Hyo,
So this is something that I've been wanting to adress for a while.
During my legal studies, I was taught that the European Union, actually the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which rose in prominence parallel to the deepening of the economical European Union, had made transparency an important requisite of what constitutes a fair trial.
For those who know about the law it's nothing new, so 6§1, Kress c. France, 7th of june 2001, and 21.06.2006, the French institution of the Commissaire au gouvernement, etc. Basically France has been condemned because the Commissaire au gouvernement at the Conseil d'Etat (the highest administrative court, judging on legal matters, not factual ones), now called the rapporteur public, was present during the judges' deliberations - even though he had no judging power and was not supposed to give his opinion or vote. The Commissaire au gouvernement is required to give her conclusions at the end of the debates, conclusions that could only be contested by legal notes, given to the judges for their deliberations - ie no oral debate. This, and the participation of this person to the deliberation tainted the judgement with a hint of partiality. Who knows, you know... France thought he was part of the judges' formation and saw no infringement on impartiality.
The Kress judgement condemned France's institution on the basis of 6§1, underlining that most of the procedure was okay but that all the elements combined could indeed give the impression, to the normal petitioner, ignorant of the proceedings of administrative law, that the commissaire au gouvernement was partial and that his/her presence might influence the court. (I've reproduced the main points below but just overlook it).
Many comments have been made regarding this decision, because it seemed that the theory of appearances had won (you shouldn't just be impartial, you should also ensure that you look impartial).
What I found revealing was that this idea that appearances must be taken into account was somehow also prevailing in many other areas. I remember my father, at the time CEO of a big company's UK branch, telling me with excitement that they were getting green by printing their annual reports on recycled paper and of course mentioning it (it was in 2003 I guess, slightly before greenwashing became a thing). I also remember studying financial law and how after the 2008 crisis, all it seemed that could be done was just to reform this and that in order to make the whole system more transparent. There were talks about forcing financial professionals to ensure that their customers were understanding the products. It became a law.
There were countless debates about transparency in the information that was reported to stakeholders. A guy, head of Security for one of the biggest French Banks, came to speak in October 2008, saying: "we all knew it, but no one stood up. There's a culture of conformism that pervades everything. We need tougher laws. We need a new Sarbanes-Oxley.". The guy would have brought handcuffs with him, honestly. Then 6 months later, Obama had been elected, and had received the CEOs of the remaining top banks just to inform them, basically, that he would bail the system. The same guy came back to talk to us about how everything's fine now and also naaah no need for new laws n stuff let the system self-regulate maybe this or that reform but really it's all water under the bridge yaknow. So, there it went. New management tools to ensure efficient compliance. Plethoric money spent on, as a former student put it, "throwing money everywhere to give the impression of being within the reach of the law". Clearly no one ever pities law students who discover in horror just how many people though it would be a good idea to go all the way up to whichever Court in order to try and encompass what we should in this particular case regarding this principle (basically, 1.1.1.2.1.a.°.*.subsubsubprinciple.yeahbutnotcompletely). I completely understand why the law is vilified in popular culture as being tedious. And then hours and hours of people's lives devoted to monitoring, quantifying, assessing with clever excel design, automatising with even more clever algorithms, that yeah that bubble was never coming back yo.
Mostly, the only fair reaction to have, IMO, was
To come back to the Kress c. France decision, and the recognition that appearances matter too, what I found so revealing was that it actually gives the impression that the ritual becomes more important than whatever it was that was supposed to be done. The justice system had been said to lack credibility for a while, especially since people started expecting it to be truly fair. I don't think it was ever supposed to. It's rather dealing with fairness than justice (justesse et non pas justice), given that the judge's action is constrained by certain rules and limitations. It is a system that has emerged in order to avoid the arbitrary of equity judgements (where the judge can just decide freely - and, risk is - arbitrarily). So anyway, considering the evolution of judicial institution from the Roman Empire onwards, clearly, the idea of socially instituted justice has been facing the unavoidable limitations of what humans, as a group, and with their understanding, are able to create. I think it's accurate to say that most people accept that the justice system can be unfair and brutal, but that we should work with it in order to create the tools that can challenge the gross unfairness (such as XXth century labour rights). I don't know if it's submission or ignorance rather than real agreement, consent, as we call lack of other choice, but anyway.
Quick note here: human rights clearly are the spiritual dimension of the religion of humanity that emerged post industrial revolution. So we're talking churchy things here. You also know, if you're inside my brain, that we are coming back to feudal times (please go and read Alain Supiot extensively, you can watch these videos and never come back coz ur brain gunna b blown off (oh and btw if my trying to be cool in English bothers you, feel free to comment), and that traditional public institutions paid for by governments are slowly being devoid of power, meaning, funding (see, the schooling system in the US, see, the rise of IA and private justice, see, the upcoming reforms of healthcare almost anywhere in Europe). Feudal times? See unstable coalitions, see multilateralism. See corporate power and politics, contractualisation of most relationships (including filiation). See privatisation and commodification of the last things public or free (or outside of the money realm). See the making of oneself a small but important sovereignty dependant on bigger vassals (using Uber to transport your Instagram popularity everywhere). You sure could be depressed, as so many are, who are also struggling with mental health issues in the face of crumbling frames of references and the emergences of new idols which one has to serve despite spending days doing meaningless tasks, I call, indexes, rates, and a third thing for rhetorical credibility.
So what's there to do against the tidal wave of chaos coming? Anyone who has been some sort of activist, or who believes him/herself to be a good person (but secretly realizes, as time passes by, that he/she's also as much contradictory as anyone he/she wants to be better than), knows the despair of trying to do something but also not wanting to resort to violence or force to make those *** realize x or y (tho). Feels how you had this idea, and years after you realize that the thing you wanted to accomplish isn't really happening but now you can't do much about it 'cause you're stuck. (This is usually when you start having children, every generation has a job to do). Or, being a good person in Geneva who slowly realizes that states are no longer funding UN agencies or NGOs, and that the competition and precarity in the field is as bad as it gets. And also, that like so many organisations, you have all sorts of power struggles and egomaniacal delusional people running those things, and that you spend way too much time on Excel assessing how much tomato sauce and rice them guys in the Kivu region (who have been living in camps all their lives) need and if there isn't something that should be done to improve food storage, like hiring a data specialist/social media manager. Wherever you look, it's hard to believe that being more transparent in how we spoil things will prevent us from spoiling things.
3- What would really qualify as transparency (because having a 3d point in the argument gives a dynamic touch that helps enhance this post) and should we strive for it?
Just to finish here. Also, whenever you see an important person being interested in your issues, don't we all know how it feels? Nah we fine bro don't worry, look away man. You heard screams? Nah it was just me pretending my leg got cut off, don't worry, see, I'll just put some saliva here, you know, it's gonna stick, no worries. Let's be honest: corporations and states caring for the environment will give birth to the craziness of technological tools to reduce carbon emissions, recapturing it, replacing bees with people in regions where pesticides have killed them (true story, in China, google it), print more useless stuff on recycled paper, let's forget printing altogether, let's all go on the clouds, but then, safety, data protection, stuff, meetings, reforms, standards, immense boredom, and still, this feeling that we're just never gonna address the real issue, which I would sum up by saying: leave it.
Is that because these ppl r bad and we good? Nope. I guess it's mainly because it's not our place to manage everything in life. Really. We are well advised to not interfere so much and just accept that stuff happens. People who are aiming for, and given a position of power (which is a consensus, which only works as long as people adhere to a certain way of thinking) are led astray by the illusion (with real effects tho) of control that it gives. The process of getting there has its own effects. It can easily entrap you, lead to all sorts of abuses, especially if you are surrounded by litteral extremists who will ascertain the power of human will and reasoning beyond any limits, in the illusion that you can do, predict, and try anything, and think, you know what folks, let's set ourselves a goal: we'll get rid of climate change in 50 years. That could happen, then one day bam the temperature decreases, everyone's high-fiving from outter space cause the great Junk Planet has gone from "completely devastated" to "putrescent" only. Aha I know so joyful, so light, a bundle of joy me is.
One can become either burdened with a feeling of helplessness or cynical and say, well, humans are just parasites under the spell of natural selection, like Donald Glover had put it in this New Yorker article:
Seems like there's just no way out of this time thing, and mostly, whatever change is proposed kind of ends up being swallowed and spit back devoid of radical impact, or creates some weird side effect that you didn't think of at first (see any Adam Curtis documentary on that, that man clearly shows us how any right-wing or left-wing movement in the 20th century has produced as much harm as one could have not hoped for). Does that mean you can just sit back and enjoy the ride? In Taoistic terms, just do your thing, work well, not too well, not too bad, and leave it. Just like Dostoïevski's Mychkine Prince: "how can you be unhappy when there are trees outside?".
What would be transparent actually mean? Again, given the unavoidable limitations of instituted rules, I have to admit that I no longer trust the processes that I have learnt to respect to bring about any change. Reform is a way to reshuffle the letters on the cake, but it won't do what it is sold as being able to do. Clearly, that could be ok. But this limitation sheds light on a requisite that has to do with our own selves, and how we behave and are in the world. A few years ago, I would go to random court audiences to see how this worked. What shocked me, fresh out of college, was the seemingly absurd nature of all this. It happened that the three judges were obviously tired and somehow racists. Or that the lawyer was simply not either competent or knowledgeable about the case. Or even more simply than this, that there was a form of instituted deafness to the circumstances of the (usually poor black or arab young man) defendant, which made the discussion solely focus on the 20€ worth of weed that had been sold despite strong legislation against it, and not on any of the many ways that man's life was rigged from the start, in a cumulative process that screamed for compassion. Of course this does not apply to every single audience, or every single case. But you know, if you don't know the language of that institution, and of the culture of those who can apply legal force, boy, you're doomed. The brutality of it all struck me deeply. I wondered why no one no longer dared to scream indignation in front of the apparent banality of such audiences. Yet, I could sense that I was not the only one - the policeman guarding the entrance, looking forward, trying to have a stare as blank as he could. The friends of the next defendant. Some old couple, linked with another audience too. It turns out, and this is clearly the limitation of my argument, that:
On the absolute transparency, on the question as to whether or not there is a way of being to the world that enables us to be just like water, well yes it is possible. But I think that it excludes you from the possibility of fitting into a prepared, pre-existing role in society. Even being a monk is limiting because you have to submit to an organisation that aims at surviving you. Therefore, once you reach the limit and recognise that you are it, as any other form of life is, well. I don't know what you're supposed to do. I guess, do your job. Because then you no longer want things to change or be different. You understand than the apparent disorder or injustice is somehow being balanced. That both injustice and justice coexist. Injustice, in the condemnation of a helpless young man. Justice, in the testimony of those who were there, of life that supports it, enables it to happen, and constantly opens up the possibility for anyone to change, and reinforces this judge's fear and contempt, and from what I gathered, this man still be surrounded by a family which knows and will be sad with him. Not much of a consolation huh... Hmmmm.....
If you want to dig up a bit more, it comes back to the fact that whatever we think is just interpretation, reframing of stuff, that we, as far as our intellectual or cognitive abilities are concerned, will never be in touch with reality as it is, and will just more or less eloquently reinstate things that have already been said/thought/described. So real transparency is basically impossible to instate / encapsulate within a formula, whether litteral or mathematical - it can not be put in form by that same cognitive disposition that makes us unable to actually be it. No institution will ever come anywhere but a bit closer, asymptotical at best. But the effort to go there will cost always more and more. Charles Eisenstein describes it as the fix mentality. Google that man and come back in a few days. There will always be a part of dogma in collective institutions, whichever they are. Because there are just that. Institutions. Which means, also, not absolute, not right, not valuable in themselves, but also, there.
So you might wonder: can you get in touch with reality as it is, by other means? Frankly, it's not the point here and come and talk to me if you want to know (yes, but don't try cause it will ruin your life and make you rant on the internet for no reason). Also, who cares, clearly, Kant had already said it, the Bible somehow points to it, Muslim legal thinking also emphasises that we can not state God's will, Buddhism also says it (see this Alexandra David-Néel quote). Let us not forget that it is just some sort of play, that there is room between the fact and the interpretation, the persona and the human, and as long as you know it, well, then, do you best, and leave it.
So this is something that I've been wanting to adress for a while.
During my legal studies, I was taught that the European Union, actually the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which rose in prominence parallel to the deepening of the economical European Union, had made transparency an important requisite of what constitutes a fair trial.
For those who know about the law it's nothing new, so 6§1, Kress c. France, 7th of june 2001, and 21.06.2006, the French institution of the Commissaire au gouvernement, etc. Basically France has been condemned because the Commissaire au gouvernement at the Conseil d'Etat (the highest administrative court, judging on legal matters, not factual ones), now called the rapporteur public, was present during the judges' deliberations - even though he had no judging power and was not supposed to give his opinion or vote. The Commissaire au gouvernement is required to give her conclusions at the end of the debates, conclusions that could only be contested by legal notes, given to the judges for their deliberations - ie no oral debate. This, and the participation of this person to the deliberation tainted the judgement with a hint of partiality. Who knows, you know... France thought he was part of the judges' formation and saw no infringement on impartiality.
The Kress judgement condemned France's institution on the basis of 6§1, underlining that most of the procedure was okay but that all the elements combined could indeed give the impression, to the normal petitioner, ignorant of the proceedings of administrative law, that the commissaire au gouvernement was partial and that his/her presence might influence the court. (I've reproduced the main points below but just overlook it).
79. However, the Court observes that this approach is not consistent with the fact that although the Government Commissioner attends the deliberations, he has no right to vote. The Court considers that by forbidding him to vote, on the ground that the secrecy of the deliberations must be preserved, domestic law considerably weakens the Government’s argument that the Government Commissioner is truly a judge, as a judge cannot abstain from voting unless he stands down. Moreover, it is hard to accept the idea that some judges may express their views in public while the others may do so only during secret deliberations.
80. Furthermore, in examining, above, the applicant’s complaint concerning the failure to disclose the Government Commissioner’s submissions in advance and the impossibility of replying to him, the Court accepted that the role played by the Commissioner during administrative proceedings requires procedural safeguards to be applied with a view to ensuring that the adversarial principle is observed (see paragraph 76 above). The reason why the Court concluded that there had been no violation of Article 6 on this point was not the Commissioner’s neutrality vis-à-vis the parties but the fact that the applicant enjoyed sufficient safeguards to counterbalance the Commissioner’s power. The Court considers that that finding is also relevant to the complaint concerning the Government Commissioner’s participation in the deliberations.
81. Lastly, the doctrine of appearances must also come into play. In publicly expressing his opinion on the rejection or acceptance of the grounds submitted by one of the parties, the Government Commissioner could legitimately be regarded by the parties as taking sides with one or other of them. In the Court’s view, a litigant not familiar with the mysteries of administrative proceedings may quite naturally be inclined to view as an adversary a Government Commissioner who submits that his appeal on points of law should be dismissed. Conversely, a litigant whose case is supported by the Commissioner would see him as his ally. The Court can also imagine that a party may have a feeling of inequality if, after hearing the Commissioner make submissions unfavourable to his case at the end of the public hearing, he sees him withdraw with the judges of the trial bench to attend the deliberations held in the privacy of chambers
Since when do we care about what them people my be feeling or thinking?
Many comments have been made regarding this decision, because it seemed that the theory of appearances had won (you shouldn't just be impartial, you should also ensure that you look impartial).
What I found revealing was that this idea that appearances must be taken into account was somehow also prevailing in many other areas. I remember my father, at the time CEO of a big company's UK branch, telling me with excitement that they were getting green by printing their annual reports on recycled paper and of course mentioning it (it was in 2003 I guess, slightly before greenwashing became a thing). I also remember studying financial law and how after the 2008 crisis, all it seemed that could be done was just to reform this and that in order to make the whole system more transparent. There were talks about forcing financial professionals to ensure that their customers were understanding the products. It became a law.
There were countless debates about transparency in the information that was reported to stakeholders. A guy, head of Security for one of the biggest French Banks, came to speak in October 2008, saying: "we all knew it, but no one stood up. There's a culture of conformism that pervades everything. We need tougher laws. We need a new Sarbanes-Oxley.". The guy would have brought handcuffs with him, honestly. Then 6 months later, Obama had been elected, and had received the CEOs of the remaining top banks just to inform them, basically, that he would bail the system. The same guy came back to talk to us about how everything's fine now and also naaah no need for new laws n stuff let the system self-regulate maybe this or that reform but really it's all water under the bridge yaknow. So, there it went. New management tools to ensure efficient compliance. Plethoric money spent on, as a former student put it, "throwing money everywhere to give the impression of being within the reach of the law". Clearly no one ever pities law students who discover in horror just how many people though it would be a good idea to go all the way up to whichever Court in order to try and encompass what we should in this particular case regarding this principle (basically, 1.1.1.2.1.a.°.*.subsubsubprinciple.yeahbutnotcompletely). I completely understand why the law is vilified in popular culture as being tedious. And then hours and hours of people's lives devoted to monitoring, quantifying, assessing with clever excel design, automatising with even more clever algorithms, that yeah that bubble was never coming back yo.
Mostly, the only fair reaction to have, IMO, was
BTW this is how I feel in almost any situation now
Let us take another detour and remind us of a wise psychoanalytical truth, that whatever is being repressed comes back in weird and extreme forms. Let us also remind ourselves that history never repeats itself quite that well, and that, as Alain Supiot coins it, the Maginot Lines of memory should not makes us oblivious to what is around the corner.
So anyway one of the key words during that area was transparency. Given how much of an extremist I am, I took it quite seriously to wonder if transparency could be attained, to what degree, and if it was at all a fair ideal to tend to. Spoiler, no, or at least not in the way it is presented right now.
Another detour takes us to contemporary China and the fear - from our point of view - of a society in which technological surveillance, combined with big data, facial recognition and social credit enables, almost in real time, to observe people and have them losing credit if they do something uncivic, like not paying your fines or sthg. Shivers. Orwellian totalitarianism. Panic.
Well. First we should be reminded that the way Confucian cultures considers the individual is way different from ours, and that submitting, and letting your individual self disappear for the benefit of the collective is seen as virtuous. (If you don't believe that, remember any teenager lecturing you. U good? Okay). Also, anyone who has been on a plane full of obese and highly tumultuous Chinese (but not just Chinese) passengers feels like if that's the way to make people behave, then why not. Also, it turns out the system is not so efficient that it would detect your inner preference for Matrix and other rebellious stuff that make you believe you're a threat to the system (and, for that matter, Google or FB are much more powerful in here).
Anyway, back to transparency. One of the things that really struck me was that you could see this from two points of view.
1- The "let's try our best with what we have" one / aka pursuing a reasonable goal.
That one can be applied for a lot of political topics. It basically says "well we're not gonna solve everything but we can identify that problem and try and do something about it.". It's rather humble and also not that easy given how much resistance there will be to doing even the most obvious things. To that extent, trying to overcome the institutional boy's club feeling that one might have towards many power structures is not that bad. Forcing elected representatives to be open about who pays for their campaign is fair. Blowing up bank secrecy (in Switzerland though, not everywhere) is acceptable. Expecting people to be examples if they want to lead is not that bad. Calling for prison reform, or refugee and migrant protection, or women's right, etc., thumbs up, of course, sure, duh even. Gathering as much info as possible on this or that illness in order to improve medicine is right. Mapping the brain in order to avoid slicing it when people have epilepsy, kuddos to that. Honestly if we were all equally busy doing things properly that would already be a lot.
And then you have transparency prevailing, whether it is by having ethics slowly replace the logic of legal and illegal and made acceptable with tools of accountability and transparency. Or basically, and more generally, having another form of logic prevailing that requires everyone to get in line before even crossing it. It makes it so much more efficient, true, but still, there's no real way of revealing who sets the line and why and why it is not an absolute. Also, very obviously, transparency requirements are also avoidable by those who would want to avoid them - just like ethics without legal consequences are heavily resting on good faith, which, you know, needs some backup.
The mischevious part of me likens it with Gwyneth Paltrow's "conscious uncoupling", yeah you might be doing something that is going to cause harm, but yaknow it's all in the open. The underlying idea behind all that is that some stuff can not be avoided so at least let's be gracious about it. Of course only an oversensitive person would criticise that. And yet when you start talking with people, everyone has a story of how this or that thing that was supposed to be rendered by any form of organisation in charge thereof did not work as planned and somehow made things worse (think, instant comparution, pleas, having hernia surgery before we realised it wasn't useful), etc. It's not always the case of course, but it is true that most of our current institutions also loose power because they seem unable to prevent things from happening, they mostly try to repair what is broken.
See where I'm going?
2. The "ain't gonna dismantle the master's house with the master's tools" one / There's a 3d way.
Oh, too much text going on here? Fear of proselytizing nonsense? Thinkin', I'm gonna advocate some teenager rebellious thing by quoting you know whom?
Better be
I've just read this on Jesus' Third way so that's this. I truly found it interesting and revealing that the man was not advocating this sort of helpless passivity in front of oppression, but said well guys resist, but don't get yourselves killed, because clearly the disparity of power is such that brutally killing a Roman soldier would just be no good. Show the other your humanity, force him to acknowledge that.
If you don't have time to read the article, it reminds us, amongst other things, that at the time you would only use the back of your hand to degrade people cause the use of the palm was reserved for equals. And you would not use the left hand (the impure hand, still today in countries like India). Basically he said that degraded people must show the other cheek, the left one, to force the other one to blow them with the palm, thus, recognising they were equals, which why wouldn't do, or at least, which would force them to be caught in the absurdity of their behaviour. Given everything we know about how dehumanisation is the hotbed for genocide, you can give five stars to Jesus.
No but tbh I've really wondered if the underlying reasoning behind having reforms to make things more transparent was not that same thing that makes the fly trapped in honey. I honestly can't say whether it's good or bad and fortunately no one cares about my opinion. I can only feel that given what is currently happening, I was under the impression that it was an extremely superficial and weird way to answer the growing mistrust towards institutions. The EU has shown, through the Greek crisis, that democracy is okay as long as it doesn't challenge the current frontiers of what is acceptable. A lot of people, especially in the South, have grown wary of these hybrid institutions. They are thus attracted to nationalist populism, since leftist populism has been defeated. The level of disempowerment has risen, and even though we're not exactly in the same situation as the US, the divide clearly sets in. Those who have adapted find themselves cut off from the basic people who don't seem to understand that this is how it is now. The level of decision making has risen and local politics seem at best inefficient given the scale mentality that pervades everything, which says, if you don't have X followers, X% increase of participation, etc., why bother?
Yet most of this reasoning is creating its own limitations. Clearly there's some sort of huh realisation when people in power positions somehow discover the reality on which their world lies, and the great limits to their power. It is ultimately still relevant that nothing ever comes to reality unless people, one by one, and collectively, demand it to happen, and, I guess, first lose hope that someone else, some institution, will do it. Legitimate leaders know this, and somehow channel people's desires in a seemingly selfless, transparent way. Now, and this is how we can go back to transparency. We've made significant changes to our way of understanding things. Untill recently, we could ignore the fact that whatever we did had an immediate impact on the world. The time span between the action and the realisation of its effects (foreseen and unforeseen) is shortening. It will take some time, again, to realise that there's actually no time span. That things happen simultaneously, despite our wiring to see things as cause - consequence. But right now, we are collectively facing a tremendous amount of information, and a growing despair as to what we could be doing. Environmentalism and activism seem to have missed their goal - or at least the goal is transforming, while the war mentality doesn't fade away. Climate change is now the enemy, so let's fight carbon emissions, and let's continue being trapped in quantitative measuring of stuff - disconnected of the organic, qualitative, located dimension of life. The delegitimisation of subjectivity shared collectively, the loss of diverse experiences continues. And in that, obscured by distractive goals, polluted by half conclusions and incomplete reasoning, we agitate ourselves in semi-activities that prevent us from feeling, deeply, that it's somehow alright. That we can be witnesses to this, and remain clear enough of obscurifying conclusions to be with the world - not at war with it, not fighting when there's no need, but to let ourselves be nourished by whatever the moment is offering.
I know this is a lot of attention required from you. Please click here to see an illustration of this. So you see privileged people like me all of sudden being like "omg the world is such a disaster", just like I saw that dude being in panic in 2008, or my father discovering that business as usual was basically damaging life on earth as we knew it before. At the time I was 15 and I thought, dude, come on, really? But yeah really, he didn't get it before. So the whole recycled paper thing really doesn't quite make up for it though because during that time, gated communities and private territories became a thing and I think many of these people still didn't experience with their own flesh how messed up the environment is. And basically, this whole let's be transparent, let's share information, let's all go on the internet and tell stuff out loud on Youtube comments isn't going to change much is it?
There's this thing in the Tao, verset 38, which says:
The Master doesn't try to be powerful;Yeah, I know. Jesus AND the Tao. Yeaaaaaah. I can't get any more smug than this (or can I?).
thus he is truly powerful.
The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;
thus he never has enough.
The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.
The kind man does something,
yet something remains undone.
The just man does something,
and leaves many things to be done.
The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.
Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.
To come back to the Kress c. France decision, and the recognition that appearances matter too, what I found so revealing was that it actually gives the impression that the ritual becomes more important than whatever it was that was supposed to be done. The justice system had been said to lack credibility for a while, especially since people started expecting it to be truly fair. I don't think it was ever supposed to. It's rather dealing with fairness than justice (justesse et non pas justice), given that the judge's action is constrained by certain rules and limitations. It is a system that has emerged in order to avoid the arbitrary of equity judgements (where the judge can just decide freely - and, risk is - arbitrarily). So anyway, considering the evolution of judicial institution from the Roman Empire onwards, clearly, the idea of socially instituted justice has been facing the unavoidable limitations of what humans, as a group, and with their understanding, are able to create. I think it's accurate to say that most people accept that the justice system can be unfair and brutal, but that we should work with it in order to create the tools that can challenge the gross unfairness (such as XXth century labour rights). I don't know if it's submission or ignorance rather than real agreement, consent, as we call lack of other choice, but anyway.
Quick note here: human rights clearly are the spiritual dimension of the religion of humanity that emerged post industrial revolution. So we're talking churchy things here. You also know, if you're inside my brain, that we are coming back to feudal times (please go and read Alain Supiot extensively, you can watch these videos and never come back coz ur brain gunna b blown off (oh and btw if my trying to be cool in English bothers you, feel free to comment), and that traditional public institutions paid for by governments are slowly being devoid of power, meaning, funding (see, the schooling system in the US, see, the rise of IA and private justice, see, the upcoming reforms of healthcare almost anywhere in Europe). Feudal times? See unstable coalitions, see multilateralism. See corporate power and politics, contractualisation of most relationships (including filiation). See privatisation and commodification of the last things public or free (or outside of the money realm). See the making of oneself a small but important sovereignty dependant on bigger vassals (using Uber to transport your Instagram popularity everywhere). You sure could be depressed, as so many are, who are also struggling with mental health issues in the face of crumbling frames of references and the emergences of new idols which one has to serve despite spending days doing meaningless tasks, I call, indexes, rates, and a third thing for rhetorical credibility.
So what's there to do against the tidal wave of chaos coming? Anyone who has been some sort of activist, or who believes him/herself to be a good person (but secretly realizes, as time passes by, that he/she's also as much contradictory as anyone he/she wants to be better than), knows the despair of trying to do something but also not wanting to resort to violence or force to make those *** realize x or y (tho). Feels how you had this idea, and years after you realize that the thing you wanted to accomplish isn't really happening but now you can't do much about it 'cause you're stuck. (This is usually when you start having children, every generation has a job to do). Or, being a good person in Geneva who slowly realizes that states are no longer funding UN agencies or NGOs, and that the competition and precarity in the field is as bad as it gets. And also, that like so many organisations, you have all sorts of power struggles and egomaniacal delusional people running those things, and that you spend way too much time on Excel assessing how much tomato sauce and rice them guys in the Kivu region (who have been living in camps all their lives) need and if there isn't something that should be done to improve food storage, like hiring a data specialist/social media manager. Wherever you look, it's hard to believe that being more transparent in how we spoil things will prevent us from spoiling things.
3- What would really qualify as transparency (because having a 3d point in the argument gives a dynamic touch that helps enhance this post) and should we strive for it?
Just to finish here. Also, whenever you see an important person being interested in your issues, don't we all know how it feels? Nah we fine bro don't worry, look away man. You heard screams? Nah it was just me pretending my leg got cut off, don't worry, see, I'll just put some saliva here, you know, it's gonna stick, no worries. Let's be honest: corporations and states caring for the environment will give birth to the craziness of technological tools to reduce carbon emissions, recapturing it, replacing bees with people in regions where pesticides have killed them (true story, in China, google it), print more useless stuff on recycled paper, let's forget printing altogether, let's all go on the clouds, but then, safety, data protection, stuff, meetings, reforms, standards, immense boredom, and still, this feeling that we're just never gonna address the real issue, which I would sum up by saying: leave it.
Is that because these ppl r bad and we good? Nope. I guess it's mainly because it's not our place to manage everything in life. Really. We are well advised to not interfere so much and just accept that stuff happens. People who are aiming for, and given a position of power (which is a consensus, which only works as long as people adhere to a certain way of thinking) are led astray by the illusion (with real effects tho) of control that it gives. The process of getting there has its own effects. It can easily entrap you, lead to all sorts of abuses, especially if you are surrounded by litteral extremists who will ascertain the power of human will and reasoning beyond any limits, in the illusion that you can do, predict, and try anything, and think, you know what folks, let's set ourselves a goal: we'll get rid of climate change in 50 years. That could happen, then one day bam the temperature decreases, everyone's high-fiving from outter space cause the great Junk Planet has gone from "completely devastated" to "putrescent" only. Aha I know so joyful, so light, a bundle of joy me is.
One can become either burdened with a feeling of helplessness or cynical and say, well, humans are just parasites under the spell of natural selection, like Donald Glover had put it in this New Yorker article:
They were discussing the Internet, which Glover declared horrible in every way. (Explaining why he had deleted his social-media presence, he told me, “I felt like social media was making me less human, and I already didn’t feel that human.”) “So why don’t you tell people that?” Robinson asked. Seven or eight other guests, white millennials in entertainment, stood around the kitchen island, listening reverently.Sadly, yeah.
Glover’s eyes widened and he emphasized every word: “Because they would kill this nigga!” Everyone laughed. “Those corporations don’t want anyone to stop the money train.”
“So you know better but you’re keeping the truth quiet—doesn’t that make you complicit?”
“A coward, you mean?” Glover said. “No, it makes me human. All we’re here to do is survive and procreate, pass on our information.”
Seems like there's just no way out of this time thing, and mostly, whatever change is proposed kind of ends up being swallowed and spit back devoid of radical impact, or creates some weird side effect that you didn't think of at first (see any Adam Curtis documentary on that, that man clearly shows us how any right-wing or left-wing movement in the 20th century has produced as much harm as one could have not hoped for). Does that mean you can just sit back and enjoy the ride? In Taoistic terms, just do your thing, work well, not too well, not too bad, and leave it. Just like Dostoïevski's Mychkine Prince: "how can you be unhappy when there are trees outside?".
What would be transparent actually mean? Again, given the unavoidable limitations of instituted rules, I have to admit that I no longer trust the processes that I have learnt to respect to bring about any change. Reform is a way to reshuffle the letters on the cake, but it won't do what it is sold as being able to do. Clearly, that could be ok. But this limitation sheds light on a requisite that has to do with our own selves, and how we behave and are in the world. A few years ago, I would go to random court audiences to see how this worked. What shocked me, fresh out of college, was the seemingly absurd nature of all this. It happened that the three judges were obviously tired and somehow racists. Or that the lawyer was simply not either competent or knowledgeable about the case. Or even more simply than this, that there was a form of instituted deafness to the circumstances of the (usually poor black or arab young man) defendant, which made the discussion solely focus on the 20€ worth of weed that had been sold despite strong legislation against it, and not on any of the many ways that man's life was rigged from the start, in a cumulative process that screamed for compassion. Of course this does not apply to every single audience, or every single case. But you know, if you don't know the language of that institution, and of the culture of those who can apply legal force, boy, you're doomed. The brutality of it all struck me deeply. I wondered why no one no longer dared to scream indignation in front of the apparent banality of such audiences. Yet, I could sense that I was not the only one - the policeman guarding the entrance, looking forward, trying to have a stare as blank as he could. The friends of the next defendant. Some old couple, linked with another audience too. It turns out, and this is clearly the limitation of my argument, that:
- real transparency requires deep introspection and attention as to what it is that motivates our behavior - not just on the surface, but deeply: why do I consider this or that (group of) person(s) an other? What do I know? How do I constantly need to judge people and put them afar so that I - the idea of myself - can continue to exist and possibly attain this or that position? What makes me violent (because this is violent - our standard is to keep going, not to make the world easy for toddlers)? What prevents me from opening up to larger understandings and compassion? This goes on and on and means that you can unroot some of the deepest and long-held beliefs about the world, and let them be exposed to careful attention - do they still hold truth? It's painful and sometimes hard, but I don't think there's any other way of becoming less in friction with the world.
- this doesn't mean that nothing can change or that you have to leave the world. Not necessarily so dramatic. I guess that you have to just once admit that the way things are is just not leading you anywhere - or see it as it is. Which is hard given how much distraction we have. I've since seen countless videos or accounts of judges or people who seemed to have understood this and would accomplish their duty with care and subtlety. That is one of the wonders of the law: it is not here to be mechanically applied. It is a living body of rules which will bear the mark of those who use it. And as such, there is an art of justice that can help making the audience - despite a "negative" outcome - a place of respect, acknowledgement, and pacification.
On the absolute transparency, on the question as to whether or not there is a way of being to the world that enables us to be just like water, well yes it is possible. But I think that it excludes you from the possibility of fitting into a prepared, pre-existing role in society. Even being a monk is limiting because you have to submit to an organisation that aims at surviving you. Therefore, once you reach the limit and recognise that you are it, as any other form of life is, well. I don't know what you're supposed to do. I guess, do your job. Because then you no longer want things to change or be different. You understand than the apparent disorder or injustice is somehow being balanced. That both injustice and justice coexist. Injustice, in the condemnation of a helpless young man. Justice, in the testimony of those who were there, of life that supports it, enables it to happen, and constantly opens up the possibility for anyone to change, and reinforces this judge's fear and contempt, and from what I gathered, this man still be surrounded by a family which knows and will be sad with him. Not much of a consolation huh... Hmmmm.....
If you want to dig up a bit more, it comes back to the fact that whatever we think is just interpretation, reframing of stuff, that we, as far as our intellectual or cognitive abilities are concerned, will never be in touch with reality as it is, and will just more or less eloquently reinstate things that have already been said/thought/described. So real transparency is basically impossible to instate / encapsulate within a formula, whether litteral or mathematical - it can not be put in form by that same cognitive disposition that makes us unable to actually be it. No institution will ever come anywhere but a bit closer, asymptotical at best. But the effort to go there will cost always more and more. Charles Eisenstein describes it as the fix mentality. Google that man and come back in a few days. There will always be a part of dogma in collective institutions, whichever they are. Because there are just that. Institutions. Which means, also, not absolute, not right, not valuable in themselves, but also, there.
So you might wonder: can you get in touch with reality as it is, by other means? Frankly, it's not the point here and come and talk to me if you want to know (yes, but don't try cause it will ruin your life and make you rant on the internet for no reason). Also, who cares, clearly, Kant had already said it, the Bible somehow points to it, Muslim legal thinking also emphasises that we can not state God's will, Buddhism also says it (see this Alexandra David-Néel quote). Let us not forget that it is just some sort of play, that there is room between the fact and the interpretation, the persona and the human, and as long as you know it, well, then, do you best, and leave it.
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