Re: <nettime> The Meaning of Boris Johnson

Joseph Rabie wrote:

Concerning...

A new and intense awareness of mutual dependency and the collective agency of which we are capable was the great revelation of the pandemic and our only hope of survival.

This is not new, it has always been the case in times of disaster. This has been very much the case in wartime, in the solidarity shown by the people in accepting material, and even mortal, sacrifices, however just or unjust the cause.

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Actually Joseph I think quite a lot is new… going as far back as November 2020 I wrote post which pointed to the proposition that before the pandemic if anyone had suggested that under conditions, other than war, that wealthy technologically advanced states were capable of shutting down 80% of the global economy, furloughing large swathes of the workforce along with 1.4 billion students as well as bringing mass air transportation to a grinding halt, the proposition would not just have been dismissed.

As the usually sober and measured political economist Helen Thomas declared “We have to face up to the fact that we have been through something, as a world,.. that in some sense was beyond our imaginations in the west at the beginning of this year.” The appearance of this degree of agency led the other participant in the discussion, Adam Tooze to declare this to be -THE shock discovery of 2020- “hands down, flat out, the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened in modern economic history.”

http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/blog/the-unthinkable-has-to-be-thought-sean-cubitt/ Re-reading this article reminds me that at the time Brian was already deploying the concept of an eco-state..

David Garcia

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