.The delusions allow them to think that they free "in spite of it", merely because they say so, even though they are submitting to it.