NEWS CENTER
The intellect, the rationality of the age of capitalist civilization has shown that it is contrary to social reason, that it works with contrary laws, by bringing our world to the brink of destruction. Leaving aside the issues discussed and the decisions taken, the Glasgow meeting a few weeks ago was a confession that “something is wrong” even by those who believe in the correctness of this reason. Even postmodernism, which is the pursuit of the system itself, can say that positivism, which has been working for the denial of social reason, and which cannot stop telling us that commodity reason is the truth and reality, is bankrupt. As expected, liberalism itself, under the name of neoliberalism, says that liberalism is exhausted. All these confessions and self-disclosures are morally problematic because they come at a time when social life is being trampled underfoot. It is distant from the social law of reason because it is begging after nature forces man to confess for salvation. This is why we are experiencing a complete eclipse of reason today. Human beings are “blind, deaf and dumb” to what is happening and cannot react adequately. Ultimately, all these results are a declaration of the bankruptcy of western reason or rationality. It is also the end of the system and the type of people who find this mind, whose job is to produce tools, right and who market their culture as freedom. The Frankfurt School of Philosophy, Foucault and similar French thinkers, and before them critical philosophers such as F. Nietzsche, have expressed this reality. In fact, we are not stating anything new with these sentences. Therefore, the important thing is to discuss what needs to be done for liberation and to take steps. Because we are living in times when the search within the system to solve the problems of humanity has been exhausted.
The bankruptcy, confession and self-disclosure of the system does not mean that the work of the liberationist claimants has become easier. It can be said that the bankruptcy of reason and rationality, which has imprisoned humanity in chaos and crisis, facilitates movements and struggles outside the system. However, the neoliberal attack, which Zizek says about Trump and similar political leaders, “they trivialize evil”, undermines morality and does not want to leave morality as a crumb. This can lead people to think that the state of capitalist modernity, which we call bankruptcy, confession and self-disclosure, is just a Tiktok video. Therefore, it has become imperative for humanity to fight against liberalism and its derivative ideologies, which focus on profiting from bankruptcy and confession, and their “believer” individualism, for democratic and ecological liberation.
The scientific democratic socialist ideology against liberalism and the free individual stance against individualism seem to be our only alternatives. The fact that the libertarian claim is moralistic will be the approach that will make our work the easiest when producing an alternative. Because ideas that take morality as a scale in the sense of doing social work allow us to decipher both the anti-socialism of liberalism and the distance between individualism and the human condition. The political consciousness that will develop on the basis of these principles will first and foremost equip the individual with a sense of responsibility and thought. A responsible person is a strong person in terms of will and consciousness. This is the most effective and powerful stance against the liberal propaganda that today calls for virtual worlds. Capitalist modernity wants to take society back to childhood in terms of intellect by using the development of communication technology in the service of the world of discourse and propaganda power of its liberal ideology. The fact that it proposes to tell society that virtual paradises can become real if it believes in new gods is proof enough of this reality. Seen from this perspective, the deepest apoliticality of the society-individual in history is revealed by itself. It would not be wrong to see apoliticalization as the natural consequence of liberalism, which considers the material and spiritual values of humanity as a commodity to be consumed and individual reality as individualism. In the face of such an attack and imposition, there is no other way but to think with the social mind in the first place, to call on it to think.
In social reality, reason is not just reason. This reason does not work to exclude conscience. It does not see morality as superfluous. On the contrary, it is reason that gives voice to conscience and shares what it produces after weighing it against the scales of morality. What we mean by this is that the right and necessary politicization is for human beings to listen to the voice of their conscience once again and once again, and to work with the collective mind, morality. If this law of humanity is not reinstated, it would be futile to expect the human condition to improve. In a world where everyone thinks he or she is right and justified, but very little is going right, it is impossible to solve an ordinary domestic problem, let alone a huge problem like the ecological one. In a world where everything is claimed to be globalized, there are few things more telling of the reality than creating individualistic worlds and imprisoning the individual in narrow rooms. While commodities are globalized and capital circulates without borders, the human world is confined to borders within borders. Or rather, imprisoned. This has led to a huge contradiction between human values and today’s imposition. In order to get rid of this aggression, the consequences of which are experienced as epidemics, war, anti-democratic political systems, populist ignorant right-wing leaderships, there must first be a conscience and morality that will be disturbed by the current picture. And this morality must call for struggle by declaring its anti-capitalism with laws as clear and strong as those spoken by the prophets: Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie. There is no doubt that today there is a great reaction against the apoliticizing political practices of capitalist modernity. Again, organized and conscious alternative stances have developed. However, it is a matter of debate whether these reactions and oppositions are radical in the sense of producing radical solutions. It is also necessary to discuss whether these political circles have overcome the limits of the system. The fact that there are political structures that argue that this is the reality expresses this. Those who argue in this regard also believe that it is necessary to rapidly engage in the construction of an alternative libertarian and democratic system.
Speaking of globalization, there is another important point that needs to be emphasized. This is that there is a lot of false liberal discourse in circulation that is aimed at directing the democratic struggle. Liberalism claims that globalization implies localism, and that in areas where local solutions develop, we need to be global. It emphasizes uncertainty under the name of globalization, and nationalism, racism and religionism in areas where it imposes localism. Thus, it tries to divert the struggles for democracy and freedom, and to waste time for those it cannot divert. However, human values are socialized through a course of development from local to universal. Every universal value also means being local in itself. The important thing is to work and struggle knowing that human values are social. It was once again seen in the corona pandemic that the globalization of the system also globalizes all problems. However, when it comes to solutions, it was also seen that the system’s measures are quite selfish, individualistic and politically local. A similar result is being experienced in the ecological problem and its solution. Although the system is the source of the problem in this field, it tries to address the solution on a regional scale, not by opening the system to discussion. Since the system is not seen as responsible, the necessary steps for a solution are sought to be developed by demanding sacrifices from the peoples and laborers. Instead of gases smoking from factory chimneys and chemicals flowing through waste streams, the system says that production in the fields and farms should be cut. The forces of capitalist modernity, which use the widespread use of communication technologies to propagandize 24/7, cause serious confusion in society and make the environment favorable for liberal solutions. In this confusion, they impose apathy, silence and inaction. They also criminalize by law proposing real solutions. Thus, it is able to develop attacks against those who protect their land, water and air, which it has legalized. Ideas globalize the most and the fastest. This has led to the globalization of the propaganda of the liberal system, especially due to the advanced technologies of communication. And, as is well known, the most propagandized commodities today are the commodities used in communication and information technology. The widespread use of these commodities has enabled the system to propagandize every household, everyone from seven to seventy.
There are several striking features that make today’s propaganda effective. The first is that it starts by identifying the most effective and effective method through the senses of sight and hearing. Secondly, through the senses of sight and hearing, it stimulates the sexual and hunger instincts of its target. Thirdly, thanks to technological tools that enable monitoring and tracking, it determines the acceptance and rejection values of age, gender, class and ethnic-religious identities and works on concrete targets. Fourthly, the target becomes attached to the target by arousing curiosity in the manner of “The Thousand and One Nights” or “Tales of a Thousand and One Nights”. Fifth, it makes its captives believe that it satisfies them with events, movements, works, objects and objects that do not exist or are not possible. And while doing all this, it tries to surprise people with illusionist methods. The biggest trick in the illusionist method of the virtual world is that it presents something that is quite systematic in itself as complex, something that is simple as a great exaggeration, and something so small that it fits on a screen as big that it is difficult for the mind to comprehend. Through this presentation, through these “things” that do not exist in the real world and in life, people can experience the illusion that they are engaged in very big, enormous, highly scientific “things”. In order to be preoccupied with such “things” that are not even as real as the stories in Sumerian mythology and to disconnect from reality, one needs to develop individualism, not individualism. Since liberalism, as an ideology, has been preparing individualism to surrender to these “things” for many years, the system today can do its job without much difficulty. For example, there is no small number of people who are satisfied with virtual friendships and virtual sharing instead of real friendships and sharing. Indeed, the mere fact that virtual media is called “social media” and the transfer of text, pictures, audio and video on the virtual road is called “sharing” is enough to understand the distortion and illusion. The fact that technology accelerates communication and information sharing as a facilitating tool is not discussed here. What is and should be opposed is capitalist modernity’s detachment of human beings from reality and reality and their imprisonment in virtual worlds. The thing to do against such an attack is to live in reality, not in the virtual. To be friends with the person whose shoulder we touch, not virtual ones. Walking in the real forest, not the virtual one. Joining a community in the real world, not in the virtual and false world. To become a member of a commune and an assembly before virtual platforms. Just as belief in Sumerian gods and the ancient form of slavery are called “irrationality, primitivism, savagery, etc…” from today’s perspective, knowing that in the not too distant future the current commodity worship will be characterized by the same concepts can be a basis for being a free individual.
Cihan İnanç
Source: Journal of Democratic Modernity
