Fight the Fuzz, Pt. 3

In England we see another case of fuzziness, with regards to the “revelations” - open secret more like - of the phone hacking scandal. Poised to be granted a majority share of the media in Britain, Rupert Murdoch and his company Newscorp had positioned themselves in such a way as to be the hidden hand, the one no-one would dare cross for fear that they had the power to make or break politicians. This is similar to the position that the church used to hold in many countries - always a stones throw away from the driving seat, but could you actually say they were in the car? No one was entirely sure ... but they probably were, from time to time.

Then there is the worldwide banking crisis, which is characterised by deregulation, a capitulation by those in charge to fuzziness if ever there was one. Perhaps we think that the nations and economies exist as a unified whole. But perhaps we are missing something. Perhaps we are missing the fact that it constantly needs redefinition, reordering, a constant revolution. Perhaps we forgot the fact that critical thought reaffirms the existence of the whole, that society cannot function without those thoughtful little humans, redefining it for every epoch. 

In a curious way, we have both downplayed thought, and exaggerated it beyond all recognition. Perhaps we are living in a Cartesian age after all. Individual thought is downgraded because we exist within the self-organising system of society, while we are also the ones smart enough to step outside it all and see these processes. Like Descartes, we may be all trapped within our own minds, but goddamit aren’t our minds glorious? I only see a massive blind spot in this way of thinking. For is not a society the culmination of critical thought and the movements that it spurs as much as it is about rules and laws that seem to reveal patterns in our behaviour as large groups? 

Does not this revelation pave the way for something new? In other words, does not definition spur on development, so that we can say that we have moved beyond Marxism in a certain way, but only because Marx helped define the inequalities of his day? In science, we see this articulated another way. The problem of the observer is one that haunts experimentation. To observe is to affect, to change in some small way the outcome. Critical thought is the catalyst for change. Societal forces are complimented by critical thought.