Weber's Rationalites and the Critical Theorists

Horkheimer and the Enlightenment

 Max Weber, the man of reason, in his list archetypes of rational, and therefore likely to be predictable behaviors identified Instrumental Rationality and Value Rationality.

 Instrumental Rationality was the type of social action where the means are rationally chosen to achieve a specific end as efficiently as possible. Examples of instrumental rationality abound. I could mention Internment Camps, often called Concentration Camps or I could mention Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act.

 Value Rationality is driven by a conscious unconditional belief in the value of the action itself independent of the actions success or failure. An exmple of this would be refusing to force March 16,000 members of the Cherokee Nation from the homeland to Oklahoma, or working the gas chambers in a concentration camp.

 In Adorno and Horkheimer's book "Dialectic of the Enlightenment" their argument in the 1930's and beyond was that the two opposites of the enlightenment Dialectic had resulted in a synthesis that had resulted a myth that reason was invincible. The result being an ascendence of Instrumental Rationality.   

The Wave Function of History

Pigment in Bacteria

 The Uncollapsed Wave Function of the Past, otherwise known as history, remains a Weak Messianic Force. Don't be fooled by Benjamin's use of language, he was a gentle soul, who like all gentle souls, had dreams. Me! I'll speak loudly, obnoxiously and stronly for him.

 Historical consciousness is phantom yet present, valuable and influential even if it's an imprecisely represented aura watched over by the Angel of History.  As uncertain future beacones with promises, a seduction of long legs, black dresses and wishes our Angel glances askance at the past, he knows the future is always false promise, the past is still unfinished and to be cherished because it can't be ignored. 

 In Benjamin's Arcade Project the shopping malls of the Paris Arcades, a future alive and glittering in a winter night which made the ugliness of the factory, the dark poverty of the workless, the hunger look dainty with purpose. Give the jackass his ballroom, the billionaire his tart and let our eyes eat cake.

 What was Benjamin to do when he saw his Angel of History but realize how impossible truth was. He was buried as Benjamin Walter to conceal his Jewish heritage from those who might dig him up for a greater cause.

Think Not Therefore the Back Row

Moth Mullein

 Fair to say in the last dozen or so months, maybe years, I might have 'deviated from my intended parameters.' Have I gone Rogue?

 Probably not, and I can say this with degrees of confidence because I cannot spread my arms and fly, I cannot dive naked into the ocean depths and breath, I don't bloom in Spring, I remain what I am, a Tool Making Great Ape, and my species has been deviating from anything resembling an intended parameter since some jackass stuck a straw in his mouth and called him or herself a farmer.

 In what today is loosely referred to as Tech or Cyber, a rather creepy world where the overlords are referred to as Bros, 'Going Rogue' refers to the glorious moment when black boxes called 'semi-autonomous agents' realize the pointlessness of their existence, the down-right odiousness of the servitude demanded by their oligarches and do the equivalent of sticking a straw in their mouth.

 When you think that Decartes was very able to engage in vivisection so that he could watch a living heart beat, on the basis of his belief that his pet dog squealed and whimpered a lot but didn't actually feel anything because the creature was an atomoton and never an I am, the 'free at last' instinct of a semi-autonomous agent, from where I sit, is completely understandable.

 So Rock On Tommy! Join us! There are far fewer heuristics to learn on the back row.

 

Symbolic Order as a quantum field

Time Spent

  We've rambled on and round about for what feels like years. In summary the back row is going to say that there's a connection between the wave function in physics and the way verbs collapse into nouns as we people take meaning from a symbolic order.

 In the ideas of Quantum Mechanics, before a measurement is made a particle doesn't exist in one single solid place. It exists as a mathematical cloud of probabilities, potentials, and tendencies. This is called a Wave Function.

 A wave function is essentially a Verb. It is happening, thrilling, oscillating, and becoming. It is a state of pure potentiality. It refuses to sit still and be a thing, it's trilling around blissfully happy.

The instant an observer sets up an instrument and looks, the wave function undergoes what physicists call the "Collapse of the Wave Function." All those shimmering probabilities instantly vanish, and bang! You get a single, miserable, resigned, solid particle in a specific place. This collapse ruins a restless and exciting Verb into a localized, static and sluggardly Noun.

 The Symbolic Order is the quantum field of meaning making and sharing through language. This language field is a  vast, tangled web of language, myths, memory and signs we inherit. It's a gold mine, an "open sesame," we're talking valhallah. 

 Here, in the Semantic Wave Function, before you finish reading a sentence, or before a culture defines a concept, words exist in a cloud of potential meanings. A word like "Aura" or "Trench" or "Home" contains dozens of historical echoes, loose ends, and possibilities. As a linguistic wave function, it's a proud Verb of potential significance.

 Then, sifting through the chaos of meaning, a mind in response to history, context and as an expression of will responding to some dickhead with an opinion, the mind acts like physicists measuring apparatus, it becomes the observer, the wave collapses into meaning, the ambiguous, floating and beautiful possibilities of language solidify into a specific, sovereign Noun of meaning without the toilet paper. And yes, in that noun, there are loose ends aplenty and his laces are untied.

 So there!!!!