Re: <nettime> IOCOSE (2012) - A Crowded Apocalypse

[Newmedia@aol.com]

IOCOSE:
 
> we don't necessarily believe there are no 'real' conspiracies any  more
 
Conspiracies, of course, are normal human behavior and are everywhere in  
our lives.  
 
They become "theories" when a few take their obsessions about social  power 
(which they typically don't either have or understand) and  weave 
"explanations" that seem to fit the "facts."  
 
They become a "crowdsourced" art-project when the need  for recognizing 
*patterns* is so widespread that it can't be  restrained.
 
Technology has much to do with these developments.
 
Since "social power" is at the heart of the matter, what underlies all this 
 are two related topics -- history of the power elites and actual elite  
history.  
 
History of the power elites is what sociologists do.  C Wright Mills  1956 
"The Power Elite" is where many begin.  UCLA's Michael Mann's  1986/1993 
"The Sources of Social Power is the most complete account to date but  it ends 
its narrative in 1914.  William Domhoff's "Who Rules America?", in  its 6th 
edition in 2009, with another coming in 2013, is an application of  Mann's 
IEMP "model" to the American situation.
 
The *actual* elite history (i.e. what things look like to an insider to the 
 key events) is rarely written.  What is written is often one-sided and  
deliberately misleading.  Carroll Quigley's (Bill Clinton's mentor at  
Georgetown, as highlighted in his first inaugural speech) 1981 "The  Anglo-American 
Establishment" remained unpublished during his life and, even  then, ends 
with WW II -- when the biggest "rotation" of elites in modern  history 
occurred, replacing Quigley's WASPs with the "evangelical" Baptist  Rockefellers.  
 
Some of the best "elite history" is written as biographies.  Kai  Bird's 
1992 "The Chairman: John J. McCloy The Making of the American  Establishment" 
is one of the best accounts of the post WW II elites but it ends  with the 
Vietnam War.  Today's expanding research into the "Cultural Cold  War" is 
uncovering important details about the 1950s/60s but it *fails* to  comprehend 
what happened when the CIA *purged* itself and turned to a "world  peace" 
agenda following the 1975 Church Committee.
 
What has actually happened over the past 35+ years has been largely  
undisclosed, partly because the Anglo-American power elites have been decline  
(i.e. no one "replaced" McCloy and the Trilateral Commission was the last  
"hurrah" for the Rockefellers), so few want to "brag" about their  failures.
 
The unraveling of the Euro-zone is just the latest example of how  
"conspiracies" hatched in the 1950s are finally meeting their long-deserved  destiny 
(i.e. the scheme for a United States of Europe, as a stepping-stone to  
"world government"), although most who are involved don't yet know what is  
happening or why.
 
The real *action* for power elites has shifted far away from the  "Atlantic 
Alliance" and moved to the BRICS and beyond.  China is the  best example of 
a place where an actual elite -- although not the individuals  who appear 
on the podium at public events -- is "conspiring" every day, with  little 
recognition even at the "highest" levels of Western governments, since  the 
cultural gap (which was still fairly narrow with Russia) is beyond the  ability 
of most outside China to comprehend.
 
> we have failed to acknowledge that crowdsourcing is now 
> something quite different from what we hoped and imagined
 
This is a crucial point.  What these technological  environments have done 
*TO US* is a significant challenge for many to  understand.  As a result, 
"Black Swans" has become a big business,  particularly for those who still 
embrace the "English Ideology."
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY


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